The Everything Parent's Guide To Children With ADD/ADHD: A Reassuring Guide To Getting The Right Diagnosis, Understanding Treatments, And Helping Your Child Focus (Everything (Parenting)) [Paperback]

Linda Sonna (Author)

Book Description

Series: Everything (Parenting) | Publication Date: February 28, 2005

Is your child:
Easily distracted?
Finding listening and concentrating difficult?
Unable to complete assignments?

If this describes your child, he could be one of the nearly 2 million children in America with ADD/ADHD. If you're looking for the facts about how this disorder may affect your child, it's hard to know where to turn. The Everything Parent's Guide to Children with ADD/ADHD, written by child psychologist Linda Sonna, gives you the clear answers and accurate information about the signs, symptoms, and treatments of this disorder that you need.

The Everything Parent's Guide to Children with ADD/ADHD helps you:

Learn the differences and similarities between ADD and ADHD

Obtain and understand the diagnosis

Weigh the pros and cons of medication

Find the right treatment

Discipline your child effectively

Get your child to focus at school and at home

Stay positive, and encourage your child with love and support

Chock-full of the professional, easy-to-read advice and information your child needs to succeed, The Everything Parent's Guide to Children with ADD/ADHD is the valuable one-stop resource you've been looking for.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Linda Sonna, Ph.D., is a child psychologist and the author of The Everything Potty Training Book, The Everything Toddler Book, The Everything Tween Book, and The Everything Parenting a Teenager Book. Her column, "EduCaring," has appeared in parenting magazines across the country. Dr. Sonna teaches creative writing and psychology at the University of New Mexico.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Adams Media; 1 edition (February 28, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593373082
• ISBN-13: 978-1593373085
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,018,274 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Before medicating your child for ADHD or depression, see the documentary at http://www.documentary-log.com/you-are-watching-the-drugging-of-our-children/. Then read my Parent's Guide to ADHD to find other ways to help your child.

I acquired a lot of technical knowledge about psychology while working on my doctoral studies at the University of Illinois, but my real education took place over the next thirty years.

The many young therapy patients I worked with were my real teachers. Most troubled children and adolescents, I learned, are acutely aware of their problems and needs. They helped me understand why they misbehaved, felt depressed and anxious, had trouble getting along at home, or weren't doing well in school. Once they were able to share their knowledge with the important people in their lives, the solutions for even the most difficult problems tended to be clear.

Living the exquisite joys and daunting challenges of being a foster mom also played an important part in my education. Helping to raise six children sensitized me to parents' struggles. It definitely made me more sympathetic to their dilemmas and need for concrete answers!

I began each new parenting book by reading all the self-help books and scientific studies I could find on the subject, and this research rounded out my education. I was amazed to find that often the self-help books and formal studies were at odds. For instance:

* Most potty training books say that children aren't ready to begin learning until age 2 to 2 1/2, while the research shows that most of the world's children are fully trained by age 2! In the early 1900s, most parents began working with infants on potty skills at age 2 months.

* While most self-help books recommend Ritalin and other psychiatric drugs as the only truly effective treatments for attention deficit disorder, the research shows that changes in diet and exercise can dramatically reduce or eliminate most children's symptoms!

* Research studies suggest that children with particular personalities respond differently to particular child-rearing methods, but most self-help books propose a single method for everyone.

Despite my many decades of study, I don't pretend to have all the answers about how to make the life better and happier for children. My ideas continue to change and evolve. I have many more books planned, and hope that this forum can be yet another method of educating myself. Let me know what you have learned, and I'll pass it on!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars New Book, Old Problem, April 3, 2005

A Kid's Review

This review is from: The Everything Parent's Guide To Children With ADD/ADHD: A Reassuring Guide To Getting The Right Diagnosis, Understanding Treatments, And Helping Your Child Focus (Everything (Parenting)) (Paperback)

Finally someone has written a book that seems to understand the problems that parents and kids have dealing with ADD. She knows that medication is not the only answer to ADD and in fact, bravely offers better solutions by way of food, nutrition, sleep, and PATIENCE...all things that can be done without chemical interventions and will bring about lasting life changes.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Hidden bias, June 22, 2010

By 

setlib (Nashville, TN USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Everything Parent's Guide To Children With ADD/ADHD: A Reassuring Guide To Getting The Right Diagnosis, Understanding Treatments, And Helping Your Child Focus (Everything (Parenting)) (Paperback)

Although this book describes itself as an objective resource that provides "clear answers and accurate information", in my opinion, that is a complete misrepresentation. It is actually strongly biased against medication and even ADD/ADHD diagnoses. I don't mind the idea of reading books that are both pro- and anti-medication to get a broad perspective, but this book should not advertise itself as a "one-stop" guide when it only presents one point of view. First it spends one hundred pages trying to convince you that your child may perhaps have lead poisoning, food allergies, or may just be "creative" -- and while these are certainly good things to check out, the book description does not accurately describe how much time is spent on these alternative explanations. There are only a few pages on stimulant medications, most of which is spent heavily criticizing them as pushed by drug companies / horrible side effects / leading to drug abuse, etc. As a parent considering medication, I really needed more than just this brief, biased glimpse at the subject. The "Fact!" sections are a complete joke, in which the author refers to a mysterious "study" which supports her argument, but fails to cite the study or even provide the names of the researchers so you can read it for yourself. I don't understand how this could pass through even the most relaxed editing process to get published. The last hundred pages is devoted to describing how bad parenting is probably responsible for most of the rampant misdiagnosing of ADD/ADHD. Here's a quote from p.125 of the book that pretty much sums up the author's point of view: "Properly used, many over-the-counter treatments produce fewer debilitating side effects than prescription medications. But remember that you are still sending the same wrong-headed, very dangerous message to your child: pills cure problems. Every child (and every adult!) becomes restless and inattentive when bored. It is normal to be upset over problems and to rail at being confined and controlled. The best non-prescription treatments are parenting classes and family counseling. So sign up!" I highly doubt Dr. Sonnes has parented an ADD/ADHD child. To suggest that such children are perfectly normal and just need better parenting is outright insulting and insensitive. I highly recommend the books by Dr. Hallowell instead. He had ADD himself and has parented ADD children, and in addition is a medical doctor, but is not as biased toward medication as you might expect. He still recommends plenty of alternative approaches, but at least he properly backs up all his assertions with real information.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The perfect guide for ADHD conspiracy theorists, November 26, 2006

By 

S. L. Hutchison (Upstate NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Everything Parent's Guide To Children With ADD/ADHD: A Reassuring Guide To Getting The Right Diagnosis, Understanding Treatments, And Helping Your Child Focus (Everything (Parenting)) (Paperback)

This is the ideal book for people who'd like to tell others that their pediatrician or child study team has it all wrong because their kid actually has heavy metal poisoning, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, bad nutrition, ineffective parenting, creative genius, or an alternative learning style.
The author writes well and does offer some useful suggestions in child behavior management. However, she appears to have done only the minimal research into ADHD that is required to take snappy pot shots (often in the form of call-outs) at anything that passes for accepted wisdom in this field.
No doubt there is room for debate, but there are many much more informative, more balanced resources if you are genuinely interested in helping a child diagnosed with ADHD. If, on the other hand, you want at all costs to avoid accepted medical treatment -- or are trying to undermine someone else's attempts to help a child -- this is the book for you.