The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind

First of all, know this — you’re smart and can learn! You just learn differently. This guide will help answer some of your important questions about having LD, such as “Why is it hard for kids with LD to learn?” and “What happens when you grow up?” It will also provide suggestions on how to deal with issues in school and take some of the mystery out of what having LD means (and doesn’t mean). Includes resources for parents and teachers.

Remember the kids who just didn’t fit in? Maybe they stood too close, or talked too loud. Whatever the reason, we called them hurtful names, and they never understood why. Now, clinical psychologists Duke and Nowicki call these children “dyssemic,” and offer some ideas of how to help them. Dyssemic children cannot readily comprehend nonverbal messages, much as dyslexics do not correctly process the written word. Yet nonverbal communication plays a vital role in our communication with others, and children who misunderstand or misuse it may face painful social rejection. In Helping the Child Who Doesn’t Fit In, Duke and Nowicki show parents and teachers how to assess the extent of a child’s problem, as well as how to help the dyssemic child.

Parents, educators and general-interest readers will relish a fine book which surveys how language develops in kids. Why isn’t language developing for so many? This explores links between reading, writing, listening and speaking, revealing how these are learned and what happens in the process breaks down at various stages.

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.

There are a ton of books that offer child-rearing advice, and only a few less that describe research on childhood emotional and learning problems; this is one of the few books that combines the two. Edward Hallowell brings readers into his consultation rooms to meet his clients — and the descriptions and dialogue are effective in bringing the situations to life. When You Worry About the Child You Love will help you understand why your child is unhappy or underachieving, will help you help your child to manage her emotions, and perhaps most important, will help parents do what they can and stop blaming themselves.

In Ready to Learn, Stan Goldberg draws on thirty years of clinical experience (and personal experience as the father of two kids with learning differences) to provide an easy-to-use guide to helping children overcome any problems and improve their learning skills.