Welcome to the Care.com Book Café, the new book and product recommendation segment of my blog.  For one week each month I will turn my keyboard over to various members of the Care.com team so that they can share some of their favorite products and books—not only how-to books on child care, pet care, senior care, and tutoring, but also fiction for children, animal-lovers, seniors, and students.  I hope you’ll join in on the conversation by posting comments with recommendations and reviews of your own.

Cheers,

Sheila

From Moe, Care.com Operations Director:

My wife, Julie, and I recently read Mary Sheedy Kurcink’s Raising Your Spirited Child: A Guide for Parents Whose Child Is More Intense, Sensitive, Perceptive, Persistent, and Energetic.  The book explains that you shouldn’t label your kids with negative terms, but rather use positive ones.  So instead of calling your child a terror, you should call her spirited.

The book helped us to understand our child’s personality, strengths, and weaknesses.  By understanding these things we are better able to anticipate and prevent tantrums and to stay calm during difficult times.  Attempting to let a spirited child “cry himself out” or attempting to out-yell him isn’t pleasant or effective.  Kurcink advises staying calm, commiserating, and talking things out.

This book can keep you sane when you’re at your wit’s end with a “spirited” child.

From Lauren, Care.com Marketing Analyst:

As a kid I was a big fan of Beverly Cleary’s Ramona series. The series’ titular heroine, Ramona Quimby, is creative, impatient, indignant, jubilant, and unafraid to make a “great big noisy fuss.”  She is, in other words, a “spirited” child.

I recommend Ramona the Pest for any child who is often accused of being a pest but never means to be one.  This book begins on Ramona’s first day of kindergarten, and Ramona is determined that it will be the “greatest day of her whole life.”  Naturally, things don’t go quite as well as she hoped.

For kids who often feel outshined by a “spirited” sibling, I recommend Beezus and Ramona.  In this book we see Ramona through the eyes of her older sister, Beezus.  Whether Ramona is wiping her finger paint-covered hands on the neighbors’ cat or taking one bite out of every apple in the box because “the first bite tastes best,” readers will sympathize with the exasperated Beezus.