Customer Reviews

Help for the Hopeless Child: A Guide for Families

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Dr. federici's book and aggressive treatment approach helpedour family get back together. He has tremendous insight, compassionand knowledge of tough kids, particularly internationallly adopted children. He provides clear and concrete guidelines on assessing and dealing with all types of chronic problems. We learned more from thos book than from all the mental health and medical experts we have seen over the years.

Being the parent of two very difficult children from Eastern Europe, we went around and around before we found this book.We also spent a lot of time in denial of the seriousness of the problems and hoped that everything would get better on its own. We spent countless dollars on non-productive therapies and listen to so many people with their contrary opinions that we were totally confused.The professionals we saw never offered solid solutions, just a lot of "wait and see" or "it will be OK soon".Dr. Federici's book was the best we have read. We finally felt that someone understood the serious nature of the problems we were having and provided hope and compassion in his very tough (but helpful) treatment model. We recommend this book HIGHLY for any family having a tough time, especially with an internationally-adopted child. We hope he writes more detailed books in the future.

Having adopted 4 older Russian children in the past two years, I found this book to be a welcome source of new ideas and technics in helping my children adapt to their new family, social and cultural situation. Especially, in the areas of dealing with their personal losses, adoption issues and growing together as a family.

Although we have been very lucky in having done some of these technics, by accident, it is now comforting to know why they work, as well as, where we need to make changes in order to assist our children in succeeding with their integration as a family and the creation of their new lives.

A better title would have been, 'Helping the Post Institutionalized Child Adapt to Family Life', as these children are obviously not 'hopeless'.

The book is very user friendly with many headings, written with a minimum of ivory tower jargon, and obviously written from the heart of one adoptive parent to other adoptive parents (and perspective ones as well).

This book is the best of dozens of books we have read on strong willed children, older adoptive children and attachment issues. But, don't tell your child where you're getting your new ideas from, your book will begin to magicly 'disappear' overnight. So far, little hands haven't hidden it well enough, as we keep finding it in the strangest places....

Dr. Federici has written a book that is long overdue. There was no hand-holding or fancy psycho-babble. He gets right to the heart of the matter in terms of assessment and practical treatment issues. He really knows children who have been institutionalized--we have two and his approach is the only one that has ever helped.

Dr. Federici assumes the parent is ready to do the right thing and uses a firm, direct, and detailed approach in dealing with difficult children who have developed bad behaviors. The approach in this book is fully objective, with no coddling of parent or child. This is a manual for those who are willing to work towards results. It is specific on techniques to use from start to finish on bonding and re-establishing the family. Even in what seems to be the most hopeless situation, Dr. Federici expresses confidence in the reader's ability to achieve success. Success is realistic in his "80% rule" -seeking perfection is not realistic; however, a 80& success rate is. Additionally, this book includes everything one needs to know to feel competent when asking for help- from how to find the right professional, personality disorders, assessments and testing, medications, how to deal with and include siblings, and where to go for support.

This very aggressive and creative book by Dr. Federici is one of a kind. His experience and willingness to address the 'hopeless child" which many others choose not to discuss has been an inspiration to our family! We hope there is a volume II.

This is an excellent book covering the topic of understanding and treating the most difficult children.There is also an excellent section on post-institutionalized children.

My Romanian adopted child was seen by so many medical and psychiatric professionals over the past 7 years that I had almost given up hope until I read Dr. Federici's book. It was totally on target, inspiring and motivating! It took a lot of effort on our part but it saved our family.

One of the most practical, family friendly books I have read in dealing with children having severe emotional and behavioral problems.

After struggling with our 2 Russian-adopted children who were diagnosed with every psychiatric disorder known to mankind, and also being involved in every different type of treatment(including "attachment therapy" by trained "Evergreen People"), we had just about given up. All the standard diagnoses: RAD/ODD/ADHD/LD with never a treatment plan that made sense. Just drugs and more non-productive therapy. This book was referred to us by many and gave us HOPE and INSPIRATION. It sure was tough to complete the "praogram", but we made more progress in six months, than in years of all these therapies by all these "experts" who missed the boat entirely. This program Dr. Federici developed began from tough to the most compassionate and reconstructive. Please read before "giving up".