Uncommon Sense for Child Professionals

Available at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble

This accessible book is one of my own favorites. It contains in simple language, every course in graduate school we all should have been able to take.  I wrote it as a handbook for mental health, education or medical professionals working with challenging kids and parents.  With your everyday jobs in mind, I provide concrete strategies to:

• Build rapport with stressed-out or resistant parents — when we first meet them.
• Teach the basics of getting to know kids – the first interview as an entirely different experience than what we were taught.
• Down and dirty diagnosis – from everyday school and home descriptions.
• Get children and adolescents to talk more about what really matters – in the room with you and at home.
• Spot developmental and temperamental problems before a crisis develops.
• Learn the importance of temperament in treatment with kids and their parents – understand how to take a ‘tempogram’ as well as a genogram.
• Learn how to give tasks to parents – and how to further treatment when or if they fail.
• Learn what actually works in the parenting literature — building genuine self-esteem, what makes parents effective when setting limits.

As in all my professional workshops, I use many case vignettes to get to the heart of what is going wrong between youngsters and their parents, and I show simple, concrete interventions that can make a big difference in your work — beginning next week.

REVIEWS

“This would be a great resource for teachers, counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists, nurses, etc., as each of these disciplines focus on connecting with kids…if you are a child professional, regardless of orientation, context, or background, this book will certainly help to develop insight and make working with families more effective and rewarding.”
— Clinical Child Psychiatry and Psychology

“The text is chock-full of practical ideas for anyone who sees children or adolescents or their parents…I picked up dozens of useful tips for working with families.”
— The Journal of the American Board of Family Practice

“In a very clear, informative manner, the book portrays the challenges and stresses that confront families today and offers realistic guidance for ways in which professionals can help parents meet these challenges.  Taffel’s insight, knowledge, compassion and caring, are evident on every page.”
— Robert Brooks, Ph.D., Harvard Medical School