List Price: $26.95 Details

Save: $8.39 (31%)

$3.99 delivery June 13 - 21. Details

Select delivery location

In stock
Usually ships within 4 to 5 days.

[{"displayPrice":"$18.56","priceAmount":18.56,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"18","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"56","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"iiFwyvdww%2BvBlDbHsCHGNmX42Idaz%2BqkrIEgirR5YjTKMWEjimx2zoct0UTX3hxOTp6xJVEnsmH1A0Oj0poYEV3fGbE44IZxRwI02%2B9%2BGfDQypxkeqhEMMiu68KztcjJpy07IXbpk4XTL7hCtN04kLqiJC2bSHU%2FFBT13FlVBECEXtxCwmVMQA%3D%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW"},{"displayPrice":"$3.95","priceAmount":3.95,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"3","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"95","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"iiFwyvdww%2BvBlDbHsCHGNmX42Idaz%2BqkPMjNTvJTGc%2BUiTIUwph%2BWL%2FBt3QTyBOvEPueOG0MlQmwW8T6UGpWUzyIG1btb1WGv8COdSKKsERHvb%2Fk7my%2FFK7NwNyWH4Sfion7SxieM8jpdxm83M6cwyfOmA8LQu3MiLD6%2F6ZOQPvNyVJQF%2FQgHcY4w%2BLqIloi","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED"}]

$$18.56 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Payment

Secure transaction

Ships from

indoobestsellers

Sold by

indoobestsellers

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

Details

Payment

Secure transaction

We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more

Ships from

indoobestsellers

Sold by

indoobestsellers

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt. You may receive a partial or no refund on used, damaged or materially different returns.

Read full return policy

$1 delivery June 9 - 14. Details

Select delivery location

Used: Very Good | Details

Sold by New Chapter Recycling

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Have one to sell?

Other Sellers on Amazon

Added

Not added

$26.95
& FREE Shipping. Details

Sold by: Amazon.com

Added

Not added

$31.64
+ $3.99 shipping

Sold by: TheWorldShopUSA

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 2 images

Follow the Author

Suffer the Children: The Case against Labeling and Medicating and an Effective Alternative Hardcover – March 28, 2011

by Marilyn Wedge (Author)

4.1 22 ratings

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

"Please retry"

—

—

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$18.56

$18.56

$1.18

"Please retry"

$9.95

$2.09

"Please retry"

—

—

—

Kindle
$14.55 Read with Our Free App
Hardcover
$18.56

18 Used from $1.18 4 New from $18.56
Paperback
$11.90

16 Used from $2.09 12 New from $9.95
Digital
—

Purchase options and add-ons

A persuasive rejection of mainstream child psychiatry that guides parents to understand their child's behavioral problems without stigmatizing diagnoses.

With more than four million American children diagnosed with ADHD and other psychiatric disorders, taking a child to a psychiatrist is as common as taking them to soccer practice. But, disturbingly, a great number of children experience dangerous emotional and physical side effects from psychotropic medications. Where can parents who are eager to avoid shaming labels and drugs turn when their child exhibits disturbing behavior? Suffer the Children presents a much-needed alternative: child-focused family therapy. A family therapist for over twenty years, Marilyn Wedge shares the stories of her patients. Wedge presents creative strategies that flow from viewing children's symptoms not as biologically determined "disorders" but as responses to relationships in their lives that can be altered with the help of a therapist.

Instructive, illuminating, and uplifting, Suffer the Children radically reframes how we as parents, as health professionals, and as a society can respond to problems of childhood in a considerate and respectful fashion.

Print length

256 pages
Language

English
Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company
Publication date

March 28, 2011
Dimensions

6.5 x 1 x 9.6 inches
ISBN-10

0393071596
ISBN-13

978-0393071597
See all details

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Wedge, a California-based family therapist, asserts that the medicating of inattentive or hard-to-manage kids has become a dangerous but socially accepted way to deal with children's problems. But psychiatric drugs may have serious side effects for children, and the benefits do not always outweigh the potential for harm. Wedge reveals how family therapists approach such symptoms as unhappiness, moodiness, or jumpiness, not as signs of a "psychiatric disorder" but as evidence of something wrong in a family that can be remedied with the right interventions. Without blaming parents, Wedge describes how she helps the family system as a whole, treating it as a living organism with an amazing capacity for self-healing. In her "strategic therapy toolbox" are such methods as getting parents not to fight or discuss financial matters in front of kids (children may have a tendency to exaggerate their parents' problems in their own minds), encouraging parents to speak positively about their lives, and learning to identify significant events in a child's life that may be related to when a problem behavior began. Like a clever detective, the author allows the child to guide her to the heart of a family's problems. Interweaving a range of fascinating case studies, Wedge proves that the road to a child's healing can often be successfully navigated without the use of labels and potentially harmful meds. (Mar.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Review

"Impressive...Suffer the Children is very readable, and I think it would be very useful for both the general reader and for students...You cover a lot of ground in a very straightforward, non-technical, unpretentious way." -David Van Nuys, Ph.D., former college professor and host of Shrink Rap Radio.

"Wedge takes the family dynamic into account as a primary influence on child behavior, but veers away from presenting a polemic against parents...Her encouragement to look anew at the 'problems' our children have...and to step back from immediate falling into diagnosis is valuable and expert advice." -Booklist

"I hope this parenting book by Marilyn Wedge, PhD. will make the best seller list so millions of parents can relearn what they can do to give their children back their childhoods. Thank you, Marilyn, for this long needed gift to change our society's future." -Parenting Techniques

"...Many school authorities, doctors and other professionals mean well when they prescribe medication and diagnose what appear to be symptoms of ailments which can be treated by pills. What Dr. Wedge advocates is... solving the underlying problems within the family...this book is highly recommended." -Kingman Daily Miner

"Marilyn Wedge has provided an excellent resource for clinicians and parents. Her book, Suffer the Children,is a tour de force argument against the current trend in American education and psychiatry which assumes that children with behavioral difficulties will likely require medication." --Shannon M. Bernard-Adams and Marcus P. Adams

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company (March 28, 2011)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393071596
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393071597
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.9 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1 x 9.6 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #4,286,858 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4,763 in Parenting Books on Children with Disabilities
- #6,205 in Popular Child Psychology
- #7,722 in Popular Psychology Counseling

Customer Reviews:
4.1 22 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Marilyn Wedge

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

"This is a brilliant book. It is interesting and compelling to read and it really does give a reasonable alternative to drugs. The question I found myself asking repeatedly while reading it, is why don't we use effective family therapy before prescribing drugs all the time? It clearly works and Wedge is an insightful, talented expert at it. If you or someone you know has a child that is going through issues, before you fill that prescription for a drug READ THIS BOOK. Trust me, you will be so glad you did." Shannon Devereaux Sanford, WTBQ Radio, New York, about Suffer the Children.

Marilyn Wedge is a family therapist, author, and popular speaker, with more than twenty years of experience helping children, teens, and families. She is the author of two books on family therapy and is currently at work on a third. She has blogs on the Huffington Post and Psychology Today.

She can be found at www.marilynwedgephd.com and www.sufferthechildren.net.

Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5

22 global ratings

5 star		60%
4 star		21%
3 star		6%
2 star 0% (0%)		0%
1 star		13%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Regardless if you are for or against medicating children for behavioral issues, you need to read this book!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 3, 2015

Verified Purchase

I read this book after reading an article that Wedge wrote in a newletter. The teachers of my 1st grade son have been adamant that he be tested for ADD and say he needs medication. I have been adamantly opposed to medication. This book gave me hope and another aspect as to how our lives in the adult world affect how kids see the world and interpret what is going on around them. We lost my mother and my father-in-law within 4 months of each other, both to horrible debilitating diseases. Our kids were aware of all of this and mom and dad weren't around as much. Maybe that's why my son is so distracted at school. I feel everyone should read this whether or not you are for or against medicating young children.

2 people found this helpful

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 5, 2011

Verified Purchase

I read part of the book while working out on a stationary bike and I must say that, in that context, the book is a page turner. Each case has, in addition to compassion, the interest of a puzzle to figure out the family behavior responsible for the child's misbehavior. It is very sad to think that some children could be incorrectly treated with very strong drugs when a simple understanding of the family issues and dynamics is all that is needed to change the situation.

5 people found this helpful

This book was SOOOO good!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 24, 2014

Verified Purchase

I would recommend this book to anyone who is around kids, parent, teacher, nanny... The author mostly gives many personal examples of how she uses family therapy to "medicate" children as opposed to giving them pills that are potentially very harmful to the development of children. Very well written and insightful, I've been recommending this book to everyone I know!

2 people found this helpful

If your child has a psychological problem, You must read this book 1st!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 19, 2018

Verified Purchase

One of the best books on child psychology. Well written and easy to read. She explains her methods in detail and it’s easy to understand.

kathleen washington

The cover was sticky where someone must have taken the ...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 13, 2014

Verified Purchase

The cover was sticky where someone must have taken the label off. I had to work to get it off.

One person found this helpful

Melissa A Lively

Thank you for writing this...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 6, 2013

Verified Purchase

I have so many concerns about how our children are being diagnosed (and medicated) with psychiatric disorders where there seems to be very little science to back up these diagnoses.

One person found this helpful

A Family Therapist You Wish Was Next Door

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 28, 2011

When my son was in preschool, he was having some attention-related problems and showing some hostility towards his teachers. The director of the school abruptly called a meeting with me and my son's father one day and basically threatened us by saying, if we didn't take our son to a behavioral psychologist for an evaluation, then they probably wouldn't keep him at the school. Though my son's father and I knew instinctively that there was nothing wrong with our son, we felt unsure because of the authority of the school coming down on us. Yes, our son was acting up but the bottomline truth was this place was simply the wrong preschool for him. A year later he was in a different preschool thriving with no sorts of comments from his teachers except what a wonderfully happy, friendly child he was. I preface my review of Marilyn Wedge's book with that story because I think that often a school or other authority figure is quick to label a child who may not be the most perfectly behaved little tot! Or, at times, teachers might even be looking for something that is wrong in the child more so than what is right. Marilyn's approach is scientific yet deeply caring-she practices what is called, "Strategic Child-Focused Family Therapy" and tells many case studies of families who had so called, "problem children", that she helped without needing to recommend medication or a giving a label diagnosis to those children. Marilyn is clearly opposed to medicating children unless it's an absolute last resort, stating that "taking a child to a psychiatrist for med checks has become as socially acceptable as taking a boy or girl to basketball practice or dance class. It is just one more stop on a soccer mom's hectic driving schedule." There are eye-opening philosophies in this book that I've never heard another family psychologist talk about or have any clinical experience with, which Dr. Wedge has plenty of examples and stories about in the book, such as "a child's aggressive acting out is more often than not a metaphor for hostility between his parents".
That story I mentioned in the beginning of the review ocurred when I was separated from my child's father and there was hostility going on between him and me. It makes sense to me looking back that our son was acting this out at school.
Marilyn clearly does know what she is talking about and her goal is to to eradicate the suffering of all family members, which often starts by a child being what she calls the "identified patient"--the one with the problem. But in truth, she wisely says, "the family is the patient...in all these situations we must look at the purpose or function that the symptom is serving in the family. Who is becoming more connected by the symptom? For what larger problem is the symptom a distraction?

15 people found this helpful

Get to Know Us

Make Money with Us

Amazon Payment Products

Let Us Help You

English United States

© 1996-2023, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates