Helping the Child Who Doesn’t Fit in

This practical and compassionate guidebook enables parents to sharpen any child’s social skills by pinpointing the child’s particular social strengths and difficulties. Each chapter — from “The Shy Child” to “The Little Adult,” from “The Short-Fused Child” to “The Sensitive Soul” — uses case studies that focus on the specific social conventions that certain children don’t “get,” and offers drills that parents and teachers can use to help children understand the unspoken underpinnings of social situations, the knowledge essential to building, sustaining, and repairing relationships.

Research shows that if these children do not “close the gap” before they finish third grade, they are likely to remain functionally illiterate throughout their lives. See Johnny Read! is the first book to offer practical, proven, and timely ways for parents to help their boys with this critical skill. Written by an expert teacher and educational consultant, this much-needed book answers essential questions, including: When does a reading delay become a reading problem? How, when, and where should I look for tutoring? How can I get the best help from the school? How can my son avoid (or overcome) the “Bad Boy” label? How can I help my son learn to read — and enjoy reading — at home?

Gary just can’t seem to fit in. He doesn’t have any friends, his school work is always sloppy, and his teachers endlessly criticize him. But Gary has a way to escape—he spaces out. Then one day Gary accidentally hurts someone, and now he’s being sent to a new school for kids with different learning styles. Will Gary finally be able to catch up and fit in, or will he remain the Spaceman forever?

Currently, only about 50% of American youths live in traditional two-parent, first-marriage families. This fact, combined with often bleak economic and social realities, creates the backdrop of interactions between families, children, and schools are examined in this probing volume. Answering a need for evaluative research in this area of increasing public interest, the contributors build a model for evaluation, focusing on the dynamics of family-school connections. How is school achievement influenced by parent-child interactions and the family environment? How do school, family, community, and peer-group connections affect early adolescents? What is the family’s role in the success of learning-disabled youth or in school truancy? What effect does parental discord and divorce have on a child’s learning?

These questions, as well as proposals for intervention and prevention, create the crux of this book designed to inform and motivate readers to respond to one of our country’s most fundamental social concerns. Vital reading for everyone who wants to better understand child-school-community interaction, this book especially warrants reading by students, researchers, and other professionals in developmental psychology, family studies, psychology, and social work.

“Disabilities can be ‘nuisances,’ but … differences are good. They add to the richness of our world.” This illustrated book explores both physical and learning disabilities. You’ll also learn how many famous historical figures had disabilities and succeeded despite them.

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.