What do we mean by “Special Needs?”
There is a huge range of possible diagnoses – and new ones are being identified every year as brain research reveals more and more about typical and atypical neurological functioning. These many different conditions, including the autism spectrum, attention deficit disorder, dyspraxia, ODD, and other behavioural and developmental issues, all share various degrees of learning difficulties.
Learning difficulties affect every aspect of a child’s life – not just schooling. Even mild learning difficulties affect behaviour, attention span, social skills, leisure activities, and ultimately self-esteem.
How will this audiobook help?
Parenting is never easy, and raising a child with special needs brings additional challenges for the whole family. There’s so much to learn and decide, and you may frequently wonder if you’re doing the right thing.
Listening to the audiobook Bringing out the Best in Children and Teens with Special Needs will give you specific skills to help your child learn better habits, and help you feel calmer and more confident on this parenting journey. The new skills you gain will enable you to teach and train your child with special needs to become more flexible, more competent, and more self-reliant.
Parents tend to blame themselves when things aren’t going well. Parenting problems are usually not about you. They’re more about what you’re doing or not doing. This audiobook will give you specific strategies that you can use immediately to improve things at home and at school.
How do I know the audiobook will be helpful for my situation?
There are many different diagnoses, and different professionals can evaluate the same child and disagree on the diagnosis.
Bringing out the Best in Children and Teens with Special Needs focuses on characteristics of the problem. This is the information we need in order to figure out what to do about it. Read on to see if any of the following characteristics apply to your child.
It is helpful to think of problems as either primary or secondary.
Primary (caused by nature) are the direct result of some specific neurological dysfunction or of an inborn temperament which is extremely sensitive, intense, impulsive inflexible and emotionally immature.
Secondary (caused by nurture) are caused by the environment of home, school, and the wider world.
You may have observed that primary problems that are relatively mild can lead to secondary problems that are severe. For example, a child with relatively poor fine-motor skills may find writing so difficult and frustrating that she becomes less and less willing to write and eventually refuses to even pick up a pencil. She can end up failing a subject that she’s actually quite good at because she isn’t turning in her homework.
Common Primary Problems include:
- Immaturity, or neurodevelopmental delay
- Impulsivity, distractability, poor concentration, etc.
- Weak organizational skills
- Poor sequencing
- Poor coordination – fine and/or gross motor control
- Fears, worries and fixations*
- Aggression
- Immature/Awkward social skills
- Difficulty acquiring language/thinking skills
Common Secondary Problems include:
- Not fulfilling academic potential
- Self-absorption
- Learned helplessness, fragile self-esteem, unrealistic self-image
- Negative attention-seeking
In this audiobook you will learn how to use Descriptive Praise and the other ‘Calmer, Easier, Happier Parenting’ foundation skills to rapidly improve your child’s:
- Behavior, cooperation, and impulse control
- Confidence, self-reliance, and self esteem
- Ability to handle frustration more constructively
- Learning skills, social skills, and ability to transition between activities.
In ‘Bringing out the Best in Children and Teens with Special Needs’ Noël Janis-Norton provides an in-depth explanation of:
- The problems, and their causes
- Using the foundation skills to help kids with special needs
- Additional essential strategies
The last tracks are dedicated to stories from parents and professionals describing how they’ve put these strategies to use. Your understanding of the strategies will be enhanced by hearing how others have applied them. You’ll hear six chapters:
- Parent #1: Reducing impulsivity and defusing strong emotions
- Clinical Psychologist Andrea Davis, Ph.D. on helping children with special needs develop good habits, and how that can decrease marital stress
- Parent #2: Reducing impulsive and aggressive behavior and improving cooperation, confidence, self-esteem, self-reliance and responsibility
- Speech and language pathologist, Susan Hollar, M.S., CCC on using descriptive praise as a teaching tool
- Parent #3: Improving cooperation, self-reliance and responsibility
- Parent #4: How new rules and routines increased teenagers’ cooperation.
|
