Children Mental Health

Open adoption isn't just something parents do when they exchange photos, send emails, share a visit. It's a lifestyle that may feel intrusive at times, be difficult or inconvenient at other times. Tensions can arise even in the best of circumstances. But knowing how to handle these situations and how to continue to make arrangements work for the child involved is paramount. This book offers listeners the tools and the insight to do just that.

Gabry lives a quiet life. As safe a life as is possible in a town trapped between a forest and the ocean, in a world teeming with the dead, who constantly hunger for those still living. She’s content on her side of the Barrier, happy to let her friends dream of the Dark City up the coast while she watches from the top of her lighthouse. But there are threats the Barrier cannot hold back. Threats like the secrets Gabry’s mother thought she left behind when she escaped from the Sisterhood and the Forest of Hands and Teeth. Like the cult of religious zealots who worship the dead.

With few exceptions, parenting books, websites, and podcasts emphasize the critical role of the parent in shaping a child’s destiny. But the obsession with parenting ignores a fundamental biological fact: that genetics affect every aspect of human behavior, and every child is uniquely “coded” with predispositions that affect everything from fearfulness, to impulsivity, to happiness.

Fourteen-year-old Luce has had a tough life, but she reaches the depths of despair when she is assaulted and left on the cliffs outside a grim Alaskan fishing village. She expects to die when she tumbles into the icy waves below but instead undergoes an astonishing transformation: she becomes a mermaid. A tribe of mermaids finds Luce and welcomes her in. All of them, like her, are lost girls who surrendered their humanity in the darkest moments of their lives.

It's the summer of 1970. Seventeen-year-old Jean has cerebral palsy, but she's always believed she's just the same as everyone else. She's never really known another disabled person before she arrives at Camp Courage. As Jean joins a community unlike any she has ever imagined, she comes to question her old beliefs and look at the world in a new light. The camp session is only 10 days long, but that may be all it takes to change a life forever.

Most people are familiar with PTSD. But many have not heard of complex PTSD and developmental trauma disorder. As adults, many of us experience symptoms of anxiety and depression. We feel chronically stressed. We have trouble trusting others, or we may even experience feelings of paranoia in our relationships with others. We struggle to define what it is that is bothering us, and we struggle to find ways effective ways to treat it.

You’ve taken the first step into the beautiful and creative life of the highly sensitive child. And now, we can help make this world a more compassionate and caring place together. Parenting a highly sensitive child is a gift: We get to experience their journey of growth and help shape their future. But parenting a highly sensitive child presents special challenges that require special awareness. Highly sensitive children need understanding, validation, and our support as positive role models to learn how to use their unique gifts in a world that doesn’t always understand them.

James and Alex have barely anything in common anymore - least of all their experiences in high school, where James is a popular senior and Alex is suddenly an outcast. But at home, there is Henry, the precocious 10-year-old across the street, who eagerly befriends them both. And when Alex takes up running, there is James’s friend Nathen, who unites the brothers in moving and unexpected ways.

Adult children of narcissists have been conditioned to downplay, dismiss, and ignore their experiences. This survival skill of staying below the radar can cause even very skilled clinicians to miss subtle opportunities to connect. It is paramount that clinicians understand the scope of these clients' experiences in order to support their healing—and to avoid the common clinical mistakes and pitfalls that often lead to inadvertently repeating harmful cycles.

This essential guide, written by an expert in pediatric pain management, is the practical, accessible, and comprehensive resource that families and caregivers have been waiting for. It offers in-the-moment strategies for managing a child’s pain along with expert advice for fostering long-term comfort and is the foremost resource for parents and caregivers seeking ways to help their child increase comfort and overcome chronic pain.

Best-selling author Michele Borba offers a nine-step program to help parents cultivate empathy in children, from birth to young adulthood - and explains why developing a healthy sense of empathy is a key predictor of which kids will thrive and succeed in the future.

Many parents want to see positive character traits in their children but wonder how to instill them. As stars of the hit reality TV show Duck Dynasty, Korie and Willie Robertson receive loads of letters and messages from fans asking how they've raised such good kids. As they will tell you, "It isn't always easy, but raising kids with good character is possible".

"Is this normal picky eating stuff, or is there more going on here?" It's a question many parents worry about, and the same question one mom asked Jennifer Friedman in a session about her son Ryder, who struggled to eat more than chicken nuggets and french fries. In Stories of Extreme Picky Eating, Jennifer invites you into her nutritional therapy office to meet real kids struggling with serious food aversions, and learn the strategies that helped them come to eat a wider variety of nutritious foods with more ease.

Adulthood is complicated for anyone, though it can be especially overwhelming for someone living with Asperger's. Thankfully, Asperger's and Adulthood presents targeted strategies from learning specialist Blythe Grossberg to help young adults with Asperger's kick-start careers, cultivate healthy relationships, and create independent paths as maturing adults. Grossberg lends her expertise by providing an Asperger's road map - pointing out potential obstacles and offering valuable how-tos for thriving in the world.

A leading cognitive scientist argues that a deep sense of good and evil is bred in the bone. From John Locke to Sigmund Freud, philosophers and psychologists have long believed that we begin life as blank moral slates.

James Sveck, 18-year-old New Yorker, charming, precocious, confused, doesn't quite fit in (doesn't really want to)....If his future (i.e., college) seems completely meaningless, not to mention terrifying....Then: he'll start anew (move to the Midwest?)....James Sveck is misunderstood by a capricious mother, a self-absorbed father, a mordant older sister, his Teutonic therapist, his D-list celebrity grandmother, his unnervingly attractive art gallery colleague....

This book is for the parent who wants to understand pediatric anxiety to its core. Written and narrated in a way that is digestible for anyone, the approach is realistic and easy to implement. Anxiety runs on a spectrum where various techniques work better than others - which is why this book is packed with coping strategies for different times, places, and situations suited to fit a range of children’s needs.

Welcome to my world. I'm Amal Abdel-Hakim, a 17-year-old Australian-Palestinian-Muslim still trying to come to grips with my various identity hyphens. It's hard enough being cool as a teenager when being one issue behind the latest Cosmo is enough to disqualify you from the in-group. Try wearing a veil on your head and practicing the bum's up position at lunchtime and you know you're in for a tough time at school.

The child of an alcoholic develops patterns of behavior during childhood that carry over into adult life. As children they were taught to cover up the family secret and suppress their feelings. No matter what is going on, as adults, when asked how she or he is doing, your partner will likely answer "fine". Distrust, fear of abandonment, and sensitivity to criticism are all major issues for your adult child. Recognizing these patterns and changing the ones that cause problems will help you and your partner enjoy a deeper relationship.

Edward M. Hallowell, MD, father of three and a clinical psychiatrist, has thought long and hard about what makes children feel good about themselves and the world they live in. Now, in The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness, he shares his findings with all of us who care about children. We don't need statistical studies or complicated expert opinions to raise children. What we do need is love, wonder, and the confidence to trust our instincts.