Besides the usual parenting challenges, parents of disabled children face added obstacles that can tax the resolve and resources of even the strongest families. Peggy Lou Morgan has developed a powerful system for obtaining dramatically better care for children with one or more serious disabilities. Parenting Your Complex Child reflects the experience and knowledge she has gained through decades of navigating a sea of complex medical, educational, occupational, and social issues while working with disabled clients and with her own son. Morgan’s unique tracking and documentation tools let parents adapt to their child’s challenges, create routines that support the child’s needs, communicate those needs to busy professionals -- and be taken seriously by them. The book also helps parents lay the groundwork for care to continue after they themselves can no longer provide it. Compassionate, practical, and proven, Parenting Your Complex Child helps parents ensure that life-changing decisions are based on the best interests of the child -- and on the best information available.

The Essential Guide to Raising Complex Kids is an honest guide on how to be an effective parent and when raising children with ADHD, anxiety, and other complex conditions--and how to guide them on a path to a healthy, happy, well-adjusted life. A wake-up call, a clear guide for action, and a message of inspiration, this book provides a reality-based recipe for how to do a masterful job of raising complex kids, while not making yourself (or your family) crazy in the process. ADHD parenting expert Elaine Taylor-Klaus, founder and CEO of ImpactADHD.com, will walk you through her proven coach-approachmethod, which shows all parents, in simple steps, how to identify challenge areas and how to use critical response toolsto parent simply, clearly, and effectively—for everyone’s benefit. It doesn’t much matter if your child has ADHD, or anxiety, or learning disabilities, or sensory processing, or ODD, or autism, or depression, or separation disorder—or celiac disease or food allergies, for that matter. All that really matters is this: your child is complex because there is a chronic medical condition (or several) that he, or she, or they need to learn to manage for themselves in order to be successful in life. A coach approach will help you communicate, collaborate, and guide your kids on their path to independence. Here are some of the challenge areas addressed inside, and the coach-approach method for working through them. Challenge: Feeling Like You've Tried Everything --> Coach-Approach: Letting Go Challenge: Fearing for the Future --> Coach-Approach: Parenting from Inspiration, Not Desperation Challenge: An Unhappy Home --> Coach-Approach: No One Gets to Be Wrong--The Benefits of Positivity Challenge: Overwhelm Is Keeping You Stuck --> Coach-Approach: Focusing on What's Most Important Once you learn the coach-approval model, it can be applied to any situation—in fact, the more you use it, the easier it all becomes. Constant battles don’t have to be part of your daily life. With The Essential Guide to Raising Complex Kids, you can (all) learn to thrive.

Step-by-step help for overcoming temper tantrums, arguing and defiance, bed- and bath-time resistance, problems getting ready in the morning, homework issues, and more. Includes bibliographical references.

Bringing the magic of empathy to daily life with a child

Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.

Amid a bewildering range of treatments that promise to alleviate or even cure autism, even the leading researchers can’t predict what will work for your child. As a parent, you are in a unique position to become the practical expert on your child’s needs and strengths. Parenting Your Child with Autism will equip you with family-tested and science-based approaches for meeting the challenges ahead. You’ll learn how to get a diagnosis and navigate the health care and educational systems, make sense of your child’s treatment options, and tap into expert opinions and your own observations to find a treatment program that works. Perhaps most importantly, you will learn how to become your child’s best advocate, and build a better life for your child. This book focuses on the processes and decisions parents of children with autism face every day. To help you build an everyday life that works for your child with autism and other family members, this book shares suggestions that range from practical and educational to philosophical, closing with some personal and professional advice for your journey ahead.

A much-needed perspective on how to mother difficult adult children while balancing one’s own needs. Difficult brings to life the conflicts that arise for mothers who are confronted with the unexpected, burdensome, and even catastrophic dependencies of their adult children associated with mental illness, substance use, or chronic unemployment. Through real stories of mothers and their challenging adult children, this book offers relatable, provocative, and, at times, shocking illustrations of the excruciating maternal dilemma: Which takes precedence—the needs of the mother or of the distressed adult child? With guidance for finding social support, staying safe, engaging in self-care, and helping the adult child, Difficult is a compassionate resource for those living in a family situation which too many keep secret and allows readers to see that they are not alone.