Family Psychology

Why do teenagers stay up late and struggle to get up in the morning? Do teenagers really take more risks? What is happening with teenagers' hormones? The Psychology of the Teenage Brain offers all those involved in teenagers' lives insight into what's happening in their brains and how understanding them can improve relationships and communication at this crucial stage. It explains key topics, including the way the brain changes during adolescence, the role of hormones, and what we really know about risk and resilience, sleep, and peer pressure.

The voices of adopted children are poignant, questioning. And they tell a familiar story of loss, fear, and hope. This extraordinary book, written by a woman who was adopted herself, gives voice to children's unspoken concerns, and shows adoptive parents how to free their kids from feelings of fear, abandonment, and shame. With warmth and candor, Sherrie Eldridge reveals the 20 complex emotional issues you must understand to nurture the child you love.

Brent Runyon's account of his attempted suicide has garnered critical accolades for its glimpse into adolescent depression and rare insight into the human condition. Fearing expulsion and parental disapproval after lighting a shirt on fire at his school, Brent goes home, soaks his bathrobe with gasoline, steps into his shower, and strikes a match. Suffering horrific burns, Brent faces a long, painful recovery - both mentally and physically.

From birth, when babies' fingers instinctively cling to those of adults, their bodies and brains seek an intimate connection - a bond made possible by empathy, the remarkable ability to love and to share the feelings of others. In this unforgettable book, award-winning science journalist Maia Szalavitz and renowned child psychiatrist Bruce D. Perry explain how empathy develops, why it is essential both to human happiness and for a functional society, and how it is threatened in a modern world.

In this book, her follow-up to the best seller Discipline Without Damage, Dr. Lapointe advises new parents how to put their child on a path to optimal development during the crucial early years. The baby and toddler years are the most important period for any child's emotional and psychological development. Parents naturally want to do what's best for their kids, but they often struggle to know what that is, especially when dealing with the big "battlegrounds" of sleep, feeding, and managing aggression.

Why America's sons are underachieving, and what we can do about it. Something is happening to boys today. From kindergarten to college, American boys are, on average, less resilient and less ambitious than they were a mere 20 years ago. The gender gap in college attendance and graduation rates has widened dramatically. In Boys Adrift, Dr. Leonard Sax delves into the scientific literature and draws on more than 20 years of clinical experience to explain why boys and young men are failing in school and disengaged at home.

More than thirty million people in the United States are dyslexic—a brain-based genetic trait, often labeled as a “learning disability” or “learning difference,” that makes interpreting text and reading difficult. Yet even though children with dyslexia may have trouble reading, they don’t have any problems learning; dyslexia has nothing to do with a lack of intellect.

This much-needed and empowering guide reveals the unique challenges these remarkable kids face, and offers strength-based, hands-on strategies for understanding, supporting, and advocating for twice exceptional kids. In a world that labels them lazy, scattered, attention-seeking, and a problem that can’t be solved, these tools will help you reimagine the world through your child’s unique perspective—so you can help them thrive.

Between the ages of twelve and twenty-four, the brain changes in important and, at times, challenging ways. In Brainstorm, the renowned psychiatrist and bestselling author of Parenting from the Inside Out, The Whole-Brain Child, and Mindsight, Daniel Siegel busts a number of commonly held myths about adolescence — for example, that it is merely a stage of “immaturity” filled with often “crazy” behavior — to reveal how it is in fact a vital time in our lives in terms of charting the course for the adults we ultimately become.

Playful Parenting means joining children in their world of play, focusing on connection and confidence, giggling and roughhousing, and following your child's lead. This audiobook is an exciting approach to raising children that will help you nurture close relationships and solve behavior problems.

Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their 12 children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins—aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the 10 Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic.

In this groundbreaking book, parenting expert and acclaimed author of the bestselling book Simplicity Parenting Kim John Payne, M.Ed., flips the script on children’s challenging or defiant behavior and lays out an elegantly simple plan to support parents in establishing loving, age-sensitive boundaries that help children feel safe and settled. In short: What looks like misbehavior is actually your children’s signal that they’re feeling lost, that they are trying to find direction and looking to you to guide them back on course.

Known for his magnetic and radiant personality, Frank spends his time training thousands of clinicians around the world on how to help clients with complex trauma make sense of their suffering. But underneath this charismatic exterior are his dark family secrets, including the marks of child abuse from his father and the invisible scars of shame.

Fat Talk argues for a reclaiming of “fat,” which is not synonymous with “unhealthy,” “inactive,” or “lazy.” Talking to researchers and activists, as well as parents and kids across a broad swath of the country, Sole-Smith lays bare how America’s focus on solving the “childhood obesity epidemic” has perpetuated a second crisis of disordered eating and body hatred for kids of all sizes. She exposes our society’s internalized fatphobia and elucidates how and why we need to stop “preventing obesity” and start supporting kids in the bodies they have.

From a clinical psychologist who served as a clinical supervisor in the Department of Psychology at Yale University, received the CPA’s award for Distinguished Contribution to the Practice of Psychology, and has treated couples and trained therapists for over four decades, this newly updated, award-winning book provides concrete, proven strategies for those who seek to survive their partner’s infidelity and to rebuild the relationship after an affair. This new third edition of After the Affair helps guide both hurt and unfaithful partners through three stages of healing.

In the real world, people on the autism spectrum need the same kinds of day-to-day skills everyone else needs to be functional! It's true. No matter how high-functioning children with autism or Asperger's may be or may become, they function better as adults if they've had the chance to learn basic skills, from being on time to good personal hygiene. But many reach adulthood without those skills. Enter Jennifer McIlwee Myers, aspie at large.

One hundred and ten years ago, Maria Montessori, the first female physician in Italy, devised a very different method of educating children, based on her observations of how they naturally learn. In Montessori, Angeline Stoll Lillard shows that science has finally caught up with Maria Montessori. Lillard presents the research behind nine insights that are foundations of Montessori education, describing how each of these insights is applied in the Montessori classroom.

Why do some children thrive and others struggle? The answers may surprise you. New research indicates that the seeds for adult success are actually planted in the toddler years. Dr. Tovah Klein's research and firsthand work with thousands of toddlers explains why the toddler brain is best suited to laying the foundation for success. Dr. Klein reveals the new science behind drivers such as resilience, self-reliance, self-regulation, and empathy that are more critical to success than simple intelligence.

IFS Couple Therapy Skills Manual presents clinicians with a powerful, non-pathologizing approach to helping couples better understand themselves, their differences, and the underlying reasons for their suffering.

Trauma can result not only from catastrophic events such as abuse, violence, or loss of loved ones, but from natural disasters and everyday incidents like auto accidents, medical procedures, divorce, or even falling off a bicycle. At the core of this book is the understanding of how trauma is imprinted on the body, brain, and spirit—often resulting in anxiety, nightmares, depression, physical illnesses, addictions, hyperactivity, and aggression.