When You Worry About the Child You Love: Emotional and Learning Problems in Children

“Steer your students toward academic, social, and emotional success regardless of their learning styles, ability levels, skills, and behaviors. This book provides strategies and activities to differentiated instruction, engage reluctant readers and writers, boost organization and study skills and more.” — Learning Journal

The middle level years are an extraordinary period of our human development. The only other time we grow as much physically, emotionally, and intellectually is form ages zero to two. But early adolescence is much more than just tripping over large feet and calling friends on the phone to discuss who likes whom. The ways we deal with conflict, relationships, and personal development as adults have direct connections to specific experiences we had between the ages of ten and fourteen. We can create a very positive future then, when we provide careful and compassionate experiences for today’s young adolescents.

This book offers practical advice and tips on areas such as learning to relax, improving your memory, staying focused, getting homework done, and making friends.

The third edition of this classic resource is a comprehensive source of information, strategies, and activities for working with learning disabled students. The book offers special educators, classroom teachers, and parents a wealth of new and proven suggestions and ready-to-use materials for helping LD students of all ages learn and perform at their fullest potential.

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.

Today’s parents are increasingly concerned about the reading and spelling skills taught in schools and are taking charge of their children’s education. Full of ideas and suggestions — from innovative preschool exercises to techniques that older children can use to increase reading speed and comprehension — Straight Talk About Reading will instantly help any parent lay a solid foundation for their child’s formative educational years.