Ready to Learn: How to Help Your Preschooler Succeed

Groundbreaking and comprehensive, Driven to Distraction has been a lifeline to the approximately eighteen million Americans who are thought to have ADHD. Now the bestselling book is revised and updated with current medical information for a new generation searching for answers.

Through vivid stories and case histories of patients — both adults and children — Hallowell and Ratey explore the varied forms ADHD takes, from hyperactivity to daydreaming. They dispel common myths, offer helpful coping tools, and give a thorough accounting of all treatment options as well as tips for dealing with a diagnosed child, partner, or family member. But most importantly, they focus on the positives that can come with this “disorder” — including high energy, intuitiveness, creativity, and enthusiasm.

See also, Delivered from Distraction: Getting the Most out of Life with Attention Deficit Disorder.

An informal and entertaining yet authoritative look at the science of babies minds. The three research psychologists, all of whom are parents, and two of whom, Meltzoff and Kuhl, are married to each other, write about child development as though they were speaking directly to parents they know. As their title indicates, the authors find parallels between babies and scientists: both, they say, formulate theories, make and test predictions, seek explanations, do experiments, and revise what they know based on new evidence. They show specifically how babies learn about people and objects, and how they acquire language.

This is a unique handbook that teaches parents how to work with schools to achieve optimal learning situations and accommodations for their child’s needs. From IEPs and 504 Plans, to IDEA and NCLB, navigating today’s school system can be difficult for even the most up-to-date, education savvy parent. Special needs advocates Rich Weinfeld and Michelle Davis provide parents and professional advocates with concise, easy-to-understand definitions and descriptions of legal terms and school regulations, along with checklists, tips, questionnaires, and other tools.

Executive functions are the cognitive skills that help us manage our lives and be successful. Children with weak executive skills, despite their best intentions, often do their homework but forget to turn it in, wait until the last minute to start a project, lose things, or have a room that looks like a dump! The good news is that parents can do a lot to support and train their children to manage these frustrating and stressful weaknesses.

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.

It is a parent’s deepest heartache: watching a child struggle in life, desperate to help. When Katherine Cunningham’s daughter Tricia (“Tiger”) is diagnosed with dyslexia, roadblocks appear at every turn, and the entire family is forced to create its own solutions.