Showing results by publisher "Random House Audio" in Parenting & Families

When Madeleine Dean discovered that her son Harry was stealing from the family to feed a painkiller addiction, she was days away from taking the biggest risk of her life: running for statewide office in Pennsylvania. For years, she had sensed something was wrong. Harry was losing weight and losing friends. He had lost the brightness in his eyes and voice, changing from a young boy with boundless enthusiasm to a shadow of himself, chasing something she could not see. Now her worst fears had come to light.

Through the stories of kids and parents in the middle school trenches, a New York Times best-selling author reveals why these years are so painful, how parents unwittingly make them worse, and what we all need to do to grow up.

The Pelzer family's secret life of fear and abuse was first revealed in Dave Pelzer's inspiring New York Times best seller, A Child Called "It", followed by The Lost Child and A Man Called Dave. Here, for the first time, Richard Pelzer tells the courageous and moving story of his abusive childhood.

Renowned sociologist Janice Johnson Dias has devoted her life to nurturing and training girls to become changemakers - whether through her investment in her daughter Marley’s humanitarian projects or through her work with the GrassROOTS Community Foundation “SuperCamp” she cofounded for girls. In these unprecedented times, her work has never been more urgent, as parents find themselves asking: How do we teach girls to change the world?

In Bless This Mess, listeners will gain constructive tools as they learn how to talk to their children about social justice, money, God, ethics, bullying, disabilities, sexuality, and their bodies. Parents will also glean insights on how to serve others with joy, give generously and gratefully, and - perhaps most important - learn how to stop being so afraid all the damn time, even while raising kids in an increasingly chaotic and often scary world.

In 1994, Driven to Distraction sparked a revolution in our understanding of attention deficit disorder. Now a second revolution is under way in the approach to ADD, and the news is great. Drug therapies, our understanding of the role of diet and exercise, even the way we define the disorder, all are changing radically. And doctors are realizing that millions of adults suffer from this condition, though the vast majority of them remain undiagnosed and untreated.

An invaluable playbook for anxious parents everywhere, Eight Setbacks That Can Make a Child a Success offers specific and unexpected advice about what to say, what not to say, and what to do to help children in eight categories of tense situations.

Passing on our faith does not happen passively—it’s something we intentionally pursue with prayer and joy. Yet many of us struggle to know what it looks like to live out a contagious faith in today’s world. We long for spiritual wisdom on how to ignite faith in our children, grandchildren, and others we encounter.

When Kelly Corrigan was in high school, her mother neatly summarized the family dynamic as "Your father’s the glitter but I’m the glue." This meant nothing to Kelly, who left childhood sure that her mom - with her inviolable commandments and proud stoicism - would be nothing more than background chatter for the rest of Kelly’s life, which she was carefully orienting toward adventure. After college, armed with a backpack, her personal mission statement, and a wad of traveler’s checks, she took off for Australia to see things and do things and Become Interesting.

Domenica Ruta grew up in a working-class, unforgiving Italian town north of Boston where in the seventeenth century women were hanged as witches. Her mother, Kathi, a notorious figure in this hardscrabble place, was a drug addict and sometime dealer whose life swung between welfare and riches, whose highbrow taste was at odds with her base appetites.

Many moms live under the weight of seemingly constant fear. Moms worry about everything from their kids’ safety and emotional health to that weird little rash on their ankle. They are the referees, social planners, medics, financial consultants, cooks, travel agents, educational specialists, family therapists, and housekeepers. It’s utterly exhausting. Unfortunately, it’s not just exhausting, it leaves them flustered. Most of us don’t have access to the support or resources we need to manage being flustered in a healthier way.

The renowned radio host and one of the most trusted voices in the nation candidly and compassionately addresses the hotly contested right-to-die movement, of which she is one of our most inspiring champions. The basis for the acclaimed PBS series.

The Out-of-Sync Child Grows Up will be the new bible for the vast audience of parents whose children, already diagnosed with Sensory Processing Disorder, are entering the adolescent, tween, and teen years, as well as those who do not yet have a diagnosis and are struggling to meet the challenges of daily life. This book picks up where The Out-of-Sync Child left off, offering practical advice on living with SPD, covering everyday challenges as well as the social and emotional issues that many young people with SPD face.

He walks with me through every day of my life, in that unsteady, faltering gait that so embarrassed me when I was a boy. Always, he is holding fast to the upper part of my right arm . . . As we make our way together, my father—I called him Daddy when I was small, because it sounded American and that is how he so desperately wanted things to seem—is speaking in the idiosyncratic rhythms of a self-constructed English. So Sherwin Nuland introduces Meyer Nudelman, his father, a man whose presence continues to haunt Nuland to this day.

In the tradition of Blow and Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, The Last Pirate is a vivid, haunting, and often hilarious memoir recounting the life of Big Tony, a family man who joined the biggest pot ring of the Reagan era and exploded his life in the process. Three decades later, his son came back to put together the pieces.

"Congratulations on the resurrection of your life", a colleague wrote to Emily Rapp Black when she announced the birth of her second child. The line made Rapp Black pause. Her first child, a boy named Ronan, had died from Tay-Sachs disease before he turned three years old, an experience she wrote about in her second book, The Still Point of the Turning World. Since that time, her life had changed utterly.

Once shrouded in secrecy, the modern family, built with the assistance of gamete (egg or sperm) donation, is coming out of the shadows. As more people see friends, family members and celebrities use donor conception to build their families, the process has become much more mainstream and accepted. Donor sperm programs and egg banks have grown enormously in the past decade and the news is full of politicians, athletes and entertainers like Elton John, Anderson Cooper, Andy Cohen, Camille Guaty, Pete Buttigieg, and Natalie Imbruglia, who used donor gametes to have their children.

From National Book Award finalist Megan K. Stack, a stunning memoir of raising her children abroad with the help of Chinese and Indian women who are also working mothers....

This smart and witty collection of opinions, observations, and anecdotes covers a broad range of personal topics. Kathie Lee Gifford's stories are often funny, sometimes heartfelt, and always compelling - think Nora Ephron's I Feel Bad About My Neck meets Carol Burnett.

No subject is off-limits: talking to her kids about sex, being married to Frank Gifford, embarrassing professional gaffes, run-ins with celebrities (of which there are many), the harsh and funny realities of aging.

A searingly powerful memoir about the impact of addiction on a family. In the summer of 2012, a woman named Eva was found dead in the London townhouse she shared with her husband, Hans K. Rausing. The couple had struggled with drug addiction for years, often under the glare of tabloid headlines. Now, writing with singular clarity and restraint, Hans' sister, the editor and publisher Sigrid Rausing, tries to make sense of what happened.