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by Amanda Jean Clothier
If parenting were an exact
science, imagine how easy it would be.
All
you’d have to do is follow the rules and guide
your children safely from adolescence to
adulthood. If only…
Well, parenting is obviously
much more complicated than that. But with humor,
trial and error and a piece of advice here and
there, we all muddle through. In the past year,
several Atlanta parents have published books
about coping with the challenges that children
present. Those parents include a couple of
family therapists, a pair of pediatric nurses,
and two everyday moms (one lives in Charlotte)
with serious e-mail habits. Here’s a look at
their books and why they put pen to paper.
Moms on Call: Basic Baby Essentials, 0-6 Months
by Laura Hunter, LPN, and Jennifer Walker, RN, BSN
 Two moms who work together as after-hours
pediatric nurses wrote Moms on Call. After answering
hundreds of calls in the middle of the night from
anxious and sometimes desperate parents, Laura
Hunter and Jennifer Walker realized they were
getting the same questions over and over (usually
about fever, cough and vomiting). So they decided to
write down the answers.
Hunter got a nudge from singer Kenny Rogers after a
visit to help him with his twin boys. “He helped me
get the material copyrighted when it was a folder
printed off of my computer,” she says. The nurses
self-published their book and produced a “how to”
companion DVD to help parents with the basics of
caring for a newborn.
Hunter says, “I couldn’t do what I do if I couldn’t
look you in the eye and say, ‘I’ve been there.’”
She’s not kidding. After her first two children, she
had twins (surprise!). After that, her husband had a
vasectomy. Ten months later they were expecting
their fifth child (surprise again!)
 The book shows parents how to get a baby to sleep
through the night (swaddling can do wonders) and
includes a list of what to keep in the medicine
cabinet for infant emergencies. It also offers
practical advice on subjects the authors know well,
such as the best and worst times to call the triage
nurse at your pediatrician’s office (avoid calling
on Monday morning if at all possible). Hunter says
the goal of the book is to share “a lot of little
tips that give parents confidence so they can enjoy
their babies. … The second volume of Moms on Call
will be aimed at parents with children 5-24 months
old. It’s due out in February or March.
For more information
about Moms on Call, visit
www.momsoncall.com.
The Mommy Chronicles: Drama of Pregnancy and New Motherhood
by Sara Ellington and Stephanie Triplett
 “We had no idea we were writing a book,” says
Atlanta-area author and mom of two Stephanie
Triplett. Not long after she found out she was
pregnant, her friend, Sara Ellington, who lives in
Charlotte, N.C., found out she too was expecting
(their due dates were just a few weeks apart). That
started an e-mail conversation. A long e-mail
conversation. At first the friends shared the woes
of pregnancy (which for Sara meant never being able
to get enough spaghetti). Then they shared the many
joys of new mommyhood (which for Stephanie meant
finally having the cleavage she’d always wanted).
They got the idea to save their comedy and
drama-filled e-mails as a sort of two-person
journal. Eventually, that idea turned into The Mommy
Chronicles.
The book covers how the friends handled postpartum
depression, staying at home, going back to work, and
husbands who, at times, just didn’t get it. [Chapter
6: “We’ve Decided to Let the Baby Stay (But We’d
Like to Get Rid of our Husbands)”].
 The women who gave birth to The Mommy Chronicles are
working on new material for their weekly radio show,
which can be heard Fridays at 4 p.m. ET at
www.hayhouseradio.com and on Sirius Satellite Radio.
For more information, visit
www.themommychroniclesbook.com.
Doc Pop’s 52 Weeks of Active Parenting
by Michael H. Popkin, Ph.D.
The man known as Doc Pop is a former child and
family therapist who, back in 1983, founded Active
Parenting Publishers. Since then he’s written
several books and created an Active Parenting
video-based education program. His latest book gives
busy parents what he calls “brief recipes for
improving their relationships with their children.”
52 Weeks of Active Parenting gives parents one skill
and one home assignment for each week of the year.
Popkin, who has two children, says, “This
information is the ‘best of’ my 30 years as a parent
educator in practical bite-sized portions.” The
activity for Week 8 is one of his favorites. It’s
called “Taking Care of the Caregiver.”
Here’s how he explains it: “I use the metaphor of a
pitcher of liquid energy to
describe how parents spend all day putting out their
energy to others at home and at work, often not
having any left for themselves. If they do not
replenish that pitcher regularly, they not only run
themselves down, but they become short-tempered and
otherwise ineffective as parents as well.” The
activity is to take care of the caregiver in four
important areas: healthy body, healthy mind,
relationships with other adults and getting
organized. Whether it’s a hot bath or good run, a
phone call to a friend, a round of golf, an adult
education class or making a “to do” list, the
assignment is to do something in each of these four
areas and write down the effect you notice in
yourself and your parenting.
 Michael Popkin is working on a book about parenting
high-spirited children. He says, “They are hard to
manage, high-risk/high-reward kids, but once they
are taught how to manage their emotions and
behavior, they can use these same special qualities
to be very successful in our culture.” The book is
due out in spring 2007.
For more information, visit
www.activeparenting.com.
ScreamFree Parenting: Raising Your Kids by
Keeping Your Cool
by Hal Edward Runkel, LMFT
 After attending grad school, working as a family
therapist and becoming a father of two, Hal Runkel
decided he wanted to compile what he’d learned over
the years into a book, but not one couched in
academic language. He kept coming back to the same
idea: Staying calm is the key to being an effective
parent. That theory is at the heart of ScreamFree
Parenting. Runkel says he’s on a mission “to help
calm the world, one relationship at a time.”
Runkel’s parenting philosophy is about taking the
focus off of the kids and instead focusing on how to
manage one’s emotions. “Emotional reactivity is the
driving force behind every bad decision, bad pattern
and bad relationship,” he says. It’s “what happens
when our anxiety gets the best of us, and we act in
ways that are actually contrary to our intentions.”
Runkel is also a proponent of what he calls “letting
the consequences do the screaming.” That means
giving children the space to learn from their
mistakes and taking a step back, far enough to see
what’s going on with the kids without being
emotionally tied up in all of their choices.
 In addition to the ScreamFree Parenting book, there
is also a ScreamFree Parenting seminar series (on
DVD), and Runkel says he’s just getting started. “I
have about 40 different titles in mind. ScreamFree
Marriage is next.”
For more information, visit
www.screamfree.com.
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