By Jane Utley Adelizzi and Diane B. Goss
(Bergin & Garvey/Greenwood, 2001)
In a straightforward and empathetic tone, Dr. Jane Utley Adelizzi and Dr. Diane Goss, both professors in the PAL program, sensitively offer support to parents of children with learning disabilities who wish to see their children grow to their full potential. While juggling the complex expectations imposed upon them, parents often combat confusion, anger, fear, sadness, and frustration. This book will help diffuse these overwhelming feelings, empowering parents with the ability to provide the academic and personal support their children need to thrive.
Adelizzi and Goss demystify the very fuzzy world of LD terminology and theory and clarify the complicated process of diagnosis and treatment. They shed light on the way children and adolescents with learning disabilities function in the home environment, in social relationships, and at school. Parents will find new understanding and hope as the authors-with the collective voice of parents and children who deal with LD every day-lead them through the maze of issues they must confront.
Reviews:
"This is a book for parents. It is a book about the child with learning problems. It is, importantly, a book about balance in an arena fraught with anguish, anger, and accusation. It is about the balance between recognizing a real problem, but appreciating the whole child; between watching, but also listening; between using your own educated common sense, but also seeking specialist assistance; between promoting academic success, but also fostering emotional well-being; between helping, but also not helping so your child enjoys mastery and learns independence. The authors encourage self-advocacy but make it clear how good professionals can help. They address abstract topics but make them vividly and often poignantly alive in all too real examples. This is an intensely real, wonderfully balanced book full of empathy, wisdom and downright practical help. I recommend it highly to parents and to the professionals whose assistance they seek." - Dr. Jane Holmes Bernstein, Director of the Neuropsychology Program, Department of Psychiatry, Children's Hospital, Boston/Harvard Medical School
"Bravo to Drs. Adelizzi and Goss for giving us a book, at last, that we can recommend to parents without qualification! Only the experienced clinician's eye could have given us such a wide-angle view of the puzzles faced by help-seeking parents of individuals with learning disabilities. This sound, honest, comprehensive and comprehendible approach addresses the entire range of parents' questions: from diagnosis, to intervention techniques on all affected academic, language, and organizational issues, and finally to the emotional and social ramifications. In a positive, compassionate tone, the uncluttered text interweaves soundly researched information with examples of clients' personal stories. If you have only one book on your shelf as a reference, a support system, and a literary ‘friend,' this should be the one. My only wish is that I had written it myself!" - Dorothy Ungerleider, Founding President, Association of Educational Therapists, Author: 'Reading, Writing and Rage'