Raising Martians From Crash Landing To Leaving Home

Describes the characteristics of Asperger's syndrome and how it affects a child's life at home and school.

Offers ways to engage with children with Asperger syndrome like concentrating on their need for concrete forms of communication.

Parenting isn't easy, and parenting a child with a Global Developmental Delay, Intellectual Disability, or Autism can be challenging. However, a lot of parenting strategies are straightforward once you get your head around them. With the right knowledge, environment, interactions, responses and understanding, you can help reduce your child's anxiety, build their confidence, and help them develop learning and communication skills. Based on his work as a Clinical Psychologist working with children developing differently, Dr Joshua Muggleton provides a comprehensive, step-by-step parenting plan that will support you to embed good practice at home from day one. The book outlines how to provide the right environment for your child to learn and grow, how to model and encourage new skills, how to organise routines, and how to make these strategies work in family life. By getting things right for your child early on, you can help prevent emotional and behavioural challenges before they arise, and will be better able to understand and support your child when they do. These strategies are designed to work across all neurodevelopmental conditions, and take into account co-occurring conditions such as ADHD, meaning none of the advice in the book requires your child to have a specific diagnosis. It also includes downloadable examples of charts, how-to guides for creating visual resources tailored to your child's individual needs, and downloadable chapters on sleep and siblings.

The mental health and emotional wellbeing of children is fantastically important. It has a huge impact on learning and development and more and more, there is recognition of the importance of mental health for everyone. Despite this, many school staff feel overwhelmed and lack confidence when it comes to dealing with these issues in their classrooms. This new text is written for all those working in primary schools. It supports schools to develop strategies to enhance the importance of mental health and emotional wellbeing, to work on preventative strategies and to support children when they need more intervention. The text explores what we mean by mental health and wellbeing. Many children will not reach the threshold for clinical diagnosis, but they nonetheless need support. This text will outline lots of effective strategies for working with children who are struggling to manage the school day. It offers advice for engaging meaningfully with parents and considers the importance of working with school staff to ensure they are fully supported.

By the time her daughter Grace was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, Sophie Walker’s life had unraveled. Her career was in disarray. She couldn’t sleep. She felt hopeless and useless in her role as a mother. Sophie began to seek the things Grace needed — everything from advocacy for her educational rights and protection from bullying to help with homework and making friends. When Sophie realized she was neglecting her own health and well-being, she decided to train for the London Marathon to raise awareness of Asperger’s and to build the mental and physical resilience she needed to support her daughter. Through running, Sophie ultimately found the strength to battle for Grace’s education, happiness, and future, as well as the inner fortitude to overcome her own frustration and depression. In this book, she documents her and her daughter’s trials and triumphs, offering real-world inspiration for parents and athletes alike.

The Imprinted Brain sets out a radical new theory of the mind and mental illness based on the recent discovery of genomic imprinting. Imprinted genes are those from one parent that, in that parent's interest, are expressed in an offspring rather than the diametrically opposed genes from the other parent. For example, a higher birth weight may represent the dominance of the father's genes in leading to a healthy child, whereas a lower birth weight is beneficial to the mother's immediate wellbeing, and the imprint of the mother's genes will result in a smaller baby. According to this view, a win for the father's genes may result in autism, whereas one for the mother's may result in psychosis. A state of equilibrium - normality - is the most likely outcome, with a no-win situation of balanced expression. Imprinted genes typically produce symptoms that are opposites of each other, and the author uses psychiatric case material to show how many of the symptoms of psychosis can be shown to be the mental mirror-images of those of autism. Combining psychiatry with insights from modern genetics and cognitive science, Christopher Badcock explains the fascinating imprinted brain theory to the reader in a thorough but accessible way. This new theory casts some intriguing new light on other topics as diverse as the nature of genius, the appeal of detective fiction, and the successes - and failures - of psychoanalysis. This thought-provoking book is a must-read for anyone with an interest in autism, psychiatry, cognitive science or psychology in general.

Meet Tom - a young boy with autism. Tom invites readers to learn about autism from his perspective, helping them to understand what it is and explaining the challenges he faces with issues such as social communication, sensory overload and changes in his routine. Tom tells readers about all the ways he can be helped and supported by those around him. This illustrated book is ideally suited for readers aged 7 and upwards, and will be an excellent way to increase understanding about autism, in the classroom or at home. It also includes clear, useful information for parents and professionals.

The tranquility of Mars is disrupted by humans who want to conquer space, colonize the planet, and escape a doomed Earth.