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.

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.

Parenting Children with Mental Health Challenges: A Guide to Life with Emotionally Complex Kids offers overwhelmed readers guidance, solidarity, and hope. The author, a “mental-health mom” who’s survived indignity, exhaustion, and the heartbreak of loving a child with multiple mental-health disorders, writes with frankness and occasional humor about the hardest parenting job on earth. Drawing on her own experiences and those of other parents, plus tips from mental health professionals, Vlock suggests ways of parenting smarter, partnering better, and living more fully and less fearfully in the shadow of childhood psychiatric illness. Addressing the many hurdles children and families must face, including life on the home front, school, friendships and relationships, and more, the book shows readers that they’re not alone—and they are stronger than they think. With its combination of easily digestible, to-the-point suggestions, clear action items, and first-person parent/kid stories, its aim is to make mental-health parents feel stronger and better, while actively seeking positive outcomes for their kids and families. With rates of mental health diagnoses among youth on the rise, this invaluable resource will help parents through the trying times with support, understanding, and guidance.

Recognize the hidden costs and rewards of childrearing! The Effect of Children on Parents, Second Edition, thoughtfully explores the interactions by which parents and children change, develop, and sometimes affect each other negatively. Everyone knows that parents influence their children, but few people consider the ways in which children affect their parents. The love, satisfaction, and fulfillment children offer can change parents’lives. So can the stress, worry, and financial drain. The Effect of Children on Parents, Second Edition, honestly confronts these long-neglected issues of family dynamics. Taking a unique interdisciplinary approach, this book describes in great detail, with jargon-free language the various aspects of children's effects on their parents. This second edition contains an abundance of fresh information, including nine entirely new chapters that deal with such complex topics as the effects on parents of children with emotional, behavioral, and delinquency problems. The Effect of Children on Parents, Second Edition, asks and answers essential questions on the parent-child dynamic, including: what role does genetic inheritance play in children's responses to their parents? how do peers influence children and through them, their parents? what happens to parents when children are difficult or have emotional problems? what special considerations apply to minority or adoptive parents? how do adult childrem affect their aging parents? how does society support or undermine parents? what roadblocks prevent parents from being as effective as they would like to be? The Effect of Children on Parents, Second Edition, takes a brave look at this often ignored area of family dynamics, giving a richer, more complex, and ultimately more healing view of how humans interact in families. Professors, students, and experts in the fields of child development, family studies, and sociology of childhood and family will find this book a sophisticated tool in their desire to better understand and help families and children.