Showing results by publisher "University Press Audiobooks" in Parenting & Families

Myths about Attention Deficit Disorder/Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder(ADD/ADHD) abound. This disorder frequently goes unrecognized, and even when diagnosed may be inadequately treated. In this up-to-date and clearly written audiobook, a leading expert offers a new way of understanding ADD. Drawing on recent findings in neuroscience and a rich variety of case histories from his own clinical practice, Dr. Thomas E. Brown describes what ADD syndrome is, how it can be recognized at different ages, and how it can best be treated.

The buzz word in education today is accountability. But the federal mandate of "no child left behind" has come to mean curriculums driven by preparation for standardized tests and quantifiable learning results. Even for very young children, unstructured creative time in the classroom is waning as teachers and administrators are under growing pressures to measure school readiness through rote learning and increased homework.

Over 20 years ago, in a small Israeli town, a desperate mother told a remarkable lie. She told her friends and family that her newborn child had died. That lie became the catalyst for the unfolding truth of the adoption of that same baby - Michael - who is, in fact, very much alive and now 22 years-old. He also has Down syndrome. When Kathryn Hulings adopted Michael as an infant, she could not have known that he would save her life when she became gravely ill and was left forever physically compromised.

In November of 1970, the Finell family's lives were changed forever by a family vacation to Acapulco. Seven-year-old Stephanie fell ill soon after their return to the United States, but her mother, Karin, thinking it was an intestinal disorder, kept her home from school for a few days. She was completely unprepared when Stephanie went into violent convulsions on a Friday morning. Following a series of tests at the hospital, doctors concluded she had contracted viral equine encephalitis while in Mexico.

In this collection of beautiful and raw essays, Amy S. F. Lutz writes openly about her experience - the positive and the negative - as a mother of a now 21-year-old son with severe autism. Lutz's human emotion drives through each moment and challenges commonly held ideas that define autism either as a disease or as neurodiversity.  

>n Making Grateful Kids, two of the leading authorities on gratitude among young people, Jeffrey J. Froh and Giacomo Bono, introduce their latest and most compelling research, announce groundbreaking findings, and share real-life stories from adults and youth to show parents, teachers, mentors, and kids themselves how to achieve greater life satisfaction through gratitude.

In Losing It, William Ian Miller brings his inimitable wit and learning to the subject of growing old: too old to matter, of either rightly losing your confidence or wrongly maintaining it, culpably refusing to face the fact that you are losing it. The "it" in Miller's "losing it" refers mainly to mental faculties - memory, processing speed, sensory acuity, the capacity to focus. But it includes other evidence as wel l- sags and flaccidities, aches and pains, failing joints and organs. What are we to make of these tell-tale signs?

When Deborah Gold and her husband signed up to foster parent in their rural mountain community, they did not foresee that it would lead to a roller-coaster 15 years of involvement with the traumatized, yet resilient, birth family. In Counting Down, Gold artfully tells her story of forging a family within an often confounding system in ways that defied the expectations of everyone involved.  

Twins Talk is an ethnographic study of identical twins in the United States, a study unique in that it considers what twins have to say about themselves, instead of what researchers have written about them. It presents, in the first person, the grounded and practical experiences of twins as they engage, both individually and together, the "who am I" and "who are we" questions of life. Here, the twins themselves are the stars.

In See Sam Run, award-winning writer and journalist Peggy Heinkel-Wolfe describes how her parenthood quickly descended into chaos as her son, Sam, became uncommunicative and unmanageable. Little by little, she found a new truth: that by learning to understand the ugliness inside herself, she learned to love her new life and her son, and to harness, at last, the energy she needed to realize Sam's fullest potential.

Pulling Down the Barn eloquently recalls author Anne-Marie Oomen's personal journey as she discovers herself an outsider on her family farm located in western Michigan's Oceana County, in the township of Elbridge - a couple hundred acres in the middle of rural America. Written as a series of heartfelt interlocking narratives, this collection of essays portrays the realities of farm life: haying, picking asparagus and cherries, the machinery of tractors and pickers.

Elements of Discipline is a timely and helpful book for teachers, parents, and day-care professionals that provides a simple set of rules for managing - successfully and humanely - a wide range of discipline situations and challenges. A well-respected child development specialist, Stephen Greenspan outlines his "ABC Theory of Discipline".

As the 1960s dawned in small-town Michigan, Anne-Marie Oomen was a naive farm girl whose mother was determined to keep her out of trouble - by keeping her in 4-H. In Love, Sex, and 4-H, Oomen sets the wholesomeness of her domestic lessons in 4-H club from 1959 to 1969 against the political and sexual revolution of the time. Between sewing her first dish towel and finishing the yellow dress she wears to senior prom, Oomen brings listeners along as she falls in and out of love, wins her first prize, learns to kiss, survives her first heartbreak, and makes almost all of her clothes.

Margaret Mohrmann has devoted most of her professional life to caring for children, and in Attending Children she shares the remarkable education those children and their families have given her. Her narratives are both painful and hopeful, tragic and funny, full of remarkable characters and sometimes bizarre families.

Real-life peer pressure is not just about dares and bullies and can be much harder to spot. Peer pressure can cause people to avoid making friends outside their own clique, follow trends without thinking, try to achieve an impossible look, not take school seriously, and let anger turn into violence. Handling Peer Pressure examines the many different kinds of peer pressure, where it comes from, and how to beat it - and tells the stories of some remarkable people who did. The book is published by Chelsea House Publishers, a leading publisher of educational material.

"Take him home, love him, and save your money for his institutionalization when he turns 21." That was the best advice Dan Burns' family doctor could offer in 1990 when three-year-old Ben was diagnosed with autism. Saving Ben tells the story of Ben's regression as an infant into the world of autism and his journey toward recovery as a young adult. His father, Dan Burns, puts the reader in the passenger's seat as he struggles with medical service providers, the school system, extended family, and more.

With the increasing demand for midwives among U.S. women, reproductive rights activists are lobbying to loosen restrictions that deny legal access to homebirth options. In Pushing for Midwives, Christa Craven presents a nuanced history of women's reproductive rights activism in the U.S. She also provides an examination of contemporary organizing strategies for reproductive rights in an era increasingly driven by "consumer rights".