The Out-Of-Sync Child: Recognizing and Coping With Sensory Integration Dysfunction

Teamwork is essential in helping a child with learning disabilities. This book is the product of parents and professionals sharing years of experience to help you understand and cope with L.D. Champion your child’s team by directing your time and energy to success, with Understanding Learning Diabilities: A Parent Guide and Workbook. Easy-to-read, quick to access and overflowing with helpful information and advice, this one-stop guide will quickly be one of your most trusted supports for helping your child succeed in school. Whether your questions about learning disabilities are few or many, this tool holds the answers you seek.

The prevalence of learning disabilities has provoked both the growth of research into the field and the development of educational interventions to assist those with learning disabilities. This book’s aim is to present the current state of this research and intervention ideas and programs. It includes updated material on the 1997 re-authorization of IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) and expanded coverage of ADHD and its relationship to learning disabilities. This book presents the latest information on the characteristics of persons with learning disabilities, the causes of their problems, and educational interventions to help them succeed in school and at work. The book is research-based, user-friendly, and practical. 

*This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

In America today, 43 percent of our children fall below grade level in reading. In her meticulously researched and groundbreaking work, Diane McGuinness faults outmoded reading systems for this crisis — and provides the answers we need to give our children the reading skills they need. Drawing on twenty-five years of cutting-edge research, Dr. McGuinness presents bold new “phoneme awareness” programs that overcome the tremendous shortcomings of other systems by focusing on the crucial need to understand and hear reliably the sounds of a language before learning to read. Maintaining that any child can be taught to read fluently if given proper instruction, she dramatically reveals how dyslexia and behavior problems such as ADD stem not from neurological disorders but from flawed methods of reading instruction. With invaluable information on remedial reading programs that can correct various ineffective reading strategies, this book is a must for concerned parents, teachers, and others who want to make a difference.

Everyone knows that high IQ is no guarantee of success, happiness, or virtue, but until Emotional Intelligence, we could only guess why. Daniel Goleman’s brilliant report from the frontiers of psychology and neuroscience offers startling new insight into our “two minds” — the rational and the emotional” — and how they together shape our destiny.

This completely updated book contains new chapters on Attention Deficit Disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and on the public laws that guarantee an equal education for learning disabled children. There is also an entirely new section on learning disabled adults and the laws that protect them. Sally Smith, the parent of a learning disabled child herself, guides parents along every step of the way, from determining if their child is learning disabled to challenging the school system to provide special services. Drawing on more than twenty-five years of experience at her own nationally acclaimed school, she also offers valuable strategies to teachers who are anxious or discouraged as they struggle with learning disabled students. Although there are no easy answers, Sally Smith’s experience, wealth of information, and sense of humor provide essential support.

Brain chemistry, not bad parenting, is responsible for the 12 percent of children younger than 18 who have diagnosable brain disorders, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), separation anxiety disorder (SAD), or enuresis (bed-wetting). Through case studies, scientific data, and information about children’s development and brain chemistry, Koplewicz helps parents understand the obstacles their brain-disordered children face. A practicing psychiatrist, he also suggests means, including therapy and medication, by which families may lessen the difficulties posed by those disorders. He devotes the final section of the book to considerations of the nature and treatment of problems including, besides those noted above, depression, conduct disorder, bipolar disorder, and autism. Presented with compassion but in no-nonsense style, his effort offers a wealth of scientific information in a format easily accessible to parents, extended families, and friends of “difficult” children.
—Kathryn Carpenter from Booklist