Product Description

When should you seek professional help for your child's behavioral, social, or learning challenges? Understanding Your Child's Puzzling Behavior is the ultimate resource for assessing your child's behavior, learning when to intervene, and knowing how to seek further help for a struggling child. Whether a child is dealing with performance issues, anxiety, noncompliance, angry outbursts, or a host of other difficulties, this book offers a step-by-step method that walks parents through the often-complex process of treating a child's problems. You'll learn

• Not to accept any 'quick-fix' solutions
• How to holistically assess the condition and determine the nature and cause of the behavior
• What professionals can offer, and when to consult them

Understanding Your Child's Puzzling Behavior can help parents make informed and confident decisions about their child's well-being.

Praise for Understanding Your Child's Puzzling Behavior

'This is a terrific guide for knowledgeable parents who want to be informed consumers of care for their children. It reduces the often confusing abbreviations and psychobabble that we clinicians use into practical, easy-to-understand language.' --Holly Galbreath, PhD, child clinical psychologist and former program director, Child Study and Treatment Center

'A very useful and practical guide for those wondering where to begin to help a child who is struggling with troublesome behaviors.' --Brock Eide, MD, MA Co-Director of Eide Neurolearning Clinic and coauthor, The Mislabeled Child

'This book provides clarity for parents in situations that are often confusing and forms the basis for implementing practical and helpful changes.' --James T. Webb, PhD clinical psychologist and author, A Parent s Guide to Gifted Children

'This book is a helpful start in giving parents a systematic approach and guide to understanding the terminology and methods used by educational, medical, psychological, and other practitioners who study and work clinically with children. If parents can speak the same language and approach professionals with good documentation, perhaps a greater understanding of the child s puzzling behavior can be arrived at sooner and more effective solutions can be implemented.' --Bobbie Collins-Perry, Duke University's Duke Gifted Letter

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #79574 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Perfect Paperback
• 192 pages

Review
. . . Faced with behavior in their children that they don t understand, parents can easily become overwhelmed. They often find themselves having to select and put their faith in professionals they know little about, make decisions based on information they don't understand, and try to remain calm when they re frightened about what might be wrong with their children. Armed with a tool, such as this guide that Steven Curtis has created, parents can gain a greater sense of control and play a more active role in uncovering the cause of the children's puzzling behavior. Having this type of information can enable them to function as partners and make informed choices about their children's future. --Linda C. Neumann, Editor, 2e: Twice-Exceptional Newsletter

Almost daily, children's behavioral problems are in the news, and the parents' complaint is often the same: something is not quite right with my child. These puzzling behaviors can take many forms--social isolation, disruptive behavior, failure to learn, excitability, inability to follow directions... What s a parent to do? Curtis, a clinical psychologist and director of Lifespan Psychological Services in Washington state, asks parents to take an involved, detailed inventory of their child before seeking professional help.

Curtis shows parents through a step-by-step procedure how to clarify and document concerns. Included are several pages of reproducible worksheets: problem-tracking sheets, time line/stressors, causal factors, and more. These worksheets will help parents not only discover possible causes for behavioral problems, but also aid in the choice of professional help. Clearly, this is a no-easy-answers approach, and Curtis insists parents must profile the child before blindly choosing professionals and starting behavior-altering drugs.

An excellent bibliography, organized by topic, includes books and Web sites, as well as a glossary of terms. Lifespan s publishing goal is to provide self-help resources for parents and professionals, and this book fills that need without advertising its own services. Understanding Your Child's Puzzling Behavior is an excellent book for parents and caregivers. --Linda Beck, ForeWord Magazine

At what point do you seek professional help when a child is acting, by his parent's standards, weird? Understanding Your Child's Puzzling Behavior: A Guide for Parents of Children with Behavioral, Social, and Learning Challenges is a parent's guide to understanding a child's strange behavior and whether they should intervene or it is simply another kind of normal. Suggesting that parents never go for short term solutions, how to look at why the child acts the way they act, and when is the line to seek psychiatric assistance? Understanding Your Child's Puzzling Behavior: A Guide for Parents of Child with Behavioral, Social, and Learning Challenges is essential for any concerned parent who doesn't get their child's behavior and for community library parenting collections. --Midwest Book Review

About the Author
Steve Curtis, PhD, is a school psychologist, with twenty-five years of experience working with children and parents. He is the former special education director at Seattle University. Dr. Curtis is now in private practice with Lifespan.

Customer Reviews

Positive in Both Worlds
Dr. Curtis has written an excellent book that can be a great resource for parents and processionals in supporting their efforts with children. Written in a clear, concise, and straightforward manner this book provides resources for working with children who are frustrated and parents who can be frustrate with the child or the world around them that is designed to support them. I have purchased copies for parents I work with and utilize it in a parent support group for children with processing challenges. I also have recommended it to professionals I work with as it fills a void left by too many other books that do not accomplish what Dr. Curtis has.

At what point do you seek professional help when a child is acting, by his parent's standards, weird?
At what point do you seek professional help when a child is acting, by his parent's standards, weird? "Understanding Your Child's Puzzling Behavior: A Guide for Parents of Children with Behavioral, Social, and Learning Challenges" is a parent's guide to understanding a child's strange behavior and whether they should intervene or it is simply another kind of normal. Suggesting that parents never go for short term solutions, how to look at why the child acts the way they act, and when is the line to seek psychiatric assistance? "Understanding Your Child's Puzzling Behavior: A Guide for Parents of Child with Behavioral, Social, and Learning Challenges" is essential for any concerned parent who doesn't get their child's behavior and for community library parenting collections.

A bright light...
Trying to find your way through the myriad of advice about how to parent your child can be overwhelming on the best of days. The actual child can get lost in all of the ideas/philosophies/beliefs. That truth is amplified if your child has any sort of behavior that seems to be outside of the "norm". Dr. Curtis guides parents in an honest, nonjudgmental way toward the avenues which can best help them and ultimately, most importantly, help the child get the support he/she needs. His assurance that positive progress can be made is a gift. That these are not "problem" children who have something wrong with them... a message those of us with atypical children are confronted with all too often, but that they are children who merit more support, understanding and sensitivity. Dr. Curtis knows that children with puzzling behavior operate within a family, and that the parents, who love these kids more than anything and are trying to help them to the best of their ability, need guidance and support too. His holistic approach is truly a relief to those of us who deal daily with the beauty, challenge, heartbreak and joy of raising these unique little beings.