When Your Child Is Cutting

A Compassionate Guide for Parents As a parent, what's harder to deal with than seeing your child in pain? It's especially frustrating when you feel like you've exhausted the resources you could use to help him or her stop hurting. And if your child is cutting or engaging in another form of self-injury, a behavior that you simply can't make any sense of in the first place, this feeling of helplessness can be unbearable. This book offers you information and advice for dealing with a child who is hurting him or herself. Learn why self-injury happens, how to identify it, and how to address this sensitive topic with calm and confidence. Follow the book's clear and simple plan for communicating with your child about this problem. Connect with the best kinds of professional help to get him or her through this painful time. Above all, rely on this compassionate and clinically sound book to give you the one thing you really need when your child is in pain-hope. Learn about the causes and effects of self-injury Identify the signs of self-harm Communicate effectively with a child who is hurting him or herself Choose the best professional help Support your child's recovery

This much-needed book tells parents why self-injury happens, how to spot it in their children, and how to address this sensitive topic with confidence. It outlines a clear and simple plan for approaching a child who self-injures because good communication is a necessary first step in healing.

‘A much needed resource empowering readers with powerful insights, a road map of practical strategies and above all else hope.’ Karen Young – child & adolescent anxiety specialist Helping teens and tweens cope when times are tough. Wisdom infused, hope-filled and research driven. If you have a child who is struggling with self-harm, I want to remind you that you are your child’s greatest advantage. What you do and how you respond matters. This book was written for you and your family. Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a global mental health concern with studies conservatively indicating 10% of young people experiment with self-harm. The ways in which young people self-harm are wide and varied, and a challenge many families now have to face. It remains distressing and difficult for parents and caring adults to understand, as it seems to go against every innate instinct of self-protection and survival. In this book, award-winning speaker, author and educator Michelle Mitchell has combined her 20 years’ experience, with the latest research, interviews with experts and stories from professionals and everyday families, to give parents and teachers fresh insights into how-to prevent, understand and respond to self-harm. Full of evidence-based strategies, this unique resource will provide parents with the facts, practical help and comfort they need. Michelle answers questions like – • Why does my child want to hurt themselves? • Is self-harm about attention seeking? • What do I say if I suspect self-harm? • Why is self-harm so addictive? • How do I manage their safety? • How do I best take care of siblings and other family members? • When is it necessary to seek support? Michelle goes where few have gone before, in tackling the distressing, confusing and fraught issue of self-harm in our young people … Michelle has done us all a great service in bringing us this invaluable title. Melinda Tankard Reist (Author, Speaker, co-founder Collective Shout) Michelle … gives a strong and poignant voice, not only to those who are self-harming, but also to the ones who love them. This book traverses that gap. It is an intelligent, thoughtful, and much-needed resource, empowering all who read it with powerful insights, a road map of practical strategies, and above all else, hope. Karen Young (Author, Speaker, Parenting and Child & Adolescent Anxiety Specialist)

From one of the world's foremost researchers and pioneers of pediatric health--a book that offers hope and a pathway to success for parents, teachers, psychologists, pyschiatrists, and child development experts coping with "difficult" children. A book that fully explores the author's revolutionary discovery about childhood development, parenting, and the key to helping all children find happiness and success. In The Orchid and the Dandelion, Dr. W. Thomas Boyce writes of the "dandelion" child (hardy, resilient, healthy), able to survive and flourish under most circumstances, and the "orchid" child (sensitive, susceptible, fragile), who, given the right support, can thrive as much as, if not more than, other children. For the past four decades Boyce has been working with troubled children. The Orchid and the Dandelion offers help to those who have lost their confidence in the promise of a child gone seriously adrift--into drug abuse, delinquency, depression, or destructive friendships, the dark territory of psychological trouble, school failure, or criminality. Boyce's breakthrough research reveals how genetic makeup and environment shape behavior. Rather than seeing this "risk" gene as a liability, through his daring research, Boyce has recast the way we think of human frailty and shows that while variant genes can create problems (susceptibility to depression, anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and antisocial, sociopathic, or violent behaviors), they can also, in the right setting and with the right nurturing, produce children who not only do better than before but far exceed their peers. He describes what it is to be an "orchid" child, to live a life far more intense, painful, vivid, and variable than that of a dandelion. For orchid children, the world is often a frightening and overwhelming place. He makes clear that orchids are not failed dandelions and shows people how to embrace the unique gifts, abilities, and strengths of orchid children and how to create and environment at home and work that will allow them to flourish. Boyce writes, as well, of dandelions: how vital they are to what George Eliot describes as "the growing good of the world," even in the midst of their own struggles and life challenges. He writes of his own family, particularly of his sister, the inspiration for his work, an orchid child overcome by the family's tragedies and sadnesses to which the author, as a dandelion child, was impervious. And we come to understand that beneath the servicable categories of "orchid" and "dandelion" lies the truer reality of a continuum, a spectrum of sensitivities to the world, along which we all have a place.

"Parents who discover a teen's self-injurious behavior are gripped by uncertainty and flooded with questions - Why is my child doing this? Is this a suicide attempt? What did I do wrong? What can I do to stop it? And yet basic educational resources for parents with self-injuring children are sorely lacking. Healing after Self-Injury provides desperately-needed guidance to parents and others who love a young person struggling with self-injury"--

"Tens of thousands of worried parents have turned to this authoritative guide for the facts about the growing problem of teen self-injury--and what they can do to make it stop. Michael Hollander is a leading expert on the most effective treatment approach for cutting, dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). Vivid stories illustrate how out-of-control emotions lead some teens to hurt themselves, how DBT can help, and what other approaches can be beneficial. Parents get practical strategies for talking to teens about self-injury without making it worse, teaching them specific skills to cope with extreme emotions in a healthier way, finding the right therapist, and managing family stress. Incorporating the latest research, the revised edition offers a deeper understanding of the causes of self-injury and includes new DBT skills"--

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "A haunting, beautiful, and necessary book."—Nicola Yoon, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Everything, Everything Charlotte Davis is in pieces. At seventeen she’s already lost more than most people do in a lifetime. But she’s learned how to forget. The broken glass washes away the sorrow until there is nothing but calm. You don’t have to think about your father and the river. Your best friend, who is gone forever. Or your mother, who has nothing left to give you. Every new scar hardens Charlie’s heart just a little more, yet it still hurts so much. It hurts enough to not care anymore, which is sometimes what has to happen before you can find your way back from the edge. A deeply moving portrait of a girl in a world that owes her nothing, and has taken so much, and the journey she undergoes to put herself back together. Kathleen Glasgow's debut is heartbreakingly real and unflinchingly honest. It’s a story you won’t be able to look away from. And don’t miss Kathleen Glasgow's novels You’d Be Home Now and How to Make Friends with the Dark, both raw and powerful stories of life.

This comprehensive workbook helps teens who self-injure explore the reasons behind their need to hurt themselves and sets forth positive ways to deal with the issues of stress and control. The activities in this workbook provide teens with safe, effective alternatives to self-injury and help them develop a plan to stay healthy.