Lack of friends * poor self-image * sibling rivalry * hyperactivity * sadness and fearfulness * eating problems * nervous habits * aggressive behavior * defiance * sleep problems * lying * learning disabilities. . . Even normal children can have problems. And parents can help them. That is the powerful assurance Dr. Stanley Turecki offers parents in this compassionate and practical book. Whatever the situation, Dr. Turecki shows you: A new way to understand your child's difficulties and gain insights into causes and solutions How to discuss problems without destructive arguments and win your child's cooperation How to strengthen self-esteem by making the most of your child's individual temperament How to improve discipline by focusing on planning and prevention rather than punishment How to collaborate with teachers about school problems What to do if you are told that your child should be tested for ADD or placed on medication When to seek professional help Including vivid vignettes illustrating a wide range of problems and how they were successfully resolved, this award-winning book is destined to become a parenting classic.

In this revised edition there are alterations and additions to the three chapters on breast feeding, with a discussion of infantile colic, rewritten chapters on physical growth, sleep problems, travel problems, the prevention of infection and the prevention of accidents, with completely new chapters on helping a child to achieve its potential and on the controversial matter of child health surveillance. Its 300 new references have been also been added.

Fears, feeding, and sleep problems, croup and tantrums, stomachaches, asthma: these are some of the problems that every parent worries about at one time or another. According to Dr. Brazelton, most of these are a normal part of growing up. Only if parents add their own anxieties to the child's natural drive toward master will these "normal problems" become laden with guilt and tension and deepen into chronic issues. If parents can learn to listen, to hear the stress that may lie behind psychosomatic complaints, they can not only remove some of the excess pressures, but also help their children toward self-understanding.

Easy-to-understand child development information on challenging behaviors, specifically written for teachers and families.

Solve toddler challenges with eight key mindshifts that will help you parent with clarity, calmness, and self-control. In Why is My Child in Charge?, Claire Lerner shows how making critical mindshifts—seeing children’s behaviors through a new lens —empowers parents to solve their most vexing childrearing challenges. Using real life stories, Lerner unpacks the individualized process she guides parents through to settle common challenges, such as throwing tantrums in public, delaying bedtime for hours, refusing to participate in family mealtimes, and resisting potty training. Lerner then provides readers with a roadmap for how to recognize the root cause of their child’s behavior and how to create and implement an action plan tailored to the unique needs of each child and family. Why is My Child in Charge? is like having a child development specialist in your home. It shows how parents can develop proven, practical strategies that translate into adaptable, happy kids and calm, connected, in-control parents.

From leading researchers, this book presents important advances in understanding how growing up in a discordant family affects child adjustment, the factors that make certain children more vulnerable than others, and what can be done to help. It is a state-of-the-science follow-up to the authors' seminal earlier work, Children and Marital Conflict: The Impact of Family Dispute and Resolution. The volume presents a new conceptual framework that draws on current knowledge about family processes; parenting; attachment; and children's emotional, physiological, cognitive, and behavioral development. Innovative research methods are explained and promising directions for clinical practice with children and families are discussed.

A veteran clinical psychologist exposes why doctors, teachers, and parents incorrectly diagnose healthy American children with serious psychiatric conditions. In recent years there has been an alarming rise in the number of American children and youth assigned a mental health diagnosis. Current data from the Centers for Disease Control reveal a 41 percent increase in rates of ADHD diagnoses over the past decade and a forty-fold spike in bipolar disorder diagnoses. Similarly, diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder, once considered, has increased by 78 percent since 2002. Dr. Enrico Gnaulati, a clinical psychologist specializing in childhood and adolescent therapy and assessment, has witnessed firsthand the push to diagnose these disorders in youngsters. Drawing both on his own clinical experience and on cutting-edge research, with Back to Normal he has written the definitive account of why our kids are being dramatically overdiagnosed—and how parents and professionals can distinguish between true psychiatric disorders and normal childhood reactions to stressful life situations. Gnaulati begins with the complex web of factors that have led to our current crisis. These include questionable education and training practices that cloud mental health professionals’ ability to distinguish normal from abnormal behavior in children, monetary incentives favoring prescriptions, check-list diagnosing, and high-stakes testing in schools. We’ve also developed an increasingly casual attitude about labeling kids and putting them on psychiatric drugs. So how do we differentiate between a child with, say, Asperger’s syndrome and a child who is simply introverted, brainy, and single-minded? As Gnaulati notes, many of the symptoms associated with these disorders are similar to everyday childhood behaviors. In the second half of the book Gnaulati tells detailed stories of wrongly diagnosed kids, providing parents and others with information about the developmental, temperamental, and environmentally driven symptoms that to a casual or untrained eye can mimic a psychiatric disorder. These stories also reveal how nonmedical interventions, whether in the therapist’s office or through changes made at home, can help children. Back to Normal reminds us of the normalcy of children’s seemingly abnormal behavior. It will give parents of struggling children hope, perspective, and direction. And it will make everyone who deals with children question the changes in our society that have contributed to the astonishing increase in childhood psychiatric diagnoses.