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Language of Listening® Books
Our Handbook — How to use our simple coaching skills
Add three simple coaching skills to your parent or teacher tool kit with Sandy’s classic, child-centered handbook, and get more hugs and more respect. This short Language of Listening® “how-to” handbook makes reward-free, punishment-free interactions with children easy. Imagine always knowing what to say and do. Now you can!
Note: Sandy is also coauthor of CPRT Treatment Manual (below)
You just want to know what to say or do… RIGHT NOW!!! And you love examples! Two of our Authorized Language of Listening® coaches, Rose Clark and Camilla Miller, partnered to create this set of 3 example booklets (downloadable, printable PDF’s). Booklets include HUNDREDS of examples of EXACTLY what to say to your child in MOMENTS YOU FACE EVERYDAY. Print your favorite pages to post on your fridge as reminders!
This 334-page interactive workbook for parents is a self-contained coaching course. Written by Authorized Language of Listening® Master Coach Camilla Miller and edited by our founder, Sandy Blackard, the engaging illustrations, client examples, personal stories, and exercises make learning easy!
In this workbook, Camilla gives you a new understanding of what works with children from toddlers to teens (and what doesn’t). She shows you why typical parenting struggles keep happening and gives you everything you need to get unstuck in your thinking and your interactions with your child. In short, this workbook can take you from where you are right now to where you want to be in your family life. And the responses you give to the thoughtful prompts she includes will turn the workbook into a journal that documents your journey.
In this countercultural book, Authorized Language of Listening® Coach Rachel Norman, shows you how to cultivate a life you aren’t trying to constantly escape. As a mom of five kids in five years, she knows! She teaches you how to discover and claim your own limits and boundaries and shape your daily life and values around the few things that really matter. If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. But when mama is at peace? Everybody benefits.
Want to save time? This easy-to-read book of 70 tips summarizes current research on interacting with babies and young children. The clear, one-page-per-topic layout includes sleeping, feeding, screen time, potty training, discipline, and more. Tracy, an Authorized Language of Listening® Speaker, also includes a section on how to use our simple coaching skills!
Parenting Books by Play Therapists and Psychologists
Create life-changing playtimes with your own child one week at a time. Theresa provides detailed instruction and shares her compelling story of the difference “special playtime” made for her family. It’s the therapy version of our Language of Listening® Mastery Class.
Note: Theresa is also coauthor of CPRT Treatment Manual (below)
MUST READ CLASSIC! The child-centered play therapy roots of Language of Listening® and Faber and Mazlish’s How to Talk… books are evident in this revised version of the 1965 classic on listening respectfully to children. Loaded with everyday examples of effective communication.
MUST READ CLASSIC! Playful Parenting is a psychological look at what works with kids. “Pretend… that we’re really gonna be late and you’re really mad.” Imagine your child saying that when you’re grumpy and trying to get out the door in the morning. As Larry demonstrated, games work for kids and parents, too.
The Art of Roughhousing, Larry’s book co-authored by Anthony DeBenedet, M.D., shows how appropriate rough-and-tumble play can nurture close connections, solve behavior problems, boost confidence, and more.
The Opposite of Worry, Larry’s most recent book, gives you easy-to-implement, playful solutions and strategies so you and your child can let go of worry, anxiety, and fear and embrace connection, trust, and joy.
The How to Talk… series’ authors studied with child-centered play therapist Dr. Haim Ginott whose influence is clear in every volume. These interactive books contain comic strip illustrations of the situations parents and teachers encounter daily, exercises, and lots of examples of what to say (in the same vein as Language of Listening®).
Strengths are an important part of our Language of Listening® coaching model. Lea’s book explores the effect of ‘throwing the strengths switch.’ As she says, her book “demonstrates how we can not only help our children [and teens] build resilience, optimism, and achievement but we can also help inoculate them against today’s pandemic of depression and anxiety.”
Unconditional Parenting: In this classic, needs-based parenting book, rather than asking, “How can we get kids to do what they’re told?” Alfie begins by asking, “What do kids need, and how can we meet those needs?” A philosophical match for Language of Listening®.
Punished By Rewards: Instead of “do this and you’ll get that,” Alfie points the way to a more successful strategy based on working with people instead of doing things to them: “Do rewards motivate people? Yes. They motivate people to get rewards.” Seasoned with humor and familiar examples.
The Myth of the Spoiled Child: Parents are accused of being both permissive and overprotective, unwilling to set limits and afraid to let their kids fail. In his lively, contrarian style, Alfie systematically debunks these beliefs. New research reveals that helicopter parenting is quite rare and, surprisingly, may do more good than harm when it does occur. The major threat to healthy child development, he argues, is parenting that is too controlling rather than too indulgent.
In Brainstorm, Dan busts many commonly-held myths about adolescence. Drawing on important new research in the field of interpersonal neurobiology, he explores exciting ways in which understanding how the brain functions can improve the lives of adolescents, making their relationships more fulfilling, less lonely, and less distressing on both sides of the generational divide.
In No Drama Discipline, Dan and co-author Tina explain how to connect and redirect. Their book explores the link between a child’s neurological development and the way a parent reacts to misbehavior. If you’ve seen anyone make a fist and open their fingers to demonstrate ‘flipping your lid,’ that’s Dan’s model.
Aware is Dan’s hands-on guide with another visual model that will enable you to become more focused and present as well as more energized and emotionally resilient in the face of stress and the everyday challenges life throws your way. Great tool for cultivating “a state of receptive awareness” that will benefit you and your child.
Dibs will not talk. He will not play. Virginia’s client-based story takes you through his long journey from being labeled as “mentally defective,” to emerging as a gifted and lovable young man. A captivating account that introduced play therapy to the world. Though we’ve removed questions and added boundaries, the play therapy roots of our Language of Listening® Mastery Class are clear in Axline’s book.
Parenting Books by Teachers
No Bad Kids: Toddler discipline without shame, is a collection of Janet’s most popular and widely read articles pertaining to common toddler behaviors and how respectful parenting practices can be applied to benefit both parents and children.
This book written by the founder of the internationally acclaimed Austin Montessori School, demonstrates the value of validation in the classroom for helping children turn their lives around. The skills Donna uses are very similar to those we teach in Language of Listening® Mastery Class.
Dr. Maria Montessori’s work was child-centered and respectful, making it a great match for the Language of Listening® coaching approach. Simone and Junnifa’s books help you bring Montessori’s principles into your home. Both authors are AMI-trained Montessori educators; Junnifa also has RIE training (Resources for Infant Educarers).
Live Love Now gives you tools for connecting with teens, preteens, and yourself, and a big sigh of relief.
Books for Play Therapists and Psychologists
Definitive textbook for professionals co-authored by Dr. Garry Landreth, world-renowned play therapist and mentor to the founder of Language of Listening®. Contains partial transcripts of his 10-session CPRT training.
Note: A revised 2nd edition by Landreth and Bratton is now available through UNT – Center for Play Therapy.
This 1st ed. treatment manual is the 2006 companion to CPRT textbook. CPRT Treatment Manual is a comprehensive instructional manual for professionals who wish to train parents to become therapeutic agents for their own children as Dr. Landreth did for coauthors Dr. Theresa Kellam and Sandra Blackard. It includes 10-session CPRT outline, parent handouts, etc.
CPRT Treatment Manual was inspired by a manual written by Sandra, the founder of Language of Listening®, to bring Dr. Landreth’s teachings to parents beyond the world of therapy. Sandra’s manual later inspired our 201 Mastery Class.
Note: A revised 2nd edition by Bratton and Landreth is now available through UNT – Center for Play Therapy.
Books for Children
This picture book uses relatable examples and engaging illustrations to communicate what an organizational psychologist does to audiences of all ages. It also helps parents who are consultants in any field answer their child’s question, “Where do you work?”
