Helping Parents Help Their Kids

Parents can play a strong role in helping their children overcome anxiety disorders--given the right tools. This innovative, research-based book shows clinicians how to teach parents cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) techniques to use with their 5- to 12-year-old. Session-by-session guidelines are provided for giving parents the skills to promote children's flexible thinking and independent problem solving, help them face specific fears, and tackle accompanying difficulties, such as sleep problems and school refusal. User-friendly features include illustrative case studies, sample scripts, advice on combining face-to-face sessions with telephone support, and pointers for overcoming roadblocks. Several parent handouts can be downloaded and printed in a convenient 8 1/2" x 11" size.

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.

Young children can surprise us with tough questions. Tominey’s essential guide teaches us how to answer them and foster compassion along the way. If you had to choose one word to describe the world you want children to grow up in, what would it be? Safe? Understanding? Resilient? Compassionate? As parents and caregivers of young children, we know what we want for our children, but not always how to get there. Many children today are stressed by academic demands, anxious about relationships at school, confused by messages they hear in the media, and overwhelmed by challenges at home. Young children look to the adults in their lives for everything. Sometimes we’re prepared... sometimes we’re not. In this book, Shauna Tominey guides parents and caregivers through how to have conversations with young children about a range of topics-from what makes us who we are (e.g., race, gender) to tackling challenges (e.g., peer pressure, divorce, stress) to showing compassion (e.g., making friends, recognizing privilege, being a helper). Talking through these topics in an age-appropriate manner—rather than telling children they are too young to understand—helps children recognize how they feel and how they fit in with the world around them. This book provides sample conversations, discussion prompts, storybook recommendations, and family activities. Dr. Tominey's research-based strategies and practical advice creates dialogues that teach self-esteem, resilience, and empathy: the building blocks for a more compassionate world.

Helping Parents Help Their Kids is a guide both for clinicians who help families and for parents who have children with behavior problems. The author provides three ways to address clinical issues in designing and implementing child behavior management plans: a general behavioral consultation model, a specific behavioral model, and an empirically-tested advice package for problems that can occur in different family contexts. Each chapter provides early research on a specific strategy and several forms to use in the clinical environment.Parents will find this book helpful because the information is presented in a user-friendly format. The author explains how parents can learn specific strategies to deal with six common problems. These problems include: teaching both children and adolescents to comply with the rules of the house, dealing with disruptive behavior, and addressing problems in school.Helping Parents Help Their Kids offers both clinicians and parents effective procedures without the technical jargon many typical behavioral texts use. Instead, the author explains these methods in common-sense terms that will be a welcome change for all who want to find solutions for their child's behavioral problems.

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.

Confident Parents, Confident Kids lays out an approach for helping parents—and the kids they love—hone their emotional intelligence so that they can make wise choices, connect and communicate well with others (even when patience is thin), and become socially conscious and confident human beings. How do we raise a happy, confident kid? And how can we be confident that our parenting is preparing our child for success? Our confidence develops from understanding and having a mastery over our emotions (aka emotional intelligence)—and helping our children do the same. Like learning to play a musical instrument, we can fine-tune our ability to skillfully react to those crazy, wonderful, big feelings that naturally arise from our child’s constant growth and changes, moving from chaos to harmony. We want our children to trust that they can conquer any challenge with hard work and persistence; that they can love boundlessly; that they will find their unique sense of purpose; and they will act wisely in a complex world. This book shows you how. With author and educator Jennifer Miller as your supportive guide, you'll learn: the lies we’ve been told about emotions, how they shape our choices, and how we can reshape our parenting decisions in better alignment with our deepest values. how to identify the temperaments your child was born with so you can support those tendencies rather than fight them. how to align your biggest hopes and dreams for your kids with specific skills that can be practiced, along with new research to support those powerful connections. about each age and stage your child goes through and the range of learning opportunities available. how to identify and manage those big emotions (that only the parenting process can bring out in us!) and how to model emotional intelligence for your children. how to deal with the emotions and influences of your choir—the many outside individuals and communities who directly impact your child’s life, including school, the digital world, extended family, neighbors, and friends. Raising confident, centered, happy kids—while feeling the same way about yourself—is possible with Confident Parents, Confident Kids.

A psychologist with a reputation for penetrating to the heart of complex parenting issues joins forces with a physician and bestselling author to tackle one of the most disturbing and misunderstood trends of our time -- peers replacing parents in the lives of our children. Dr. Neufeld has dubbed this phenomenon peer orientation, which refers to the tendency of children and youth to look to their peers for direction: for a sense of right and wrong, for values, identity and codes of behaviour. But peer orientation undermines family cohesion, poisons the school atmosphere, and fosters an aggressively hostile and sexualized youth culture. It provides a powerful explanation for schoolyard bullying and youth violence; its effects are painfully evident in the context of teenage gangs and criminal activity, in tragedies such as in Littleton, Colorado; Tabor, Alberta and Victoria, B.C. It is an escalating trend that has never been adequately described or contested until Hold On to Your Kids. Once understood, it becomes self-evident -- as do the solutions. Hold On to Your Kids will restore parenting to its natural intuitive basis and the parent-child relationship to its rightful preeminence. The concepts, principles and practical advice contained in Hold On to Your Kids will empower parents to satisfy their children’s inborn need to find direction by turning towards a source of authority, contact and warmth. Something has changed. One can sense it, one can feel it, just not find the words for it. Children are not quite the same as we remember being. They seem less likely to take their cues from adults, less inclined to please those in charge, less afraid of getting into trouble. Parenting, too, seems to have changed. Our parents seemed more confident, more certain of themselves and had more impact on us, for better or for worse. For many, parenting does not feel natural. Adults through the ages have complained about children being less respectful of their elders and more difficult to manage than preceding generations, but could it be that this time it is for real? -- from Hold On to Your Kids