Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood


Edward M. Hallowell - 1992
    Discusses the causes, symptoms, and treatment of attention-deficit Disorder (ADD).

The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome


Tony Attwood - 2006
    Now including a new introduction explaining the impact of DSM-5 on the diagnosis and approach to AS, it brings together a wealth of information on all aspects of the syndrome for children through to adults.Drawing on case studies and personal accounts from Attwood's extensive clinical experience, and from his correspondence with individuals with AS, this book is both authoritative and extremely accessible. Chapters examine:* causes and indications of the syndrome* the diagnosis and its effect on the individual* theory of mind * the perception of emotions in self and others* social interaction, including friendships* long-term relationships* teasing, bullying and mental health issues* the effect of AS on language and cognitive abilities, sensory sensitivity, movement and co-ordination skills* career development.There is also an invaluable frequently asked questions chapter and a section listing useful resources for anyone wishing to find further information on a particular aspect of AS, as well as literature and educational tools.Essential reading for families and individuals affected by AS as well as teachers, professionals and employers coming in contact with people with AS, this book should be on the bookshelf of anyone who needs to know or is interested in this complex condition.'I usually say to the child, "Congratulations, you have Asperger's syndrome", and explain that this means he or she is not mad, bad or defective, but has a different way of thinking.' - from The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome.

Raising Your Spirited Child: A Guide for Parents Whose Child is More Intense, Sensitive, Perceptive, Persistent, and Energetic


Mary Sheedy Kurcinka - 1991
    Research shows that spirited kids are wired to be "more"—by temperament, they are more intense, sensitive, perceptive, persistent, and uncomfortable with change than the average child. In this revised edition of the award-winning classic, voted one of the top twenty books for parents, Kurcinka provides vivid examples and a refreshingly positive viewpoint. Raising Your Spirited Child will help you:understand your child's­—and your own—temperamental traitsdiscover the power of positive—rather than negative—labelscope with the tantrums and power struggles when they do occurplan for success with a simple four-step programdevelop strategies for handling mealtimes, sibling rivalry, bedtimes, holidays, and school, among other situations

How to Talk so Little Kids Will Listen: A Survival Guide to Life with Children Ages 2-7


Joanna Faber - 2017
    Now, in response to growing demand, Adele’s daughter, Joanna Faber, along with Julie King, tailor How to Talk’s powerful communication skills to children ages two to seven. Faber and King, each a parenting expert in her own right, share their wisdom accumulated over years of conducting How To Talk workshops with parents and a broad variety of professionals. With a lively combination of storytelling, cartoons, and fly-on-the-wall discussions from their workshops, they provide concrete tools and tips that will transform your relationship with the young kids in your life. What do you do with a little kid who…won’t brush her teeth…screams in his car seat…pinches the baby...refuses to eat vegetables…throws books in the library...runs rampant in the supermarket? Organized according to common challenges and conflicts, this book is an essential emergency first-aid manual of communication strategies, including a chapter that addresses the special needs of children with sensory processing and autism spectrum disorders. This user-friendly guide will empower parents and caregivers of young children to forge rewarding, joyful relationships with terrible two-year-olds, truculent three-year-olds, ferocious four-year-olds, foolhardy five-year-olds, self-centered six-year-olds, and the occasional semi-civilized seven-year-old. And, it will help little kids grow into self-reliant big kids who are cooperative and connected to their parents, teachers, siblings, and peers.

Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood


Lisa Damour - 2016
    Untangled explains what’s going on, prepares parents for what’s to come, and lets them know when it’s time to worry. In this sane, highly engaging, and informed guide for parents of daughters, Dr. Damour draws on decades of experience and the latest research to reveal the seven distinct—and absolutely normal—developmental transitions that turn girls into grown-ups, including Parting with Childhood, Contending with Adult Authority, Entering the Romantic World, and Caring for Herself. Providing realistic scenarios and welcome advice on how to engage daughters in smart, constructive ways, Untangled gives parents a broad framework for understanding their daughters while addressing their most common questions, including • My thirteen-year-old rolls her eyes when I try to talk to her, and only does it more when I get angry with her about it. How should I respond? • Do I tell my teen daughter that I’m checking her phone? • My daughter suffers from test anxiety. What can I do to help her? • Where’s the line between healthy eating and having an eating disorder? • My teenage daughter wants to know why I’m against pot when it’s legal in some states. What should I say? • My daughter’s friend is cutting herself. Do I call the girl’s mother to let her know? Perhaps most important, Untangled helps mothers and fathers understand, connect, and grow with their daughters. When parents know what makes their daughter tick, they can embrace and enjoy the challenge of raising a healthy, happy young woman.Praise for Untangled“Finally, there’s some good news for puzzled parents of adolescent girls, and psychologist Lisa Damour is the bearer of that happy news. [Untangled] is the most down-to-earth, readable parenting book I’ve come across in a long time.”—The Washington Post “Anna Freud wrote in 1958, ‘There are few situations in life which are more difficult to cope with than an adolescent son or daughter during the attempt to liberate themselves.’ In the intervening decades, the transition doesn’t appear to have gotten any easier which makes Untangled such a welcome new resource.”—The Boston Globe “Damour offers a hopeful, helpful new way for parents to talk about—and with—teenage girls. . . . Parents will want this book on their shelves, next to established classics of the genre.”—Publishers Weekly“For years people have been asking me for the ‘girl equivalent of Raising Cain,’ and I haven't known exactly what to recommend. Now I do.”—Michael Thompson, Ph.D., co-author of Raising Cain “An essential guide to understanding and supporting girls throughout their development. It’s obvious that Dr. Damour ‘gets’ girls and understands the best way for any adult to help them navigate the common yet difficult challenges so many girls face.”—Rosalind Wiseman, author of Queen Bees & Wannabes “A gem. From the moment I read the last page I’ve been recommending it to my clients (including those with sons!) and colleagues, and using it as a refreshing guide in my own work with teenagers and their parents.”—Wendy Mogel, Ph.D., author of The Blessing of a Skinned Knee

Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love


Sue Johnson - 2008
    In Hold Me Tight, Dr. Sue Johnson presents Emotionally Focused Therapy to the general public for the first time. Johnson teaches that the way to save and enrich a relationship is to reestablish safe emotional connection and preserve the attachment bond. With this in mind, she focuses on key moments in a relationship-from "Recognizing the Demon Dialogue" to "Revisiting a Rocky Moment" -- and uses them as touch points for seven healing conversations.Through case studies from her practice, illuminating advice, and practical exercises, couples will learn how to nurture their relationships and ensure a lifetime of love.

Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead


Brené Brown - 2012
    Brené Brown offers a powerful new vision that encourages us to dare greatly: to embrace vulnerability and imperfection, to live wholeheartedly, and to courageously engage in our lives. “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; . . . who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.” —Theodore RooseveltEvery day we experience the uncertainty, risks, and emotional exposure that define what it means to be vulnerable, or to dare greatly. Whether the arena is a new relationship, an important meeting, our creative process, or a difficult family conversation, we must find the courage to walk into vulnerability and engage with our whole hearts.In Daring Greatly, Dr. Brown challenges everything we think we know about vulnerability. Based on twelve years of research, she argues that vulnerability is not weakness, but rather our clearest path to courage, engagement, and meaningful connection. The book that Dr. Brown’s many fans have been waiting for, Daring Greatly will spark a new spirit of truth—and trust—in our organizations, families, schools, and communities.

Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control: A Love-Based Approach to Helping Attachment-Challenged Children With Severe Behaviors, Volume 1


Heather T. Forbes - 2006
    Forbes and B. Bryan Post address some of the most pressing and challenging issues faced by parents of children with histories of disrupted attachments. The authors have the ability to strip away the fog surrounding these troubled relationships, exposing the reality of children's reactions and dysregulated responses to the past traumatic experiences that so often underlie their difficulty in making close, affectional bonds. This clarity illuminates their therapeutic intervention in a manner that allows parent and child to hold onto the strategy, as they are caught up in the whirlwind of challenging behavior during the painful process of change. The authors address in detail the child's trauma (often associated with the adoption process), and they also address the painful struggle of the parents when a challenging child exposes the parents' own vulnerabilities to memories that they may have suppressed of their own past experiences. The immense value of this book is the clarity and simplicity of the authors' working model; the price of this clarity is that the hard truth is exposed with such intensity that some may shy away from facing reality and not benefit from their undoubted insights. The psychotherapeutic intervention described by the authors involves clinicians tapping into their own empathic capacities to help children feel supported to such a degree that a direct connection can be forged between the reality of children's traumatic experiences and the parents and/or clinicians being able to tolerate their pain, and so regulate the child's distress down to a manageable level. The recognition that another person can truly understand and tolerate their pain can be a major contribution to the client's therapeutic outcome. This book is an absolute necessity for every parent working through attachment issues, and for every professional (therapist, caseworker, teacher, policy maker, etc.) working with children who exhibit severe acting-out behaviors.

All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood


Jennifer Senior - 2014
    Award-winning journalist Jennifer Senior now asks: what are the effects of children on their parents?"All Joy and No Fun is an indispensable map for a journey that most of us take without one. Brilliant, funny, and brimming with insight, this is an important book that every parent should read, and then read again. Jennifer Senior is surely one of the best writers on the planet."-Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on HappinessIn All Joy and No Fun, award-winning journalist Jennifer Senior isolates and analyzes the many ways in which children reshape their parents' lives, whether it's their marriages, their jobs, their habits, their hobbies, their friendships, or their internal senses of self. She argues that changes in the last half century have radically altered the roles of today's mothers and fathers, making their mandates at once more complex and far less clear. Recruiting from a wide variety of sources-in history, sociology, economics, psychology, philosophy, and anthropology-she dissects both the timeless strains of parenting and the ones that are brand new, and then brings her research to life in the homes of ordinary parents around the country. The result is an unforgettable series of family portraits, starting with parents of young children and progressing to parents of teens. Through lively and accessible storytelling, Senior follows these mothers and fathers as they wrestle with some of parenthood's deepest vexations-and luxuriate in some of its finest rewards.Meticulously researched yet imbued with emotional intelligence, All Joy and No Fun makes us reconsider some of our culture's most basic beliefs about parenthood, all while illuminating the profound ways children deepen and add purpose to our lives. By focusing on parenthood, rather than parenting, the book is original and essential reading for mothers and fathers of today-and tomorrow.

The Highly Sensitive Child: Helping Our Children Thrive When the World Overwhelms Them


Elaine N. Aron - 2002
    Up to 20 percent of the population is born highly sensitive, and now in The Highly Sensitive Child, Aron shifts her focus to highly sensitive children, who share the same characteristics as highly sensitive adults and thus face unique challenges as they grow up.Rooted in Aron's years of experience as a psychotherapist and her original research on child temperament, The Highly Sensitive Child shows how HSCs are born deeply reflective, sensitive to the subtle, and easily overwhelmed. These qualities can make for smart, conscientious, creative children, but with the wrong parenting or schooling, they can become unusually shy or timid, or begin acting out. Few parents and teachers understand where this behavior comes from-and as a result, HSCs are often mislabeled as overly inhibited, fearful, or "fussy,"or classified as "problem children" (and in some cases, misdiagnosed with disorders such as Attention Deficit Disorder). But raised with proper understanding and care, HSCs are no more prone to these problems than nonsensitive children and can grow up to be happy, healthy, well-adjusted adults.In this pioneering work, parents will find helpful self-tests and case studies to help them understand their HSC, along with thorough advice on: - The challenges of raising an highly sensitive child- The four keys to successfully parenting an HSC- How to soothe highly sensitive infants- Helping sensitive children survive in a not-so-sensitive world- Making school and friendships enjoyableWith chapters addressing the needs of specific age groups, from newborns through teens, The Highly Sensitive Child delivers warmhearted, timely information for parents, teachers, and the sensitive children in their lives.

The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed


Jessica Lahey - 2014
    As teacher and writer Jessica Lahey explains, even though these parents see themselves as being highly responsive to their children’s well-being, they aren’t giving them the chance to experience failure—or the opportunity to learn to solve their own problems.Overparenting has the potential to ruin a child’s confidence and undermine their education, Lahey reminds us. Teachers don’t just teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. They teach responsibility, organization, manners, restraint, and foresight—important life skills children carry with them long after they leave the classroom. Providing a path toward solutions, Lahey lays out a blueprint with targeted advice for handling homework, report cards, social dynamics, and sports. Most importantly, she sets forth a plan to help parents learn to step back and embrace their children’s failures. Hard-hitting yet warm and wise, The Gift of Failure is essential reading for parents, educators, and psychologists nationwide who want to help their children succeed.

Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder


Paul T. Mason - 1998
    It is designed to help them understand how the disorder affects their loved ones and recognize what they can do to get off the emotional roller coasters and take care of themselves.

The Out-of-Sync Child: Recognizing and Coping with Sensory Processing Disorder


Carol Stock Kranowitz - 1998
    This newly revised edition features additional information from recent research on vision and hearing deficits, motor skill problems, nutrition and picky eaters, ADHA, autism, and other related disorders.

The Birth Order Book: Why You Are the Way You Are


Kevin Leman - 1984
    Leman offers readers a fascinating and often funny look at how birth order affects personality, marriage and relationships, parenting style, career, and children.

Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids


Hunter Clarke-Fields - 2019
    In Raising Good Humans, you’ll find powerful and practical strategies to break free from “reactive parenting” habits and raise kind, cooperative, and confident kids.Whether you’re running late for school, trying to get your child to eat their vegetables, or dealing with an epic meltdown in the checkout line at a grocery store—being a parent is hard work! And, as parents, many of us react in times of stress without thinking—often by yelling. But what if, instead of always reacting on autopilot, you could respond thoughtfully in those moments, keep your cool, and get from A to B on time and in one piece?With this book, you’ll find powerful mindfulness skills for calming your own stress response when difficult emotions arise. You’ll also discover strategies for cultivating respectful communication, effective conflict resolution, and reflective listening. In the process, you’ll learn to examine your own unhelpful patterns and ingrained reactions that reflect the generational habits shaped by your parents, so you can break the cycle and respond to your children in more skillful ways.When children experience a parent reacting with kindness and patience, they learn to act with kindness as well—thereby altering generational patterns for a kinder, more compassionate future. With this essential guide, you’ll see how changing your own “autopilot reactions” can create a lasting positive impact, not just for your kids, but for generations to come. An essential, must-read for all parents—now more than ever.“To raise the children we hope to raise, we have to learn to become the person we hoped to be…. This wonderful book will help you handle the ride.”  —KJ Dell’Antonia, author of How to Be a Happier Parent   “Hunter Clarke-Fields shares her wisdom and personal experience to help parents create peaceful families.” —Joanna Faber and Julie King, coauthors of How to Talk So Little Kids Will Listen