Personal Development For Children

When foster carer Cathy Glass is asked to foster Darcy-May, a two-day-old baby, she is very concerned. The baby is coming to her straight from the hospital and will have no contact with her teenage mother, Haylea. Even more worrying, she will be brought to Cathy with a police escort, as it’s vital her extended family don't know where she is.

Carson McCullers was all of 23 when she published her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. She became an overnight literary sensation, and soon such authors as Tennessee Williams were calling her "the greatest prose writer that the South [has] produced." The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter tells an unforgettable tale of moral isolation in a small southern mill town in the 1930s.

Born in the Philippines, young Grace Talusan moves with her family to a New England suburb in the 1970s. At school, she confronts racism as one of the few kids with a brown face. At home, the confusion is worse: her grandfather's nightly visits to her room leave her hurt and terrified, and she learns to build a protective wall of silence that maps onto the larger silence practiced by her Catholic Filipino family. Later, she learns that her family history is threaded with violence and abuse. Despite all this, she finds love, and success as a teacher.

The emotional trauma we suffer as children not only shapes our emotional lives as adults but also affects our physical health and overall well-being. Scientists now know on a biochemical level exactly how parents' chronic fights, divorce, death in the family, being bullied or hazed, and growing up with a hypercritical, alcoholic, or mentally ill parent can leave permanent, physical "fingerprints" on our brains.

ADHD in adults is one of the most common disorders. Living with ADHD in our later years is hugely influenced by multiple factors: co-occurring issues, such as anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and learning disorders combined with a heightened level of stress, the presence or lack of support from others, and the number of people we are responsible for, can complicate and intensify the effects of ADHD. The good news is that you’ve come to the right place to learn more about how older adults with ADHD can lead calmer, happier, more productive lives.

Nationally recognized expert Robert Emery applies his twenty-five years of experience as a researcher, therapist, and mediator to offer parents a new road map to divorce. Dr. Emery shows how our powerful emotions and the way we handle them shape how we divorce—and whether our children suffer or thrive in the long run. His message is hopeful, yet realistic—divorce is invariably painful, but parents can help promote their children's resilience.

Healing isn't possible, though, without first uncovering the hurts—starting with adoption's central players: adoptees, who are so often in pain, suffering from what the latest brain science validates as the long-term emotional effects of separation trauma. By encouraging others to vulnerably share their stories, the authors discover that adoptees aren't the only ones in the adoption constellation who are hurting. Birth parents regularly shut down after being shut out by adoptive parents.

Raising children is never an easy task; as many parents will tell you, it is a lifetime commitment and one that can sometimes be thankless. Now, raising a neurodivergent child makes parenting several times more challenging. Neurodivergence is the difference in brain function from what we consider standard or typical. A neurodivergent child shows different mental characteristics from what would be considered typical, called neurotypical. ODD and ADHD are two examples of neurodivergent disorders that are common among the population.

Evie and Elliot are scrawny, filthy, and wide-eyed with fear when they turn up on foster carer Maggie Hartley's doorstep. Aged just two and three years old, this brother and sister have hardly set foot outside their own home. They have been prisoners, locked in a terrifying world of abuse, violence, and neglect. Maggie soon realizes that Evie and Elliot are lacking the basic life skills we all take for granted. The outside world terrifies them; the sound of the doorbell sends them into a panic that takes hours to abate.

For any parent of estranged adult children, reconciling may be a solo sport. Even when reconciliations do occur, their success requires wisdom and strength. That's why it's so important to empower yourself, make positive changes, and reclaim your life, even while waiting and continuing to reach out (if you choose to). Beyond Done with the Crying: More Answers and Advice for Parents of Estranged Adult Children is filled with information and solutions to the complex, real-life problems that plague parents of estranged adult children and their families.

This deeply personal memoir, cowritten by singer-songwriter, renowned mental health advocate, and recent Order of Canada recipient Séan McCann and wife Andrea Aragon, leaves no stone unturned. Detailing in powerful and lyrical prose a Newfoundland childhood indoctrinated in strict Catholic faith, the creation of the wildly successful Great Big Sea, and the battle with alcoholism that nearly cost them everything, McCann and Aragon offer listeners a story of reaching international fame and finding rock bottom.

"It sounded at first like something out of an old horror movie. I thought maybe someone was just playing around, but then I heard it again and again, a loud piercing cry, and less like Hollywood every time. The windows were down in my police cruiser on that warm fall day, but I still couldn’t tell where the sounds came from. I began looking around for the unlikely sight of someone being disemboweled in a mall parking lot on a Saturday afternoon. Seeing nothing, and still hearing the screams, I called in a “disturbance”.... Around the next corner I found the source of the commotion.

Turn your setbacks to breakthroughs and fears to power with this guide on developing a growth mindset—become a responsible and resilient adult!

In Dr. Mark McConville's decades of experience as a family clinical psychologist, perhaps no problem has been more fraught than that of young adults who fail to successfully transition from adolescence into adulthood. These kids - technically adults - just can't get it together: They can't hold a job, they struggle to develop meaningful relationships, and they often end up back in their parents' spare bedroom or on the couch. In fact, studies show that one in four Americans aged 25 to 34 neither work nor attend school - a problem that spans all socioeconomic and geographic boundaries.

Named after the lager that christened her at birth, Stella's life is characterised instability and neglect. Her teenage mother abandons her in the first few weeks of her life, and left in the 'care' of her father, she ends up lying deserted in a house with no food, no water, no clothes and no warmth. She eventually lands in the care of foster carer Louise, who is determined to change her life for the better.

A groundswell of women are taking back their pregnancies and childbirth and embracing a natural way. Genevieve Howland, the woman behind the enormously popular Mama Natural blog and YouTube channel, has created an inspiring, fun, and informative guide that demystifies natural pregnancy and walks Mom through the process one week at a time.

Whether you've been looking forward to it or dreading it, the experience of coming home to an empty nest brings with it a well of emotions, realizations, and one gigantic, all-consuming thought: Now what? In Finding Joy in the Empty Nest, Jim Burns combines his personal experiences with his expertise as a family educator to help you navigate your new life as an empty nester and find joy in this new season of life.

They are five kids with five different fathers and an alcoholic mother who leaves them to fend for themselves for weeks at a time. Yet through it all, they have each other. Rosie, the youngest, is fawned over and shielded by her older sister, Regina. Their mother, Cookie, blows in and out of their lives "like a hurricane, blind and uncaring to everything in her path". But when Regina emancipates herself as a minor and escapes, her siblings are separated.

The Parenting Handbook helps parents develop deep and connected relationships with their children. The authors, child psychologists and moms with an immense social media following, give parents practical tools and strategies backed by the latest research in neuroscience and developmental psychology.

For 25 years, Positive Discipline has been the gold standard reference for grown-ups working with children. Now Jane Nelsen, distinguished psychologist, educator, and mother of seven, has written a revised and expanded edition. The key to positive discipline is not punishment, she tells us, but mutual respect. Nelsen coaches parents and teachers to be both firm and kind, so that any child - from a three-year-old toddler to a rebellious teenager - can learn creative cooperation and self-discipline with no loss of dignity.