Book picks similar to
Bright Not Broken: Gifted Kids, Adhd, and Autism by Diane M. Kennedy
non-fiction
parenting
autism
adhd
Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error
Kathryn Schulz - 2010
Kathryn Schulz, editor of Grist magazine, argues that error is the fundamental human condition and should be celebrated as such. Guiding the reader through the history and psychology of error, from Socrates to Alan Greenspan, Being Wrong will change the way you perceive screw-ups, both of the mammoth and daily variety, forever.
The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America
Amy Chua - 2014
Yale Law School professors Chua (the Tiger Mom herself) and husband Rubenfeld argue that the triumph of certain cultural groups in America--e.g., Mormons in business and the highly paid Chinese Americans and Jews--results from three principles: members of such groups believe the group is exceptional, still feel they must prove themselves, and work for future goals instead of immediate satisfaction.
The Sleep Solution: Why Your Sleep Is Broken and How to Fix It
W. Chris Winter - 2017
If you want to fix your sleep problems, Internet tips and tricks aren't going to do it for you. You need to really understand what's going on with your sleep--both what your problems are and how to solve them.The Sleep Solution is an exciting journey of sleep self-discovery and understanding that will help you custom design specific interventions to fit your lifestyle. Drawing on his twenty-four years of experience within the field, neurologist and sleep expert W. Chris Winter will help you...- Understand how sleep works and the ways in which food, light, and other activities act to help or hurt the process- Learn why sleeping pills are so often misunderstood and used incorrectly--and how you can achieve your best sleep without them- Incorporate sleep and napping into your life--whether you are a shift worker, student, or overcommitted parent- Think outside the box to better understand ways to treat a multitude of conditions--from insomnia to sleep apnea to restless leg syndrome and circadian sleep disorders- Wade through the ever-changing sea of sleep technology and understand its value as it relates to your own sleep strugglesDubbed the "Sleep Whisperer" by Arianna Huffington, Dr. Winter is an international expert on sleep and has helped more than 10,000 patients rest better at night, including countless professional athletes. Now, he's bringing his experiences out from under the covers--redefining what it means to have optimal sleep and get the ZZZs you really need...INCLUDES TIPS, TRICKS, EXERCISES, AND ILLUSTRATIONS
I Always Want to Be Where I'm Not: Successful Living with Add and ADHD
Wes Crenshaw - 2014
Written in an entertaining, conversational style for readers aged fifteen and up, Dr. Wes pulls no punches in confronting the cognitive, social, emotional, and academic pitfalls people with ADD face every day. He also helps families, friends, and romantic partners understand a diagnosis of ADD not as an excuse for difficulties, but as a first step on the path to a better tomorrow. Dr. Wes Crenshaw offers thirteen principles for successful living with ADD and ADHD drawn from twenty-two years of experience and 23,000 hours of clinical discussions with hundreds of interesting clients. Written in an entertaining, conversational style for readers aged fifteen to thirty, Dr. Wes pulls no punches in confronting the cognitive, social, emotional, and academic pitfalls people with ADD face every day. He also helps families, friends, and romantic partners understand a diagnosis of ADD not as something to fear or an excuse, but as a first step on the path to a better tomorrow. Dr. Wes's principles include accepting here and now, living intentionally, making mindful decisions, recognizing and taking the right path and not just the easy one, wanting rather than wishing, finding and following life's instructions, managing crises, taking responsibility, attaining character through radical honesty, and creating sustainable happiness through organized thinking and living. Finally, Dr. Wes guides you and your loved ones in how to better manage relationships, seek a good diagnosis, utilize therapy, and become your own expert on medication management.* Have you been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD or do you suspect you should be? Do you really want to start solving your many riddles and living a more successful and productive life? This book is for you. * Does your partner, child, roommate, or friend have ADD? Do you wonder what's going on in his or her head, and you really want to understand the secret code so you can better love him or her? This book is for you.* Are you a little scattered or organizationally challenged? Do you struggle with details, follow-through, or in converting ideas into results? Do your people see you as fun and energetic, but uncommitted and difficult to pin down. Maybe you're an "ADD-leaner." This book is for you.
The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence
Rachel Simmons - 2009
Unerringly nice, polite, modest, and selfless, the Good Girl is a paradigm so narrowly defined that it's unachievable. When girls inevitably fail to live up- experiencing conflicts with peers, making mistakes in the classroom or on the playing field-they are paralyzed by self-criticism, stunting the growth of vital skills and habits. Simmons traces the poisonous impact of Good Girl pressure on development and provides a strategy to reverse the tide. At once expository and prescriptive, The Curse of the Good Girl is a call to arms from a new front in female empowerment. Looking to the stories shared by the women and girls who attend her workshops, Simmons shows that Good Girl pressure from parents, teachers, coaches, media, and peers erects a psychological glass ceiling that begins to enforce its confines in girlhood and extends across the female lifespan. The curse of the Good Girl erodes girls' ability to know, express, and manage a complete range of feelings. It expects girls to be selfless, limiting the expression of their needs. It requires modesty, depriving the permission to articulate their strengths and goals. It diminishes assertive body language, quieting voices and weakening handshakes. It touches all areas of girls' lives and follows many into adulthood, limiting their personal and professional potential. Since the popularization of the Ophelia phenomenon, we have lamented the loss of self-esteem in adolescent girls, recognizing that while the doors of opportunity are open to twenty-first-century American girls, many lack the confidence to walk through them. In The Curse of the Good Girl, Simmons provides a catalog of tangible lessons in bolstering the self and silencing the curse of the Good Girl. At the core of Simmons's radical argument is her belief that the most critical freedom we can win for our daughters is the liberty not only to listen to their inner voice but also to act on it. Watch a Video
Say What You Mean: A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication
Oren Jay Sofer - 2018
Here's a proven method that makes it not only considerably easier, but also much more effective for people on both sides of the conversation. Oren Sofer's method for effective communication is a unique combination of mindfulness with the modality called nonviolent communication (NVC), a method popular since the 1960s that is based on the belief that all human beings have the capacity for compassion and resort to violence or behavior that harms others only when they don't recognize more effective strategies for meeting needs. NVC provides those peaceful strategies. Oren's unique method for fostering peaceful--and effective--communication has three "steps" or components: (1) presence: bringing mindful awareness to the interaction, (2) intention: clarifying and setting a goal for the interaction, and (3) attention: learning to really hear and understand in a way that enables you to navigate the difficulties, express yourself clearly, and listen like it really matters--which it most certainly does. The steps are accompanied by many practical exercises, and in the course of this three-part training, readers will learn how to apply these skills to personal and social relationships with romantic partners, friends, colleagues, and family.
The Grown-Up's Guide to Teenage Humans: How to Decode Their Behavior, Develop Unshakable Trust, and Raise a Respectable Adult
Josh Shipp - 2017
But Josh Shipp didn’t need Harvard to know that. Once an at-risk foster kid, he was headed straight for trouble until he met the man who changed his life: Rodney, the foster parent who refused to quit on Shipp and got him to believe in himself. Now, in The Grown-Up’s Guide to Teenage Humans, Shipp shows all of us how to be that caring adult in a teenager’s life. Stressing the need for compassion, trust, and encouragement, he breaks down the phases of a teenage human from sixth to twelfth grade, examining the changes, goals, and mentality of teenagers at each stage. Shipp offers revelatory stories that take us inside the teen brain, and shares wisdom from top professionals and the most expert grown-ups. He also includes practice scripts that address tough issues, including:
FORGIVENESS: What do I do when a teen has been really hurt by someone and it’s not their fault?
COMMUNICATION: How do I get a teen to talk to me? They just grunt.
TRUST: My teen blew it. My trust is gone. Where do we go from here?
BULLYING: Help! A teen (or their friend) is being harassed.
DIFFICULT AND AWKWARD CONVERSATIONS: Drugs. Death. Sex. Oh my.
Written in Shipp’s playfully authoritative, no-nonsense voice, The Grown-Up’s Guide to Teenage Humans tells his story and unpacks practical strategies that can make a difference. Ultimately, it's not about shortcuts or magic words—as Shipp reminds us, it’s about investing in kids and giving them the love, time, and support they need to thrive. And that means every kid is one caring adult away from being a success story.
Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom
William Glasser - 1998
William Glasser offers a new psychology that, if practiced, could reverse our widespread inability to get along with one another, an inability that is the source of almost all unhappiness.For progress in human relationships, he explains that we must give up the punishing, relationship–destroying external control psychology. For example, if you are in an unhappy relationship right now, he proposes that one or both of you could be using external control psychology on the other. He goes further. And suggests that misery is always related to a current unsatisfying relationship. Contrary to what you may believe, your troubles are always now, never in the past. No one can change what happened yesterday.
Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age
Sherry Turkle - 2015
And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection. Preeminent author and researcher Sherry Turkle has been studying digital culture for over thirty years. Long an enthusiast for its possibilities, here she investigates a troubling consequence: at work, at home, in politics, and in love, we find ways around conversation, tempted by the possibilities of a text or an email in which we don’t have to look, listen, or reveal ourselves. We develop a taste for what mere connection offers. The dinner table falls silent as children compete with phones for their parents’ attention. Friends learn strategies to keep conversations going when only a few people are looking up from their phones. At work, we retreat to our screens although it is conversation at the water cooler that increases not only productivity but commitment to work. Online, we only want to share opinions that our followers will agree with – a politics that shies away from the real conflicts and solutions of the public square. The case for conversation begins with the necessary conversations of solitude and self-reflection. They are endangered: these days, always connected, we see loneliness as a problem that technology should solve. Afraid of being alone, we rely on other people to give us a sense of ourselves, and our capacity for empathy and relationship suffers. We see the costs of the flight from conversation everywhere: conversation is the cornerstone for democracy and in business it is good for the bottom line. In the private sphere, it builds empathy, friendship, love, learning, and productivity. But there is good news: we are resilient. Conversation cures. Based on five years of research and interviews in homes, schools, and the workplace, Turkle argues that we have come to a better understanding of where our technology can and cannot take us and that the time is right to reclaim conversation. The most human—and humanizing—thing that we do. The virtues of person-to-person conversation are timeless, and our most basic technology, talk, responds to our modern challenges. We have everything we need to start, we have each other.
Elijah's Cup: A Family's Journey into the Community and Culture of High-functioning Autism and Asperger's Syndrome (Revised edition)
Valerie Paradiž - 2002
Her inspiring narrative offers compelling insights into daily life with Elijah's Asperger's syndrome and her own 'shadow syndrome', which affects many family members of autistics. It is also a celebration of the idiosyncratic beauty of the Asperger mind and the sense of mutual support and self-respect in the ASD community.This revised edition includes a contribution from Elijah and a new chapter that brings the story up-to-date: the author successfully sets up a specialist educational unit for Asperger pupils, Elijah experiences his first two years of school, and the author's dawning recognition of her own Asperger's Syndrome leads to major life changes.Elijah's Cup offers moving and insightful observations as well as factual information for parents and anyone working with people with ASDs.
A Field Guide to Earthlings: An Autistic/Asperger View of Neurotypical Behavior
Ian Ford - 2010
This book unlocks the inner workings of neurotypical behavior, which can be mysterious to autistics. Topics include the nuances of friendship, dating, small talk, interpersonal conflicts, image, learning styles, social communication, common sense, and white lies.Proceeding from root concepts of language and culture through 62 behavior patterns used by neurotypical people, the book reveals how they structure a mental map of the world in symbolic webs of beliefs, how those symbols are used to filter perception, how they build and display their identity, how they compete for power, and how they socialize and develop relationships. From the introduction: This book reveals psychological patterns of neurotypical humans, from an autistic perspective. I wrote it to help you understand them. You might read it if you are autistic and have to work harder to understand why people do what they do, or you might read it if you are neurotypical and want to understand an autistic person in your life, or you might read it because you are interested in new ways of looking at personalities and behavior.
Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes
William Bridges - 2004
Since Transitions was first published, this supportive guide has helped hundreds of thousands of readers cope with these issues by providing an elegantly simple yet profoundly insightful roadmap of the transition process. With the understanding born of both personal and professional experience, William Bridges takes readers step by step through the three stages of any transition: The Ending, The Neutral Zone, and, eventually, The New Beginning. Bridges explains how each stage can be understood and embraced, leading to meaningful and productive movement into a hopeful future. With a new introduction highlighting how the advice in the book continues to apply and is perhaps even more relevant today, and a new chapter devoted to change in the workplace, Transitions will remain the essential guide for coping with the one constant in life: change.
Raising a Sensory Smart Child: The Definitive Handbook for Helping Your Child with Sensory Integration Issues
Lindsey Biel - 2005
Now as awareness of this condition reaches an all-time high, this comprehensive guidebook offers cutting-edge advice to parents of SI children. Written by an occupational therapist and a parent with a child with SI dysfunction, "Raising a Sensory Smart Child makes it easy for readers to recognize and understand their child's sensory issues and to find the best treatment for their child's needs.
The Asperger's Answer Book: Professional Answers to 300 of the Top Questions Parents Ask
Susan Ashley - 2006
Written by an experienced child psychologist, The Asperger's Answer Book covers such topics as:Is it autism or is it Asperger's?Getting your child evaluatedEmotional intelligenceRoutines and ritualsMotor skillsSensory sensitivityGrowing up with Asperger's SyndromeWritten in an easy-to-read Q&A format, The Asperger's Answer Book helps parents understand and accept their child's illness and develop a plan for success.
How to Keep House While Drowning: A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing
K.C. Davis
Presented in 31 daily thoughts, this compassionate guide will help you begin to get free of the shame and anxiety you feel over home care.Inside you will learn:· How to shift your perspective of care tasks from moral to functional· How to stop negative self-talk and shame around care tasks· How to give yourself permission to rest, even when things aren’t finished· How to motivate yourself to care for your space