It is with great pleasure and delight that I announce the very first book from Jennifer S. Miller and this site: Confident Parents, Confident Kids: Raising Emotional Intelligence in Ourselves and Our Kids — From Toddlers to Teenagers. 

When I asked fifty parents in a neighborhood Mom’s Club the question: “what one issue do you want to read a parenting book about?” – they responded: big feelings – mine and my child’s. How do we deal with them and promote confidence and emotional intelligence? So that’s precisely what this book is about. 

Here are some numbers that tell a bit about the journey I’ve taken to publishing a book. I’ve:

• blogged each week for over seven nearly eight years for a total of 481 posts;
• developed nine distinctly different, full book proposals (about one per year) over that time;
• surveyed countless (and of the ones I did count – 150!) parents to learn what they care most about and what keeps them up at night;
• researched, wrote, and sent out specifically targeted query letters to 46 literary agents with mostly rejections, no response, or non-committal interest;
• landed with my 47th – Tina Wainscott of the Seymour Agency – I am so grateful for you!!!!
• conducted research with partners Shannon Wanless and Roger Weissberg to demonstrate the essential link between parenting and social and emotional learning (which is highlighted in this book);
• expanded audience reach from family, friends, and collaborators to 22,000 followers and views in 152 countries and growing; and
• engaged in countless collaboration discussions and projects with readers, contributors, researchers, educators, and other professionals who care about making a difference in the lives of families.

Last summer, I entered into a partnership with literary agent Tina Wainscott who took a look at my book proposal and instead of trying to reshape it to fit a pop culture view of what works in publishing, she encouraged me to deeply infuse it with everything that Confident Parents, Confident Kids has always been about. So I’ve been able to write and fully illustrate the book of my dreams, the one in which I tell the stories of our community, of our dialogue with one another about ways in which we can become more confident in our parenting and raise confident kids with small, simple, everyday practices that are tied to research. These practices promote kids’ and parents’ social and emotional development and as a result, offer ways to cultivate their inner resources and thrive. Quarto Publishing and the Trade Winds Press team not only loved the content and its potential to help parents but also, loved the illustrations and supported the development of a full-color book!

Thank you, Tina Wainscott, Amanda Waddell, Todd Conly, David Martinell and the whole team at Quarto/Trade Winds Press for making this possible — and doing it collaboratively. I am also especially grateful to my family – extended and immediate – who supported me through this intense process. I am grateful to CASEL and Roger Weissberg for the rigor and research you put into the social and emotional learning framework that is the backbone of this work. I am grateful to partner Shannon Wanless for her heart and mind and passion in collaborating on moving this work forward. I am grateful to the NBC team – Esta, Jamie, and Gabbi – for your rich partnership and expanding my reach! And to the many other CPCK collaborators pictured here, I thank you! And thank you, reader, for your role in making this possible! This book would not exist without your readership and participation in this critical dialogue!

I hope you’ll share this great news with anyone you know who is interested in reading about parenting! Here’s more on the book:

Confident Parents, Confident Kids lays out an approach for helping parents—and the kids they love—hone their emotional intelligence so that they can make wise choices, connect and communicate well with others (even when patience wears thin), and become socially competent and confident human beings.

• The myths we’ve been told about emotions, how they shape our choices, and how we can reshape our parenting decisions in better alignment with our deepest values.
• How to identify the temperaments your child was born with so you can support those tendencies rather than fight them.
• How to align your biggest hopes and dreams for your kids with specific skills that can be practiced, along with new research to support those powerful connections.
• About each age and stage your child goes through and the range of learning opportunities available.
• How to identify and manage those big emotions (that only the parenting process can bring out in us!) and how to model emotional intelligence for your children.
• How to alter challenging patterns we fall into responding to turnaround even our toughest moments into teachable ones.

Available for Pre-Order on Amazon and Barnes and Noble NOW. The actual release date will be November 5, 2019.

Confident Parents, Confident Kids: Raising Emotional Intelligence In Ourselves and Our Kids— from Toddlers to Teenagers