Books_parenting_family

PARENTING & FAMILY


Many of the books listed provide educational reading for parents (assistance with problems, what to expect as a teenager matures, dealing with bullies - regardless of your age). 

Our books cover a wide range of areas and are written so that they are easily understood:

  • Raising children well,
  • Family relationships,
  • Raising teenagers,
  • Dealing with bullies,
  • Love and marriage.

Happy Reading

!

BUSHFIRE

!

10% OFF for Paid-up Members

A Book that Reaches and Teaches

Elizabeth Mellor (The Awakening Network Inc., Seymour, 2010) 174 pages


Elizabeth won a prize in the twenty-third Annual Australian Family Therapists’ Award for Children’s Literature. Bushfire was put on the recommended reading list for therapists to use with their clients.

 

Read what they wrote: “Bushfire … [is] for therapists who may work with clients (adults or children) in the aftermath of a natural disaster which impacts on a whole community. It was placed in the top five books for “Older Readers (meaning children from about 10 years of age and up)."

 

Bushfire is a fictional story that is a great read for children and teenagers, and a powerful mentoring resource for adults.

This book is a gripping story about a child going through a bushfire and its aftermath. It also offers a path for dealing with the trauma and emotional upheaval experienced by anyone affected by bushfire. The book is written with children and teenagers in mind but speaks to all ages and provides parents, or anyone involved with young people, with a wonderful device to approach the issues surrounding traumatic events. Many adults have also benefited from reading it.

Bushfire begins on a very hot Australian summer day with the threat of bushfire in the air. The central character, Ruby, lives with her parents and her dog, Gypsy, on a property some distance from town. For over 50 hours, Ruby and her parents face the rigours of bushfire. After a long fight, they and their house survive, although other parts of their property are destroyed.

The story is written through Ruby's eyes and it takes us both through the fire and its aftermath. Having survived the fire, Ruby's family moves to a recovery centre set up on the local cricket oval where we get to know the other characters central to the book. This time of facing day-to-day difficulties and painful realisations is balanced by humour, good old fashioned common sense and an underlying theme of learning how different people cope with trauma and their recovery from it. While living there, Ruby returns to school where she faces problems with other students who didn't experience the fire and has to come to terms with her own grief. The story ends six months after the fires, as neighbours and friends gather at Ruby's home to celebrate their lives and to say goodbye to those who died.

Two resource guides are available for the book: one for parents and the other for teachers. These are free and available through Elizabeth's bushfire book website. See below.

For more book description, author information, contact details for Elizabeth, reviews and a blog, go to bushfirebook.com.au, or click here

PARENTCRAFT (2nd. Edition): A practical guide to raising children well

!

This is the second edition of a book that is becoming a standard for parenting books in several parts of the world.  Now published in 6 languages

 Ken & Elizabeth Mellor (2nd. Edition, Finch Publishing, Sydney, 2001)  (248 pages)

Also Available in Kindle from Amazon

In this wide-ranging and practical guide to parenting,  There is clear information on  the role of parents, important parenting skills, how our family backgrounds contribute to what we do, and the cycles and stages of childhood.  They explore themes that relate to managing families, catering for the needs of parents and children, love and discipline, setting standards and limits, and integrating important values into parenting.

"At last the Mellors have written down their ideas on child-rearing.  We have used their approaches for seventeen years and they really work," - George & Jenny, parents of three.

TEEN STAGES: How to guide the journey to adulthood

!


Great information on the six stages that teenagers grow through. Retails for A$22.95.


Ken & Elizabeth Mellor (Finch Publishing, Sydney, 2004) (214 pages)

Teenagers actually want to be controlled and have their parents involved in their lives!

Also Available in Kindle from Amazon

Teen Stages is a powerful guide to each year of a teen's development, giving you tactics specific to the stage your child is experiencing. With easy-to-apply advice, plus helpful activities and check lists you can use right away, you will learn how your child's moods and behaviour change as they move through the six stages of adolescence: The Baby, The Dissenter, The Fledgling, The Sweet and Sour, The Romantic and The World Leader.

Once you understand the stage your teen is at, you'll have the keys to understand why they act the way they do, what they really need, and how to communicate with them.

Also published in USA

EASY PARENTING

!
A guide to raising happy, well balanced children.
Ken & Elizabeth Mellor (Finch Publishing, Sydney, 2001) (122 pages)


Easy Parenting
is about meeting the challenges and dealing with the difficulties that parents face, so they can raise their children to become happy, well balanced adults. In Easy Parenting, Ken and Elizabeth Mellor also suggest ways to handle friction in families. The book includes both what parents can do and how to learn to do it.

Enjoyable to read, easy to understand and straightforward to apply, the book contains many practical skills and approaches, including:

  • different ways of loving your child
  • "nagging" effectively as part of teaching children
  • effective ways to discipline
  • struggling with children for their benefit
  • developing your child's self-esteem
  • getting your child to understand what you say
  • finding out what your child needs
  • managing conflicts between brothers and sisters.

Easy Parenting is taken from the middle third of ParentCraft, Ken & Elizabeth Mellor's internationally acclaimed book on parenting.. The contents are the same with a few minor additions.

THE HAPPY FAMILY

!
A guide to enjoyable family life.
Ken & Elizabeth Mellor (Finch Publishing, Sydney, 2001) (122 pages)


The Happy Family
is about how to make family life enjoyable, stable and secure for all involved. Ken and Elizabeth Mellor provide simple, easy-to-use ways to manage our families well so they provide what is needed. They suggest that our families are classrooms for life and little communities in which children learn how to live in the wider world.

Their practical advice on how to do this includes:

  • understanding and shaping your family patterns
  • creating balance between family life and work
  • learning from our own childhood experience of families
  • ways of ensuring your own family works well
  • handling family conflicts
  • creating and working together in a parenting team.

The Happy Family is taken from the first third of ParentCraft, Ken & Elizabeth Mellor's internationally acclaimed book on parenting.. The contents are the same with a few minor additions.

SYMBOLS OF LOVE I CHING for Lovers, Friends and Relationships

!
 
Stephen Karcher (Little Brown and Company, London, 2002) (309 pages)


Stephen Karcher
has created a wonderful book for couples using the Chinese Oracle - the I Ching.  As usual, the simplicity and beauty of  his writing makes this book very easy reading and wonderfully rich in the contribution it can make to people who wish to enhance their relationships with each other.  Stephen presents the hexagrams as they apply to relationships, enabling readers to apply the ancient wisdom of the I Ching to the complexities of the way we love one another today.

Ken & Elizabeth Mellor joined forces with Stephen to add the richness of their approach to his. They provided Reflections and Practices for each of the hexagrams - amounting to about 16% of the text.  As spiritual mentors, they have introduced many thousands of people to meditation and other enlightening techniques. Their experience as counsellors and psychotherapists and their shared life as a couple make them particularly at home in the blend of the practical, psychological and spiritual that is the heart of this way of the lover. 

PARENTCRAFT (1st. Edition): Essential skills for raising children from infancy to adulthood

!


First edition of this amazing book.  Now published in 6 languages. A change of cover and subtitle are the only differences with the second edition. 

Ken & Elizabeth Mellor (Finch Publishing, Sydney, 1999) (248 pages)

This first edition is the same as the second with the exception of the cover picture, the subtitle of the book and a few paragraphs at the beginning of the "Parenting with love" chapter. 

In this wide-ranging and practical guide to parenting, There is clear information on the role of parents, important parenting skills, how our family backgrounds contribute to what we do, and the cycles and stages of childhood. They explore themes that relate to managing families, catering for the needs of parents and children, love and discipline, setting standards and limits, and integrating important values into parenting.

"At last the Mellors have written down their ideas on child-rearing. We have used their approaches for seventeen years and they really work," - George & Jenny, parents of three.

OSCAR'S WAY

!

10% OFF for Paid-up Members

Elizabeth Mellor (Biame Network Inc., Seymour, 2005) 
(Paperback, 195x130mm, 197 Pages)

 

Also Available in Kindle from Amazon


The story is an fable involving two key characters: Oscar, a blue tongue lizard, and Jambie, a possum, who are on an odyssey through the Australian bush to get to two gigantic trees that grow on a distant hill.

Readers, both young and old, love the story and find themselves transported into a world of living creatures, whose journey is filled with adventures and the self-discovery that goes with them.

It is wonderfully written so that the reader is invited into his or her further awakening as the story progresses - and the end is well worth the trip.

Buy it as a treat for yourself, or to read to your children. 

This is a wonderful book for fanning interest in the mysteries of life in both children and adults.

Book Review

PDFs have a small A$2.50 handling charge that will show up when your select "shipping method" as you check out.

Also, your download links for your PDFs and MP3s are usually sent between Monday and Friday (not automatically 24/7) so allow time for their arrival.