Dear Mom,

I’ve got two books for you.

The Connected Parent

As an mom by adoption, I appreciate any book that teaches me how to build healthy attachments with my children. That means, any book by Dr. Karyn Purvis. Her final book, The Connected Parent, was co-written by my friend, Lisa Qualls and it is excellent.

The Connected Parent provides real-life applications for concepts taught in The Connect Child. If you read The Connected Child or attended an Empower to Connect Conference to learn Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI) like we did, you already know the tools Dr. Purivs taught are powerful. But, if you are like us, you may have struggled to apply them in your home, with your unique child(ren). Enter, The Connect Parent and Lisa Qualls.

Lisa and her husband have seven children. She struggled with all the same attachment challenges you and I face. She went one step further and actually took lessons from Dr. Purvis. Then she went home and wrote little scripts that she could rely on (and remember) in the frenzy of raising a houseful of kids. She is very honest about the challenges she has faced and her imperfections, which I found made the book even better.

This was a quick read for me, being a refresher on some points and quickly applicable on other points. What I loved most about this book is the hope that is found between the pages. These are tools that work! I immediately handed a copy to my husband and together we put these old principles back into our regular routines at home. The wins that Lisa shared (and some losses) encouraged me to keep going, to not give up on these tools, and to keep hope alive.

Side note: While this book is an obvious purchase for adoptive parents, the tools in the book are for any parent of children with behaviors that don’t respond well to normal Love & Logic parenting. There are many children who struggle for various reasons (big “T” trauma, little “t” trauma, developmental delays, etc). So, this book is for almost every momma out there. :)

You can purchase a copy of The Connect Parent here.

Hands Full

My newest read is for every mom, especially those with their hands full.

So, if you have…

• a troop of children and drive the big van

• a colicky baby

• a teething two year old

• a teenager with fifteen extra-curricular activities that force you to affix the “mom-taxi” bumper sticker to your minivan…

…keep reading!

No matter what your hands are full with, Momma, you need encouragement. Encouragement is exactly what my friend Brooke Frick provides in this book, Hands Full: Thirty Days of Encouragement for Busy Moms.

This book will have you laughing and nodding your head, YES!, page after page. There’s no fluff with Brooke so you won’t find perfectly manicured nails or Pottery Barn perfect living rooms in this book. Nope. Instead, you’ll find fruit flies on bananas and cheerios in the carseat. Somehow, Brooke finds grace in all those messy corners.

If you think you don’t have time for self-care, or you haven’t read a book in a year, this is the book for you. If you only have time to read three pages before you fall asleep, choose this book for those three pages. You are not alone in your full life, friend. Be encouraged because God is the one who filled your hands and he will enable you to carry all that you must in your motherhood journey.

You can buy a copy of Hands Full here.