Start Your Family

Starting a family is a soul-shaping, world-altering experience. Unfortunately, in a culture of competing values and protracted timelines, couples are increasingly backing their way into parenting or missing it altogether. By the time the average couple tries to have kids, they are often beyond their late twenties and surprised to learn they are sliding past the peak of their fertile years. In Start Your Family, Steve and Candice Watters encourage couples to be intentional about their timeline in the early years of marriage and to trust God to help them boldly launch their families. Responding to the most common doubts and hurdles, they offer biblical inspiration for the questions: Why have kids? When is the best time to start? How can we fit kids into our lives?

A poetry collection introducing animal architects that build remarkable structures in order to attract a mate and have babies. Many animals build something--a nest, tunnel, or web--in order to pair up, lay eggs, give birth, and otherwise perpetuate their species. Organized based on where creatures live--underground, in the water, on land, or in the air--twelve poems bring fish, insects, reptiles, mammals, and birds to life. Back matter includes more information about each animal. "A fine synthesis of poetry and science" — Kirkus Reviews "An inviting introduction to a dozen industrious creatures" — Publishers Weekly "A natural for classroom use, with eye-catching art that will lure little ones in" — Booklist ILA Teachers' Choices

A groundbreaking approach to transforming traumatic legacies passed down in families over generations, by an acclaimed expert in the field Depression. Anxiety. Chronic Pain. Phobias. Obsessive thoughts. The evidence is compelling: the roots of these difficulties may not reside in our immediate life experience or in chemical imbalances in our brains—but in the lives of our parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents. The latest scientific research, now making headlines, supports what many have long intuited—that traumatic experience can be passed down through generations. It Didn’t Start with You builds on the work of leading experts in post-traumatic stress, including Mount Sinai School of Medicine neuroscientist Rachel Yehuda and psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score. Even if the person who suffered the original trauma has died, or the story has been forgotten or silenced, memory and feelings can live on. These emotional legacies are often hidden, encoded in everything from gene expression to everyday language, and they play a far greater role in our emotional and physical health than has ever before been understood. As a pioneer in the field of inherited family trauma, Mark Wolynn has worked with individuals and groups on a therapeutic level for over twenty years. It Didn’t Start with You offers a pragmatic and prescriptive guide to his method, the Core Language Approach. Diagnostic self-inventories provide a way to uncover the fears and anxieties conveyed through everyday words, behaviors, and physical symptoms. Techniques for developing a genogram or extended family tree create a map of experiences going back through the generations. And visualization, active imagination, and direct dialogue create pathways to reconnection, integration, and reclaiming life and health. It Didn’t Start With You is a transformative approach to resolving longstanding difficulties that in many cases, traditional therapy, drugs, or other interventions have not had the capacity to touch.

Despite the best of intentions, the busyness of life and endless distractions frequently cause parents to put their family's development on the back burner. FAMILY SHIFT shows parents how to realign their families with easy but critical steps to follow to start living intentionally. Author Rodney Gage and his wife, Michelle, saw a drift start to threaten their own family's well-being and set out to stop it in its tracks. They wanted to defy the alarming statistics of the decline of the family unit and share with families everywhere that they can learn to thrive as a family, not merely survive. Every family gets off track at some point, but that's not a major problem as long as you know your destination. FAMILY SHIFT has families working together to create a family vision, mission statement, and core values family members will be better equipped to help one another navigate the unexpected twists and turns of life. Each chapter concludes with questions to answer as a family and additional resources to work through together.

What's a pampered cat to do now that she has to compete for attention with an ill-mannered puppy? Award-winning author Susin Nielsen delights in this laugh-a-minute twist on the classic sibling rivalry story. Princess Puffybottom has the perfect life -- her subjects serve her delicious meals, clean up her "delicate matters" and wait on her hand and foot. Life is good . . . until Darryl arrives. Princess Puffybottom thinks he's disgusting, horrid and a true animal. Though she tries everything in her power to banish him (including hypnosis, trickery and even sabotage), it looks like this puppy is here to stay. Can Princess P. and Darryl find a way to co-exist? A hilarious picture book from acclaimed author Susin Nielsen, with adorable illustrations by Olivia Chin Mueller, Princess Puffybottom . . . and Darryl is perfect for not only warring siblings, but also anyone who loves cute pets (and some toilet humor).

From the television host, actress, and mother of three, a fabulous collection of season-by-season recipes, holiday hacks, birthday rituals, and date night ideas for creating wonderful family celebrations and cherished memories. Television personality Vanessa Lachey is a dedicated mom of three, a supportive wife to singer Nick Lachey, and someone who freely shares her “perfectly imperfect” home and family life. But like many people, Vanessa didn’t come from a family whose traditions were passed down from generation to generation. Her mom left when she was nine, and when she began her own family, Vanessa had to rely on her own imagination to create celebrations and milestone markers that would become annual rituals. In Life from Scratch, Vanessa shares personal stories, ideas, delicious recipes, and parenting tips you can use to make your own celebrations unique and unforgettable. Inside you’ll discover the simple gift-giving custom Vanessa shares with her best girlfriends each year; the date-night tradition that she and Nick swear by; and her fool-proof recipe for “authentic” Chicken Adobo she serves to family and friends. A fun, uplifting yearlong guide that celebrates families that color outside the lines, Life from Scratch will inspire people to make each season, and each special moment, their own.

Research on home visiting shows that Early Head Start (EHS) home-based programs benefit from additional training and resources that streamline philosophy and content. In this essential guide, Walsh and Mortensen propose that alignment with Family Life Education’s (FLE) strengths-based methodology results in greater consistency through a model of prevention, education, and collaboration with families. This text is the first to outline linkages between FLE and EHS home visiting. It explores a qualitative study of FLE integrated in a current EHS home-based program and application of FLE methodology to home visiting topics. This approach will influence professional practice and provide a foundation for developing evidence-based home visiting practices. Online content accompanies the text, with videos demonstrating the FLE approach in action and discussion questions to encourage engagement with and understanding of the core material. Transforming Early Head Start Home Visiting: A Family Life Education Approach is essential reading for upper-level undergraduate and masters students in family studies and early childhood education, as well as practitioners working with children and families.

A true story of making a difference: “What does your family stand for? Read this book—it will change your life” (Daniel H. Pink). It all started when fourteen-year-old Hannah Salwen had a “eureka” moment. Seeing a homeless man in her neighborhood at the same moment when a glistening Mercedes coupe pulled up, she said “You know, Dad, if that man had a less nice car, that man there could have a meal.” Until that day, the Salwens had been caught up like so many of us in the classic American dream—providing a good life for their children, accumulating more and more stuff, doing their part but not really feeling it. So when Hannah was stopped in her tracks by this glaring disparity, her parents knew they had to do something. As a family, they made the extraordinary decision to sell their Atlanta mansion, downsize to a house half its size, and give half of the sale price to a worthy charity. What began as an outlandish scheme became a remarkable journey that transported them across the globe and well out of their comfort zone. In the end they learned that they had the power to change a little corner of the world—and found that it changed them, too. “You feel lighter reading this book, as if the heavy weight of house and car and appliances, the need to collect these things to feel safe as a family, are lifted and replaced by something that makes much more sense.” —Los Angeles Times