Parenting a Spicy One: A Compassionate Guide for Raising a Deep-Feeling and Wonderfully Strong-Willed Kid -- Mary Van Geffen, Hardcover

Tired of negotiating with a tiny tyrant? Feeling drained by extreme emotions and unpredictable outbursts--including your own? Do you fear you might be raising a menace but also want to avoid dimming their sparkly light? Does "gentle parenting" advice make you chuckle bitterly because it doesn't work on your kid?

Welcome to parenting a Spicy One--a child more loyal to their own soul than to your agenda. Parenting coach and adult Spicy One Mary Van Geffen knows raising these future world changers requires courage and compassion. Based on her experience guiding thousands of parents through her program, she offers a transformative approach to
- staying calm during five-alarm tantrums
- choosing connection over control
- maintaining boundaries without crushing their spirit
- finding joy and confidence in parenting this prickly creature
- being okay when they are not
- parenting with a tenderness you never experienced as a child

Each chapter provides small, doable changes to help you become calmer, kinder, and firmer, plus self-reflection questions to help you make space for the exceptional adult your Spicy One will one day become. It's never too late to confidently choose effective, respectful discipline--to transform both your relationship with your larger-than-life kid and yourself.

Author: Mary Van Geffen
Publisher: Fleming H. Revell Company
Published: 02/10/2026
Pages: 352
Binding Type: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781540905031

About the Author
Mary Van Geffen is an international parenting coach for Moms of Spicy Ones, as well as a Spicy One herself. Mary helps parents practice the spiritual discipline of staying calm, kind, and firm with their strong-willed kids--especially when they don't deserve it. She combines her training as a Simplicity Parenting counselor and Professional Co-Active Coach with hard-earned personal experience raising her own spirited child as well as her mild-mannered child. She has transformed the lives of over eight thousand mothers with her eight-week group program and on-demand digital courses. She shares daily inspirational tips with her 400,000 followers on Instagram. Her greatest achievement is cultivating a connected relationship with her now-adult children.