This practical manual offers essential information and guidance for anyone involved with ADA issues in higher education settings. Fundamental principles and actual clinical and administrative procedures are outlined for evaluating, documenting, and accommodating a wide range of mental and physical impairments.

For teachers, counselors and parents, this comprehensive new resource is filled with up-to-date information and practical strategies to help kids with attention deficits learn to control and change their own behaviors and build the academic, social, and personal skills necessary for success in school and in life. The Kit first explains ADD/ADHD behavior, its biological bases and basic characteristics and describes procedures used for diagnosis and various treatment options. It then details a proven set of training exercises and programs in which teachers, counselors and parents work together to monitor and manage the child’s behavior to achieve the desired results.

Consumer text provides possible explanations for some of the behaviors children with autism may exhibit, so parents and teachers can create environmental supports for different kinds of behavior problems.

Best Friends, Worst Enemies brings to life the drama of childhood relationships, guiding parents to a deeper understanding of the motives and meanings of social behavior. Here you will find penetrating discussions of the difference between friendship and popularity, how boys and girls deal in unique ways with intimacy and commitment, whether all kids need a best friend, why cliques form and what you can do about them.

The first five years of a child’s life are the most critical for speech and language development, and, as a parent, you are your child’s primary language role model. So what are the best ways to help your child develop the all-important skill of communication? Inside, you’ll discover all of the essential steps and checkpoints from birth through age five, tips to help your child progress on schedule, and easy methods to:

• Evaluate and monitor your child’s language development
• Understand and deal with environmental impacts such as television and cultural styles
• Recognize the signs of language development problems

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.

Designed for parents who suspect their child may have some type of communication problem. Explains what is considered ‘normal’ for a child’s development then describes symptoms of various common disorders. Demonstrates how to distinguish between a problem that will probably be outgrown, from one that requires outside help. Also explains how to get help, what tests are likely to be done and how to understand the diagnosis. Includes activities parents can do with their children at home to help them progress.

How and when does a child begin to make sense of the world? Why does a lively preschool child so often become a semiliterate and defeated school failure?

Developmental psychologist Margaret Donaldson shows that much of the intellectual framework on which we base our teaching is misleading. We both underestimate the astonishing rational powers of young children and ignore the major stumbling block that children face when starting school.

Given a setting and a language that makes sense to them in human terms, very young children can perform tasks often thought to be beyond them. The preschool child learns everything in a human situation. Only in school is he asked to acquire skills―reading, writing, arithmetic―isolated from a real-life context. This transition is difficult.

The author suggests a range of strategies that parents and schools can adopt to help children. She argues that reading is even more important than we have thought it to be, since learning to read can actually speed children through the crucial transition.

This guide features comprehensive profiles of LD programs at more than 1,100 two- and four-year colleges in the U.S. and Canada. Program listings are categorized as structured/proactive programs or self-directed/decentralized programs for both two- and four-year schools.

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.