Parents: Have Extra Time Right Now? We Recommend the Following Books to Read...
With schools and public places closing around the world in reaction to the coronavirus, families are finding themselves with a lot of time together at home—a lot of time. You know how to cuddle for naps, how to flip on the TV for a half hour, how to distract with a fun bedtime story, but what about all the other hours of the day?
We’ve compiled a running list of books for parents to help make pass the time and learn more about navigating your child's development.
Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood
By: Lisa Damour, PhD
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
An award-winning guide to the sometimes erratic and confusing behavior of teenage girls that explains what’s going on, prepares parents for what’s to come, and lets them know when it’s time to worry.
In this sane, highly engaging, and informed guide for parents of daughters, Dr. Damour draws on decades of experience and the latest research to reveal the seven distinct—and absolutely normal—developmental transitions that turn girls into grown-ups, including Parting with Childhood, Contending with Adult Authority, Entering the Romantic World, and Caring for Herself. Providing realistic scenarios and welcome advice on how to engage daughters in smart, constructive ways, Untangled gives parents a broad framework for understanding their daughters while addressing their most common questions, including
• My thirteen-year-old rolls her eyes when I try to talk to her, and only does it more when I get angry with her about it. How should I respond?
• Do I tell my teen daughter that I’m checking her phone?
• My daughter suffers from test anxiety. What can I do to help her?
• Where’s the line between healthy eating and having an eating disorder?
• My teenage daughter wants to know why I’m against pot when it’s legal in some states. What should I say?
• My daughter’s friend is cutting herself. Do I call the girl’s mother to let her know?
Perhaps most important, Untangled helps mothers and fathers understand, connect, and grow with their daughters. When parents know what makes their daughter tick, they can embrace and enjoy the challenge of raising a healthy, happy young woman.
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Mindful Discipline: A Loving Approach to Setting Limits & Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child
By: Shauna Shapiro PhD & Chris White, MD
Grounded in mindfulness and neuroscience, this pioneering book redefines discipline and outlines the five essential elements necessary for children to thrive: unconditional love, space for children to be themselves, mentorship, healthy boundaries, and mistakes that create learning and growth opportunities. In this book, you will also discover parenting practices such as setting limits with love, working with difficult emotions, and forgiveness and compassion meditations that place discipline within a context of mindfulness. This relationship-centered approach will restore your confidence as a parent and support your children in developing emotional intelligence, self-discipline, and resilience-qualities they need for living an authentic and meaningful life.
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The Explosive Child
By: Ross W. Greene, PhD
A groundbreaking approach to understanding and parenting children who frequently exhibit severe fits of temper and other intractable behaviors, from a distinguished clinician and pioneer in this field.
What’s an explosive child? A child who responds to routine problems with extreme frustration—crying, screaming, swearing, kicking, hitting, biting, spitting, destroying property, and worse. A child whose frequent, severe outbursts leave his or her parents feeling frustrated, scared, worried, and desperate for help. Most of these parents have tried everything-reasoning, explaining, punishing, sticker charts, therapy, medication—but to no avail. They can’t figure out why their child acts the way he or she does; they wonder why the strategies that work for other kids don’t work for theirs; and they don’t know what to do instead.
Dr. Ross Greene, a distinguished clinician and pioneer in the treatment of kids with social, emotional, and behavioral challenges, has worked with thousands of explosive children, and he has good news: these kids aren’t attention-seeking, manipulative, or unmotivated, and their parents aren’t passive, permissive pushovers. Rather, explosive kids are lacking some crucial skills in the domains of flexibility/adaptability, frustration tolerance, and problem solving, and they require a different approach to parenting.
Throughout this compassionate, insightful, and practical book, Dr. Greene provides a new conceptual framework for understanding their difficulties, based on research in the neurosciences. He explains why traditional parenting and treatment often don’t work with these children, and he describes what to do instead. Instead of relying on rewarding and punishing, Dr. Greene’s Collaborative Problem Solving model promotes working with explosive children to solve the problems that precipitate explosive episodes, and teaching these kids the skills they lack.
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Self-Esteem: A Proven Program of Cognitive Techniques for Assessing, Improving, and Maintaining Your Self-Esteem
By: Matthew McKay PhD & Patrick Fanning
If you struggle with low self-esteem, or you're seeking positive and effective ways of building a healthy sense of self-worth, this much-anticipated fourth edition of the best-selling classic by Matthew McKay is your go-to guide. This fully revised edition features an innovative application of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) to self-esteem, and utilizes updated cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to help you create positive change and thrive.
Circumstances and status can affect self-esteem - many factors can contribute to the way we see ourselves - but the one contributing factor that all people who struggle with low self-esteem have in common is our thoughts. Of course we all have a better chance of feeling good about ourselves when things are going well, but it's really our interpretation of our circumstances that can cause trouble, regardless of what they are.
This revised and updated fourth edition of the best-selling Self-Esteem uses proven-effective methods of CBT and relevant components of ACT to help you raise low self-esteem by working on the way you interpret your life. You'll learn how to differentiate between healthy and unhealthy self-esteem, how to uncover and analyze negative self-statements, and how to create new, more objective and positive self-statements to support your self-esteem rather than undermine it. And with cutting-edge material on defusion and values, you'll learn to let go of judgmental, self-attacking thoughts and act in accordance with what matters to you most, enhancing your sense of self-worth.
If you struggle with low or unhealthy self-esteem, this new edition of Self-Esteem, packed with evidence-based tips and techniques, has everything you need to improve the way you see yourself for better overall well-being.
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The 5 Love Languages of Children: The Secret to Loving Children Effectively
By: Gary Chapman & Ross Campbell
More than 1 million sold!
You know you love your child. But how can you make sure your child knows it? The #1 New York Times bestselling The 5 Love Languages® has helped millions of couples learn the secret to building a love that lasts. Now discover how to speak your child’s love language in a way that he or she understands. Dr. Gary Chapman and Dr. Ross Campbell help you:
Discover your child’s love language
Assist your child in successful learning Use the love languages to correct and discipline more effectively Build a foundation of unconditional love for your child
Plus: Find dozens of tips for practical ways to speak your child’s love language.
Discover your child's primary language—then speak it—and you will be well on your way to a stronger relationship with your flourishing child.
For a free online study guide, visit 5lovelanguages.com.
Also, read our new blog: HOW TO TALK TO YOUR KIDS: ASSUAGING FEARS DURING THE CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK
ABOUT CTS
Collaborative Therapeutic Services (CTS) offers a variety of counselling and therapy services, hours, and service providers with diverse specializations. We offer evening & weekend appointments. Have questions? Contact Us Here or Call 813-951-7346. Located in Tampa, Florida.
Ask us about our new NEUROLEASE™ TREATMENT THERAPY - A cutting edge treatment for releasing toxic emotions.
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TeleTherapy Mental Health Support to Help With Coronavirus Stress and Anxiety
Seeking Additional Professional Mental Health Support For Coronavirus?
We have counselors ready to talk to you by phone, video conferencing or in office to help you work through your fears and anxiety. We can help you with what to say to your children.
Coping with these feelings and getting help when you need it will help you, your family, and your community recover from a disaster. Connect with family, friends, and others in your community. Take care of yourself and each other, and know when and how to seek help.
All telephone calls and video conferences are private and follow HIPPA compliant rules.
Talking to Kids About the Coronavirus
Don’t avoid the topic. Children have already heard about the virus from the news, at school, or have seen people walking around wearing masks. When we avoid talking about important topics such as the coronavirus, it conveys to children that the topic is “off limits,” which can increase worry and anxiety in children. Stay calm. When talking to your child about the coronavirus outbreak, first make sure you are aware of your own feelings of anxiety or fear. If you’re calm and reassuring, your child is more likely to be calm. If you’re anxious or frightened, they will respond accordingly.
Reassure child by providing factual information. Stories on social media and the internet can be misleading. Some have inaccurate information and could lead to increased anxiety and worry. It is important to provide your child with age-appropriate factual information. For example, you can reassure them that health care workers are working hard right now to help keep people safe. You can also explain to them that the coronavirus is not as common as the flu, and that the scientists who study the virus think that most of the people who get sick will be fine, especially children.
Learn more here about how to talk to your kids about the Coronavirus.
Under quarantine?
A person living in Venice recently described the dynamic playing out around her, as Italy enforces strict social-distancing measures. She writes:
“There is an eerie silence throughout this city now, a drawn look on the face of anyone who is scurrying around the streets (as I still am), an accusatory dynamic between friends and family as each person tries to insist either that they are right in NEVER leaving the house or alternatively that they are right in STILL leaving the house… No-one seems to be able to accept the free decisions of others at the moment, from the government right on down, and I find that worrisome.”
Psychiatry professor Rima Styra and her University of Toronto colleague Laura Hawryluck, a professor of critical care medicine, researched quarantines during the SARS outbreak and found that 29% of those quarantined showed signs of PTSD, and 31% had symptoms of depression following isolation.
What to Do When You’re Alone
Despite the confusion over exactly how and when to quarantine, millions of people around the world will inevitably have to drastically reduce social contact and spend time in isolation to combat coronavirus. Frank McAndrew, an evolutionary psychologist at Knox College in Illinois, notes that enforced quarantine is particularly distressing. “Being quarantined gives one a sense of being at the mercy of other people and other uncontrollable forces such as an epidemic. This leads to a feeling of helplessness and uncertainty about the future that can be very unsettling,”
Ultimately, though self-care is important, professional treatment is crucial for a wide range of mental health problems. The mental health implications of isolation do not mean we shouldn’t quarantine. It’s essential to follow medical professionals’ guidance on combating coronavirus, just as it’s important to recognize the difficulties. In times of isolation, we can support each other by recognizing mental health struggles and providing comfort even from afar.
ABOUT CTS
Collaborative Therapeutic Services (CTS) offers a variety of counselling and therapy services, hours, and service providers with diverse specializations. We offer evening & weekend appointments. Have questions? Contact Us Here or Call 813-951-7346. Located in Tampa, Florida.
Ask us about our new NEUROLEASE™ TREATMENT THERAPY - A cutting edge treatment for releasing toxic emotions.