Parenting Your Child Through the Challenges of Autism takes a revolutionary approach to helping parents find and implement the most effective and powerful treatments for children with autism. All children with autism respond to treatment differently, which is one of the reasons even autism experts and researchers can't pinpoint which single treatment works best for children who have this condition.
The autism specialists who authored this book recommend observing your child's response to each treatment and adjusting the treatment accordingly. After reading
Parenting Your Child Through the Challenges of Autism, parents themselves will become the expert on their child's autism and choose from a range of research-backed autism programs. These programs are divided into three sections:
- disproven treatments
- questionable treatments
- well-proven treatments.
With this knowledge in hand, parents can trust themselves and establish customized treatment plans that draw on one or more of these programs for the best results.
The book also offers information on medications and a variety of practical dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) skills parents can start using right away to improve their children's responses. Mindfulness and emotion regulation skills are provided to help parents avoid unproductive feelings of despair and disappointment that may arise on the path to finding the best treatments for their children.
About the AuthorM. Anjali Sastry, PhD, teaches system dynamics and global health delivery at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her innovative action learning lab has put close to two hundred graduate students to work on challenges on the front lines of delivering health care in resource-constrained settings, mostly in Africa. As a member of the Global Health Delivery Project, she collaborates on field research at Harvard Medical School. She lives with her family on the Boston-Brookline border. Blaise Aguirre, MD, is an expert in child, adolescent, and adult psychotherapy, including dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) and psychopharmacology. He is medical director of 3East at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital, a residential DBT program for young women exhibiting self-endangering behaviors and borderline personality traits. He has been a staff psychiatrist at McLean since 2000 and is widely recognized for his extensive work in the treatment of mood and personality disorders and personal development in adolescents. He is on the psychiatry faculty at Harvard Medical School and lives in Lexington, MA.
Industry Reviews
"As indicated by its subtitle, this book is not a how-to manual, nor is it a book that advocates one view or another regarding this very complex disorder known as autism. The authors have presented a guide for parents, families, and caregivers with regard to understanding what is and is not known about the disorder, evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the child, establishing medical and educational teams to best support the needs of the child and the family, becoming an effective advocate for the child, handling potential family stresses, and negotiating a multiplicity of interventions and treatment options. This book is well-researched and exceptionally well-balanced in its approach and is a thoughtful, common-sense guide to setting reasonable expectations and successfully negotiating the world of the autistic child." - Margaret L. Bauman, MD, associate professor of neurology at the Harvard Medical School, director of the Autism Research Foundation and the Autism Research Consortium, and founding director of the Lurie Center for Autism
