Raising a Kid Who Can

Three mental health professionals cut through the "parenting advice" noise with this accessible, easy-to-skim book filled with actionable strategies and tips to help parents focus only what's truly essential and build their child's neurobiological capacity to thrive where they are planted, in good times and bad.  

It’s time to parent smarter, not harder. Filled with scientifically based and eminently actionable advice and strategies, The Parents' Playbook boils down the ten essential things that every child needs to thrive so that parents can stop drowning in information and get to the business of raising healthier, happier humans. Written by three mental health professionals who work with families, organized for easy skimming, and designed to be useful at any stage in a child’s life, the book devotes one short, impactful chapter per principle, including Resilience, Attention and Self-Control, Psychological Flexibility, Self-Motivation, Compassion and Gratitude.  The result is a new approach to a parenting guide, one that takes a wholistic approach to nurturing a child’s development and help parents get right to the information they need, when they need it.

About the Author

Catherine McCarthy, MD, is a Duke-trained child and adolescent psychiatrist with nearly 25 years of clinical experience. In addition to being the keynote speaker for several major conferences, she lectures regularly to parents and students in nearly every school system, both public and private, in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. 

Heather Tedesco, PhD, is a licensed Applied Psychologist with a Ph.D. in Social Psychology.  She has a private practice in McLean, Virginia, where she works exclusively with parents to make parenting less stressful, more effective, and more enjoyable.  She is the go-to parenting resource for many Washington, DC-area pediatric, psychological testing, and therapy practices. 

Jennifer Weaver, LCSW, has been rated as one of the “Best Child Therapists” in the area in Washingtonian magazine. Along with her therapy practice, she also provides workshops and training to mental health professionals, schools (faculty, student, and parent groups), and the larger community. Ms. Weaver is the founder of Helix, a separate, intensive program for kids to help prevent the need for inpatient or residential treatment, set to open this fall. This program has the direct support of colleagues and mentors at McLean Hospital in Boston, Anna Freud Centre in London, and Yale Child Study Center in New Haven.