Central Skagit Library District

As a parent you strive to model kindness, compassion, and patience when interacting with your children. But no parent is perfect, and in difficult or stressful moments, you may react to your kids in ways that don't exactly fit your ideal model of parenting for example, yelling. You aren't alone. Parental reactions are often deeply ingrained, and you likely learned them from your parents. So how can you break this cycle and be the kind of parent you...

Award-winning science journalists Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman demonstrate that many of modern society's strategies for nurturing children are in fact backfiring--because key twists in the science of child development have been overlooked. The authors discuss the inverse power of praise, why insufficient sleep adversely affects kids' capacity to learn, why white parents don't talk about race, why kids lie, why evaluation methods for "giftedness"...

The current model of parental discipline is as outdated as a rotary phone. Why don't our kids do what we want them to do? Parents often take the blame for misbehavior, but this obscures a broader trend: in our modern, highly connected age, children have less self-control than ever. About half of the current generation of children will develop a mood or behavioral disorder or a substance addiction by age eighteen. Contemporary kids need to learn independence...

"If you liked Big Little Lies, you'll want to crack open [Little Broken Things]." —Southern Living

An unforgettable and moving novel about an affluent suburban family whose carefully constructed façade crumbles with the unexpected arrival of an endangered young girl.
I have something for you.

When Quinn Cruz receives that cryptic text message from her older sister Nora,...

"At long last, I've found a book that I can hand to weary parents with the confidence that they can learn to help their baby sleep through the night--without the baby crying it out."--William Sears, M.D., Author of "The Baby Book." Illustrations.

North Dakota, 1951. It's been years since George and Margaret Blackledge lost their son James and months since his widow Lorna took off with their only grandson and married Donnie Weboy. Margaret is resolved to find and retrieve the boy -- while George is none too eager to stir up trouble. Soon, the Blackledges find themselves entangled with the entire Weboy clan, who are determined not to give up the boy without a fight.

Beginning with Sigmund Freud, modern child development theories have changed the way that parents raise their children and the way that teachers teach those children. This video is an entertaining and enlightening view of the major child development theories, how the theories differ and how more than one approach can be beneficial. Historical footage and photos are combined with candid documentary footage from day care centers.

"The spellbinding story of Chris McCandless, who gave away his savings, hitchhiked to Alaska, walked into the wilderness alone, and starved to death in 1992, fascinated not just New York Times bestselling author Jon Krakauer, but also the rest of the nation. Krakauer's book, Into the Wild, became an international bestseller, translated into thirty-one languages, and Sean Penn's inspirational film by the same name further skyrocketed Chris McCandless...

Clint Smith's vibrant and compelling new collection traverses the vast emotional terrain of fatherhood, and explores how becoming a parent has recalibrated his sense of the world. There are poems that interrogate the ways our lives are shaped by both personal lineages and historical institutions. There are poems that revel in the wonder of discovering the world anew through the eyes of your children, as they discover it for the first time. There are...

BORN THIS WAY follows a group of seven young adults born with Down syndrome as they pursue their passions and life long dreams, explore friendships, romantic relationships, and work, all while defying society's expectations.