Raising Resilient Children: Fostering Strength, Hope, and Optimism in Your Child

It’s parent-teacher conference time and Hank is in a panic! He[’s terrified that his teacher is going to tell his parents that he’ll have to repeat the fourth grade. If only Hank could get his parents out of town. Wait! Hank just might have a plan�

Just like other kids, Zinkoff rides his bike, hopes for snow days, and wants to be like his dad when he grows up. But Zinkoff also raises his hand with all the wrong answers, trips over his own feet, and falls down with laughter over a word like “Jabip.” Other kids have their own word to describe him, but Zinkoff is too busy to hear it. He doesn’t know he’s not like everyone else. And one winter night, Zinkoff’s differences show that any name can someday become “hero.”

Leo isn’t reading, or writing, or drawing, or even speaking, and his father is concerned. But Leo’s mother isn’t. She knows her son will do all those things, and more, when he’s ready.

Author Rondalyn Varney Whitney, a pediatric occupational therapist, is the mother of Zac, a child who suffers from nonverbal learning disorder, or NLD. By definition, NLD is a neurological defect in children who are unable to recognize the nonverbal clues that make up 50 percent of communication. In Bridging the Gap, Whitney seamlessly weaves practical professional advice throughout the account of her passionate involvement with her son. She writes, “I believe that NLD, now thought to be as prevalent as dyslexia, is a difference and not a flaw.” She also warns parents and teachers that kids with NLD are likely to be misdiagnosed as lazy or defiant, so she urges readers to consider both the strengths (high intelligence and advanced verbal skills and memory) and weaknesses (low visual, spatial, and motor skills and deficits in social communication) of these kids.

Peter does well in third-grade math. But, somehow, in writing and spelling, by the time the letters get from his brain to his paper, they get turned around. His Dad thinks he’s lazy. Peter just wants to get sick and stay home from school. It takes the perseverance of a spider named Seymour to help Peter work to overcome his learning problems.

A happy rhyming book that looks at the friendship between a child and his teacher.