Easy to Love But Hard to Raise


Book Description

An anthology of personal essays written by parents of children with ADD, ADHD, OCD, PDD, ASDs, SPD, PBD and/or other alphabet soup diagnoses that takes the already difficult job of parenting and adds to the challenge. These essays focus on honest feelings, lessons learned, epiphanies, commonplace and extraordinary experiences. They are written by parents of toddlers, young children, teens, and adult children; those who are in the parenting trenches now, and those looking back on their parenting experiences. Topics include: how children came to be diagnosed, the experience of dealing with problem behaviors in various contexts and settings, experiences with/feelings about treatment (therapies, medications, alternative treatments), school (and other advocacy) experiences, children's social interactions/friends, and the effect of parenting a difficult child on a parent's emotional and physical health, marriage, and other relationships.




Easy to Love But Hard to Live with


Book Description

This book contains 35 powerful essays from adults with autism, mental illnesses, fetal alchol spectrum disorders, OCD, ADHD, and other "invisible special needs" and those who love them. These poignant, funny, heartbreaking and honest stories let mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, lovers, husbands, wives, children and individuals with neurobehavioral disabilities themselves know that they are not alone, and that they somehow stop being important to the world when they reach adulthood. Finding that common powerful bond in a world of judgement and cruelty from those who don't understand, magically transforms the journey and makes it easier to cope. Instead of putting on appearances for others, adults with challenges and their loved ones can choose to connect with who they really are and accept their lives. "Easy To Love But Hard To Live With" is filled with poignant stories that inspire and empower. A great read for those living with a misunderstood partner, sibling, parent, child or other loved one."




Doing Life with Your Adult Children


Book Description

Are you struggling to connect with your child now that they've left the nest? Are you feeling the tension and heartache as your relationship dynamic begins to change? In Doing Life with Your Adult Children, bestselling author and parenting expert Jim Burns provides practical advice and hopeful encouragement for navigating this tough yet rewarding transition. If you've raised a child, you know that parenting doesn't stop when they turn eighteen. In many ways, your relationship gets even more complicated--your heart and your head are as involved as ever, but you can feel things shifting, whether your child lives under your roof or rarely stays in contact. Doing Life with Your Adult Children helps you navigate this rich and challenging season of parenting. Speaking from his own personal and professional experience, Burns offers practical answers to the most common questions he's received over the years, including: My child's choices are breaking my heart--where did I go wrong? Is it OK to give advice to my grown child? What's the difference between enabling and helping? What boundaries should I have if my child moves back home? What do I do when my child doesn't seem to be maturing into adulthood? How do I relate to my grown child's significant other? What does it mean to have healthy financial boundaries? How can I support my grown children when I don't support their values? Including positive principles on bringing kids back to faith, ideas on how to leave a legacy as a grandparent, and encouragement for every changing season, Doing Life with Your Adult Children is a unique book on your changing role in a calling that never ends.




I Love You Rituals


Book Description




You Only Fall in Love Three Times


Book Description

Discover the three types of love--and the key to finding the one you're truly meant to be with. We love and we love again -- sometimes our hearts get broken but, somehow, we find the courage to dive back in. In this soul-searching book, relationship expert Kate Rose guides readers down the path to a deeper understanding of who they are, what they want, and finally, to the discovery of their Twin Flame. According to Rose, love is a journey of self-discovery and every relationship we have in our lives teaches us something that we need to learn about ourselves and what will make us truly happy. She introduces readers to the three types of love we will all experience: The Soulmate introduces us to the dream of love, but somehow what seemed like it would be "happily ever after" wasn't meant to last forever. We are so consumed with making The Karmic Love work that we often fail to question whether it should work. As painful as it is to accept, this love that felt so right in the beginning is actually all wrong. The Twin Flame comes into our lives and often we don't even know it's love because . . . it's too easy. This is the love who helps us to accept ourselves just as we are because this is precisely what they do. In You Only Fall in Love Three Times, Kate Rose shows us that happy endings may not happen quite the way they do in fairytales-- but they happen nonetheless.




Hard to Love


Book Description

A sharp and entertaining essay collection about the importance of multiple forms of love and friendship in a world designed for couples, from a laser-precise new voice. Sometimes it seems like there are two American creeds, self-reliance and marriage, and neither of them is mine. I experience myself as someone formed and sustained by others' love and patience, by student loans and stipends, by the kindness of strangers. Briallen Hopper's Hard to Love honors the categories of loves and relationships beyond marriage, the ones that are often treated as invisible or seen as secondary--friendships, kinship with adult siblings, care teams that form in times of illness, or various alternative family formations. She also values difficult and amorphous loves like loving a challenging job or inanimate objects that can't love you back. She draws from personal experience, sharing stories about her loving but combative family, the fiercely independent Emerson scholar who pushed her away, and the friends who have become her invented or found family; pop culture touchstones like the Women's March, John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, and the timeless series Cheers; and the work of writers like Joan Didion, Gwendolyn Brooks, Flannery O'Connor, and Herman Melville (Moby-Dick like you've never seen it!). Hard to Love pays homage and attention to unlikely friends and lovers both real and fictional. It is a series of love letters to the meaningful, if underappreciated, forms of intimacy and community that are tricky, tangled, and tough, but ultimately sustaining.




Grown and Flown


Book Description

PARENTING NEVER ENDS. From the founders of the #1 site for parents of teens and young adults comes an essential guide for building strong relationships with your teens and preparing them to successfully launch into adulthood The high school and college years: an extended roller coaster of academics, friends, first loves, first break-ups, driver’s ed, jobs, and everything in between. Kids are constantly changing and how we parent them must change, too. But how do we stay close as a family as our lives move apart? Enter the co-founders of Grown and Flown, Lisa Heffernan and Mary Dell Harrington. In the midst of guiding their own kids through this transition, they launched what has become the largest website and online community for parents of fifteen to twenty-five year olds. Now they’ve compiled new takeaways and fresh insights from all that they’ve learned into this handy, must-have guide. Grown and Flown is a one-stop resource for parenting teenagers, leading up to—and through—high school and those first years of independence. It covers everything from the monumental (how to let your kids go) to the mundane (how to shop for a dorm room). Organized by topic—such as academics, anxiety and mental health, college life—it features a combination of stories, advice from professionals, and practical sidebars. Consider this your parenting lifeline: an easy-to-use manual that offers support and perspective. Grown and Flown is required reading for anyone looking to raise an adult with whom you have an enduring, profound connection.




Unconditional Parenting


Book Description

The author of Punished by Rewards and The Schools Our Children Deserve returns with a provocative challenge to the conventional ways of raising children. Kohn argues that all children have the need to be loved unconditionally, yet conventional approaches to parenting, such as punishment and reward, teach children that they are loved only when they please and impress parents. Kohn cites powerful research detailing the damage this can cause. Unconditional Parenting pushes parents to question their ideas of parenting and offers practical solutions to problems.




How to Raise an Adult


Book Description

New York Times Bestseller "Julie Lythcott-Haims is a national treasure. . . . A must-read for every parent who senses that there is a healthier and saner way to raise our children." -Madeline Levine, author of the New York Times bestsellers The Price of Privilege and Teach Your Children Well "For parents who want to foster hearty self-reliance instead of hollow self-esteem, How to Raise an Adult is the right book at the right time." -Daniel H. Pink, author of the New York Times bestsellers Drive and A Whole New Mind A provocative manifesto that exposes the harms of helicopter parenting and sets forth an alternate philosophy for raising preteens and teens to self-sufficient young adulthood In How to Raise an Adult, Julie Lythcott-Haims draws on research, on conversations with admissions officers, educators, and employers, and on her own insights as a mother and as a student dean to highlight the ways in which overparenting harms children, their stressed-out parents, and society at large. While empathizing with the parental hopes and, especially, fears that lead to overhelping, Lythcott-Haims offers practical alternative strategies that underline the importance of allowing children to make their own mistakes and develop the resilience, resourcefulness, and inner determination necessary for success. Relevant to parents of toddlers as well as of twentysomethings-and of special value to parents of teens-this book is a rallying cry for those who wish to ensure that the next generation can take charge of their own lives with competence and confidence.




Loving Your Child Too Much


Book Description

Can you really love your child too much? As parents, we yearn to show our children how much we love them. We want a close relationship. So, how do we snow love in a healthy, balanced way without falling into some of the most common pitfalls or parenting? Clinton and Sibcy offer practical, grounded advice to shower kids with love, without... Overindulging How do you support, encourage and share the blessings you've been given to your child without spoiling? Overprotecting How do you protect your children from the evils of the world yet allow them to grow into strong, independent adults, capable trusting others and making good decisions? Overcontrolling How do you help your child, take ownership of his behavior and learn to live within limits without squelching his individualism? You'll discover the secrets based on years of research, counseling and clinical therapy from well-respected Christian psychologists. Loving Your Child Too Much is a powerful tool to kelp you raise happy, well-balanced and fully-loved kids. Book jacket.