Dear Fellow Parents and Colleagues:

The Center for the Improvement of Child Caring is pleased to announce its support and distribution of an extremely helpful guide for parents, How to Raise Emotionally Healthy Children by Dr. Gerald Newmark.

This updated and highly practical, 168 page guide, which is available in English and Spanish, has sold over 300,000 copies thus far.

Use for Effective Parenting Projects

Thousands of copies of this book have already been adopted for community-wide effective parenting projects. Several early childhood education groups have obtained and are using thousands of these books, as are entire school districts, including the nation's second largest school district, Los Angeles Unified. Even an entire city has made the book the centerpiece of its efforts (see story and video below).

Every parent learns from the same resource and every parent does a better job.

How to Raise Emotionally Healthy Children enables parents to recognize and satisfy the critical emotional needs that all children have:

To feel respected,
To feel important,
To feel accepted,
To feel included, and
To feel secure.


In the process of teaching parents how best to meet their children's emotional needs, and how to avoid trampling on these basic needs, the book and its new audio version on CD also helps parents learn how to have their own similar needs satisfied.

Dr. Newmark has a compelling and provocative message about parent-child relations. It provides powerful and practical concepts and tools that enable parents, teachers, and childcare providers to interact with children and with each other in emotionally helpful ways. In the process, children learn to interact with each other in the same way.

Dr. Newmark's message has been called a "wake-up call" to America that we are abandoning our children emotionally. Failure to support our children's emotional health at home and at school may be jeopardizing their future and the entire nation.

CICC's Low Price
CICC is making the book version available at a lower price than it is on Amazon.com and in bookstores where it can be purchased for $12.95.

We are selling the book at $9.95. You can purchase 1 to 10 copies at that reduced price right now by clicking here

There is now an Audio CD version in English or Spanish available for $29.95. It is ideal for non-readers and for listening in the car. Click here to purchase the Audio CD version.

Large Book Quantites
We are also making larger quantities of the book available for school-wide, company-wide and city-wide purposes at even greater savings:

For 11 to 75 books, the cost is $7.95 a book.

For 76 or more books, the cost is $5.95 for each book.

In addition, these larger quantities come with a free Facilitator's Guide for running Parent Support Groups that are based on what the book teaches. The Facilitator's Guide is a $25 value, and it can be purchased separately (click here)

To obtain the special bulk rate prices, contact Gary Oltman at CICC: gary@ciccparenting.org or (800) 325-2422. You can fax a purchase order to (818) 753-1054. Or you can send your purchase order to:

CICC
6260 Laurel Canyon Blvd., Suite 304
North Hollywood, CA 91604

Support Group Facilitators
Finally, if you would like to have your staff or volunteers trained to provide Parent Support Groups based on this book, also contact Gary Oltman. Facilitator Training Workshops can be arranged in any city. The Support Groups that Facilitators lead can be great introductions to becoming what Dr. Newmark calls a "Professional at Parenting", and participating in such groups begins to get parents into the habit of being trained and educated. Thus, these Support Groups can serve as preludes or precursors to parents signing up for other parenting programs that your school or community have to offer.

Below you will learn more about the book, what it teaches and about Dr. Newmark. You will also be able to view a documentary on how an entire city is making use of the book to promote healthy child development and prevent delinquency and gang problems.

Do take advantage of some or all of these opportunities to enhance your own or your community's competencies at becoming the best parents you can be.

With warmest regards,


Kerby T. Alvy, Ph.D.
CICC Founder and Executive Director
NEPI Board of Advisors

INTRODUCTION - Challenges of Parenting: Pleasures, Paradoxes and Pitfalls

1. THE FIVE CRITICAL NEEDS OF CHILDREN
(Parenting as Though Children Really Matter)

2. FAMILY SITUATIONS
(A Closer Look at Behavior That Helps and Behavior That Hurts)

3. RECOLLECTIONS FROM CHILDHOOD
(Memories Have Impact)

4. BECOMING A PROFESSIONAL AT PARENTING
(Childrearing is Too Important to Leave to Chance)

5. OVERCOMING OBSTACLES AND TAKING CONTROL
(Maintaining Focus and a Balanced Lifestyle)

6. STRENGTHENING FAMILIES AND SCHOOLS
(Creating and Extending a Sense of Community)

APPENDICES

Guide to Parent Resources
Family Activities List
Becoming Students of Our Own Behavior: Keeping a Daily Journal
Family Feedback Critique
Parent Self-Care Plan
Parent Self-Care Evaluation
Family Activities Plan
Family Activities Evaluation
Children's Well-Being Survey
Five Emotional Needs of Babies
Role of Secondary Education in a Democratic and Changing Society

The Five Critical Emotional Needs of Children: Definitions and Examples

Emotional health provides a foundation for success in school, work, marriage and life in general. Failure to recognize and satisfy these five needs jeopardizes our children's future and that of succeeding generations. The five critical needs as a family value contribute to a healthy family environment and strengthen us as a nation.

Need to Feel Respected

Children need to feel respected. For that to happen, they need to be treated in a courteous, thoughtful, attentive and civil manner. One of the best ways for children to learn about respect is to feel what it's like to be treated respectfully and to observe their parents and other adults treating one another the same way.

If we want children to grow up feeling respected and treating others with respect, we need to avoid sarcasm, belittling, yelling; we need to keep anger and impatience to a minimum; we need to avoid lying; we need to listen more and talk less; we need to command less and suggest and request more; we need to learn how to say "please," "thank you," "excuse me", "I'm sorry"- yes, even to children. We need to become conscious of our mistakes, willing to admit them and ready to make corrections. This will help us cultivate these values in our children.

Need to Feel Important

Feeling important refers to a child's need to feel: "I have value. I am useful. I have power. I am somebody." This need is evident at a very early age. Pressing a button in an elevator - me, me. Children want to do things for themselves, and so often we get in their way.

Parents need to avoid being all powerful, solving all family problems, making all decisions, doing all the work, controlling everything that happens. Involve your children - ask their opinions; give them things to do; share decision-making and power; give them status and recognition, and have patience with mistakes when it takes a little longer or is not done as well as you could have done yourself.

If children do not feel important, if they don't develop a sense of value in constructive ways, they may seek negative ways to get attention, to feel "I am somebody."

Need to Feel Accepted

Children have a need to feel accepted as individuals in their own right, with their own uniqueness, and not treated as mere reflections of their parents, as objects to be shaped in the image of what parents believe their ideal child should look like. This means that children have a right to their own feelings, opinions, ideas, concerns, wants and needs. Trivializing, ignoring or ridiculing a child's feelings or opinions is a rejection which weakens the relationship. Paying attention to and discussing them, even when you do not like or disagree with some, strengthens the relationship.

Need to Feel Included

Children need to feel included. They need to be brought in, to be made to feel a part of things, to feel connected to other people, to have a sense of community. It happens when people engage with others in activities and projects, when they experience things together in a meaningful way. It is important for the family to create these opportunities. People who do things together feel closer to one another. Family activities offer a way to become closer and also to have fun, learn, and contribute to others.

Need to Feel Secure

Children need to feel secure. Security means creating a positive environment where people care for each other and show it, where people express themselves and others listen, where differences are accepted and conflicts are resolved constructively, where enough structure exists for children to feel safe and protected, and where children have opportunities to actively participate in their own and family evolution through family planning and decision making, problem solving and feedback activities.

Supported by its forward-thinking Mayor, Dennis Donohue, the City of Salinas in Northern California has made How to Raise Emotionally Healthy Children the centerpiece of a campaign to become An Emotional-Health Friendly City. Various sectors of the community, including the schools, businesses and hospitals, are using the book to teach and support parents in meeting the emotional needs of the city's children. The goal, as Mayor Donohue indicates, is to have emotional health sown into the fabric of daily living in Salinas.

As part of this effective parenting initiative, a Read-A-Thon was conducted that involved 12 schools and 3000 parents. You can see this campaign in action, and hear what the mayor and other city leaders have to say about its value and purpose, by clicking here to view a brief documentary.

To read a November 15, 2008 article in the Salinas Californian on how the book is helping the city, click here.

Dr. Gerald Newmark's specialty for several decades has been "people."

He has had experience at every level of education from elementary school to university as a teacher, consultant or researcher. He has lectured extensively in the United States, and periodically in Europe, Japan and Mexico on doctor-patient, manager-employee, parent-child-teacher relations, and on innovative methods of teaching and learning. In these venues, he captivated his varied audiences with his ability to connect with all cultures and groups and penetrate quickly to the heart of the subject. In non-technical, straightforward language he conveys his messages in an interesting and entertaining manner so as to produce understanding, learning, and smiles. He speaks French and German fluently and has a working knowledge of Spanish and Italian.

With funding from the Ford Foundation, Dr. Newmark worked with children, parents, and teachers in Los Angeles city schools as co-director of a project to develop a model school. The results of this effort are described in his book, This School Belongs to You and Me: Every Learner a Teacher, Every Teacher a Learner. For this work, Dr. Newmark received a presidential citation.

With his latest book, How To Raise Emotionally Healthy Children: Meeting the Five Critical Needs of Children...and Parents Too!, Dr. Newmark focuses his attention on improving parent, child, teacher, family, and school relations.

An important aspect of Dr. Newmark's adult life has been participation in civil rights and youth affairs. He was involved for six years with the Synanon Foundation in its pioneering work in the treatment of drug addiction, and with Operation Bootstrap in Central Los Angeles in projects to improve inter-racial relations. He has been a consultant to the California Special Olympics and the California State Department of Education. Dr. Newmark has served on the advisory boards of the National Commission on Resources for Youth, the Center for ReUniting Families, and two drug abuse programs-Amity, Inc. in Arizona, and Tuum Est (now Phoenix House) in Los Angeles. He is presently on the Board of the Catticus Foundation.

Dr. Newmark is a member of the American Association of Humanistic Psychology, the Charles F. Menninger Society, and the National Association For The Mentally Ill. He and his wife, Deborah, are now members of the National Effective Parenting Initiative, and are Project Partners with the Uniting Los Angeles for Effective Parenting Project that is jointly led by the National Effective Parenting Initiative and the Center for the Improvement of Child Caring.

The Center for the Improvement of Child Caring (CICC) was founded in 1974 by Dr. Kerby T. Alvy and has grown to be one of the nation's largest and most productive nonprofit parenting and parenting education organizations. For more information about CICC's many programs, activities, products and services, go to www.ciccparenting.org, or call toll-free (800) 325-2422.

To sign up to receive CICC's free Effective Parenting Newsletter, click here.

The National Effective Parenting Initiative (NEPI), of which CICC is a sponsor and affiliate, is an advocacy and membership organization that we urge you to join. NEPI works to create the conditions in our nation and in our communities that allow for all parents to receive the best possible parenting education and support.

Learn about NEPI's major projects:

Government-Led Effective Parenting Initiative

Uniting Los Angeles for Effective Parenting Project

Become Part of NEPI:

Parent Membership

Professional Membership

Organizational Membership

Sign the Effective Parenting Petition.