How to Use This Library

The Parent Book is a library. You don’t have to start on the first page or read it in order, and there’s no final chapter with all the answers. It brings together the resources our therapy practice keeps coming back to, organised so that you can find what you need when you need it. We don’t believe a definitive book on parenting exists. What we’ve built sits alongside the school, the GP, your family and the books you’ve turned to for years.

What is here

The library has a few kinds of thing in it, and each does a different job.

Chapters are the longer pieces. Each is about one of the situations parents most often bring to our therapy rooms: the friendship that has ended, the conversation that keeps being put off, the body that has begun to feel like a battleground. Read a chapter when you want to spend fifteen or twenty minutes thinking a subject through. Most chapters open with a short version, three things that help, for an evening when you don’t have twenty minutes, and close with the fuller set, which you can print as a single page to keep.

Quick tips are one-minute reads for what’s happening right now: the refusal at the door, the broken banana, the worry that won’t settle. There are a great many of them. You won’t read them all, and you don’t need to.

Activities are things to try together, most of them done in one sitting. Some come with a sheet to print.

For you is a small shelf of short tools for the parent, not the child.

The Bookshelf, the podcasts and the videos hold work by other people that we trust: books to read with your child or for yourself, a podcast episode for a long drive, a talk or a film worth watching and talking about afterwards.

Where else to find help is never far away. Chapters end with the organisations we would actually send you to, and every subject has a one-page pack on what to do first, with a sheet of who else can help. At the top of every page, Urgent help takes you straight to the numbers to call or text if you are worried about someone’s safety right now. For two of the most frightening moments a parent can face, there is also a step-by-step guide, under What to do next. We’re one small practice, and we’re not all the help there is, so we want you to know where to find the rest.

How to use it

There are three ways in.

If you’ve come with a particular worry, search for it in your own words. The box at the top of your library asks what you’re looking for help with, and it reads every chapter, quick tip and activity.

Or browse, by what you are facing or by your child’s age. Tell us your children’s ages, a year group for each child, and your library will lead with what fits them. Each chapter tells you who it’s for and how long it takes, so you know before you start.

If you’d rather start at the beginning, the full library opens with the chapters we would give any parent first. Read them in order, or one at a time when you need one. The school year page sets out what tends to come up for families, term by term, from the first weeks of September to results day.

The library keeps growing. New chapters and activities are added when they’re ready, and your library’s front page shows what has arrived since your last visit. Two or three times a term we also write with what has been added, and with the seasonal letters; you can stop those from your account page, and every one has a one-click stop.

A few practical things

Save what helps. Every chapter, quick tip and activity has a small bookmark. Press it and the piece waits for you under Saved for later, on your library’s front page, and on the Saved page in your account menu. It belongs to your subscription, so it’s there on any device you sign in on.

Pick up where you left off. The library remembers where you stopped reading, and offers to take you back there. To do that, it keeps a note of what you have opened, and when. Beyond that, the note is used only to see which pieces help: never for advertising, and never passed to an analytics company. The privacy policy has the detail. There are no streaks and no badges.

Night mode. If you’re reading late, Night mode, at the top of every page, sets the whole library for reading in the dark.

What this is not

This isn’t a parenting bible, a curriculum or the answer. It’s the help we give in a therapy room, made available to parents who would otherwise only find it there. We hope it works the way a good library does: it’s there when you need it, and it leaves you alone when you don’t.

The Editors, Kensington Square Therapy