Customer Reviews

Parenting Children With Health Issues: Essential Tools, Tips, and Tactics for Raising Kids With Chronic Illness, Medical Conditions, and Special Healthcare Needs

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This book is a profound yet practical guide to raising resilient children who have significant health issues. The publication of this book can best be described as a gift to families who are faced with far more complex challenges than are found in those with more typical children. These challenges include how to help children feel a sense of control, acceptance and hope while living with serious disorders. It provides a wise guide for helping raise children who are able to embrace life while taking good care of their health conditions. The book reflects a synthesis of the best in parenting skills along with a rich understanding of child psychology, family dynamics and a range of chronic disorders. This wealth of information is distilled for the reader in a format that is easy to follow; readers are provided with numerous examples of how to implement these insights. It is a unique and thorough guide to critical aspects of child-rearing that are just not found anywhere else. I regard this book as simply indispensable for families and professionals alike. It is a gem.

Laura E. Marshak
Author (with Fran Prezant) of : Married with Special-Needs Children [A couple's guide to keeping connected], Woodbine House 2007

Child psychiatrist Foster W. Cline and mother of two children with cystic fibrosis Lisa Greene present Parenting Children with Health Issues: Essential Tools, Tips and Tactics for Raising Kids with Chronic Illness, Medical Conditions & Special Healthcare Needs, a guide to learning and applying the parenting skills needed for raising children who require special medical or dietary care. Chapters discuss how to handle a child's refusal to take medication or undergo medical treatments, promote personal responsibility, deal with sibling, family, and couple relationship issues, and much more. "Because chronically ill children can so easily drift into feeling 'unfair-ed upon' by life, some become entitled and demanding, developing and exploiting placating parents who, as their child becomes more demanding, have increasing difficulty separating 'wants' from 'needs.' Entitled people, children or adults, have a tendency to control others through what they define as their 'needs.'" An invaluable, experience-laden guide accessible to parents and caretakers of all backgrounds, highly recommended.

Authors Cline and Green offer a truthful testimony to the question "How would you spend your precious moments with your child with health problems?" They present a systematic approach, Love & Logic, to positive parenting, the goal of which is to enable a child to learn the health habits to care for him\herself. Moreover, the parenting in these family situations requires thoughtfulness and compassionae conversation about real issues as grief, death, medications, self-care as well as normal child rearing tasks.

Part One of the book focuses on the basic Love & Logic strategies that most parents face: self esteem, boundaries, problem solving, and how children learn. Part 2, Advanced Love & Logic applications discusses the realities of the medical challenges within the family and how to deal with them. Added bonuses at the back of the book are extra parenting tips, the authors' personal stories, and resources.

The book is thorough, well written and easy to read. You will appreciate the honest approach in dealing with the real world situations through loving strategies. I highly recommend it.

For additional resources for stressful family situations see Help Kids Cope with Stress & Trauma

My 11 year old daughter has Type 1 Diabetes. This book provides much needed advice on how to allow her to take control of managing her disease. Very helpful to me and I highly recommend it! We are seeing great results in her behavior.

As a nurse that works with children with Congenital Heart Disease and many other health problems, I find that parents can be overwelmed with their child's disease process and put parenting on the back burner. Parenting doesn't mean being the bad guy. This book tells you how to parent with love, not anger and encourage your child to grow, mature and cope even in the face of critical health problems. Many parents tend to keep their child in the dark about their illness until they become young adults and then do not know why their child doesn't take over their own healthcare needs or doesn't know how to cope with their illness. Instead of reading the whole book which can overwelm many parents we encourage reading specific chapters first and especially read the stories. If you ever get a chance to attend one of the author's presentations jump at the chance to attend.

As the mother of a child who has Cystic Fibrosis, I was so happy to begin reading this book and using it's suggestions immediately. I found that the advice, when applied correctly, really does work. Our CF respitory therapist recommended it to me, and it has been a great reference for me and my husband. I plan on sharing it with our extended family as well so they may have the tools on hand when needed.

This is the most helpful book I have ever read. My wife reads parenting books and luckily she left this one sitting on the table. I like that it's caring but not too sappy and the tools are simple and straight forward. This book has made a huge difference in the way I deal with our kids, all of them including the one with cystic fibrosis. I feel like I can handle things better because I know what to say and do when my kids are acting up instead of getting mad at them. Our kid with CF hardly ever fights with us about his medications now and he seems happier, too. I also don't fight with my wife about the kids as much. It has really helped us. Our home is so much more relaxed.

I did find this book very useful and I will use a number of the parenting techniques and suggestions - however this book contains regular references to Christian religious beliefs which are neither helpful nor illuminating. I probably would not have purchased the book if I had known that the authors were religious.