Born Wise: How the Forgotten Wisdom of Childhood Can Help Us Raise a New Generation

The beloved child therapist and founder of Nurtured First has good news for parents: you already know what to do. You just have to remember.

Parents today are struggling more than ever—and so are their kids. Rising anxiety, emotional outbursts, screen addiction, academic delays, and disconnection are viewed as problems within children that parents need to solve, yet quick fixes and strict discipline either don’t work or leave parents feeling overwhelmed.

What if fixing isn’t the answer? What if children are already telling us what they need, and parents must simply learn to listen?

Jessica VanderWier has helped millions of families better understand their children and enjoy parenting again. Now, she shares the simple reframe that will help parents step out of fear-based fixing and back into a loving relationship with their child: We are born wise.

In Born Wise, parents will learn to interpret and respond to the unmet needs beneath their child’s defiance, anger, and tantrums. They will learn what happens when kids lose their wisdom to play, care, be vulnerable, and depend on their parents at an early age. Through therapeutic tools and strategies, they will learn to create environments that preserve that wisdom and become dependable leaders for their families. Along the way, parents will remember what it felt like to be young and longing to be cared for, and to use those memories to guide them in setting their children up for a lifetime of resilience and confidence.

Ultimately, VanderWier invites parents into a new way of seeing their children: not as problems to be fixed, but as wise humans who need to be understood.