A powerful toolkit for parents of both checked-out and stressed-out teens that shows exactly what to do (and stop doing) to support their academic and emotional flourishing.

Adolescents are hardwired to explore and grow, and learning is mainly how they do this. But a shocking majority of teens are disengaged from school, simultaneously bored and overwhelmed. This is feeding an alarming teen mental health crisis. As kids get older and more independent, parents often feel powerless to help. But fear not, there are evidence-backed strategies to guide them from disengagement to drive, in and out of school.

For the past five years, award-winning journalist Jenny Anderson and the Brookings Institution’s global education expert Rebecca Winthrop have been investigating why so many children lose their love of learning in adolescence. Now, weaving extensive original research with real-world stories of kids who transformed their relationships with learning, they identify four modes of learning that students use to navigate through the shifting academic demands and social dynamics of middle and high school, shaping the internal narratives about their skills, potential, and identity:

• Resister When kids resist, they struggle silently with profound feelings of inadequacy or invisibility, which they communicate by ignoring homework, playing sick, skipping class, or acting out.
• Passenger When kids coast along, consistently doing the bare minimum and complaining that classes are pointless. They need help connecting school to their skills, interests, or learning needs.
• Achiever When kids show up, do the work, and get consistently high grades, their self-worth can become tied to high performance. Their disengagement is invisible, fueling a fear of failure and putting them at risk for mental health challenges.
• Explorer When kids are driven by internal curiosity rather than just external expectations, they investigate the questions they care about and persist to achieve their goals.

Understanding your child’s learning modes is vital for nurturing their ability to become Explorers. Anderson and Winthrop outline simple yet counterintuitive parenting strategies for connecting with your child, tailoring your listening and communication styles to their needs, igniting their curiosity, and building self-awareness and emotional regulation.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) involves difficulties in social interaction and communication, restricted interests and repetitive behavior. Approximately half of children with ASD also exhibit disruptive behaviors such as tantrums and aggression, which can be stressful for the child and family. Parent Training for Disruptive Behavior is an 11-session intervention for parents who wish to learn how to reduce disruptive behaviors and increase adaptive skills in their children with ASD. Each session introduces effective behavior change strategies and includes easy-to-use worksheets, checklists, and take-home activities to help parents apply what they have learned. By participating in this intervention with a trained therapist, parents can help their children overcome behavior problems, promoting happier kids and families.

"Low-demand parenting requires radical acceptance. It says to the kid right in front of you, I see you, just as you are. - You are ok here. I love you right here."

Parent to neurodivergent children and autistic adult, Amanda Diekman, outlines a parenting approach that finally lowers the bar for the whole family, enabling the equilibrium of the home to be restored.

Low-demand parenting allows you to drop the demands and expectations that are making family life impossible and embrace the joyful freedom of living life with low demands. It can be a particularly effective approach for children with high anxiety levels including neurodivergent children. Amanda talks from experience and teaches you how to identify what the big, tiny and invisible demands are for your own child and gives you the step-by-step instructions on how to drop them.

Full of practical resources and scripts that are easy to implement in busy everyday life, this book is your flashlight and your map to parenting your uniquely wired child. It will not tell you where to go, but it will help you find your way so you and your family thrive.

As women, there is no definite beginning or end to our search for our identity. And the path to awakening to who we are beyond our own identity starts in a fog. In Growing Wings & Children, author and medical intuitive Alison Feather Adams discusses how to allow new dimensions of who we are to become integrated with our current identity of self.

Adams explains how we gain faith in opening our hearts-to receive greater knowledge of deeper dimensions within us-when we expand our capacity to meet life and allow it to inform us of its potential to be experienced. We may develop greater intimacy within our relationships as we become more accepting of what is important to us and choose how we may express it independently.

It also addresses how children can be a gift to us by reminding us of our own innocence if we allow them to grow with confidence in who they are. Our journey of self becomes an ever-expanding realization that grows in grace as we allow Greater Other Dimensions to guide and enrich who we have the ability to be.

GOD, WHY DIDN'T HE COVER ME? DISCLAIMER: This is not the typical, tell-all story; it is an uncompromising expose Emotionally and sexually abused by religious leaders, God has anointed me in the area of my affliction to purely expose the devices of Satan and challenge the Body of Christ to raise the standard of holiness, purity, and integrity. As I am willing to become transparent in this three-part series (From Mistress to Ministry), my testimony capitalizes on scriptural references and information, in conjunction with past experiences, to present a biblical reformation that will promote genuine holiness in a wayward church. The principle of spiritual warfare is that we must be called to order, before we can advance to the next level of victory. My objective is three-fold: to nurture damaged spirits, to foster a healing process for victims of abuse, and to present the deliverance that repentance brings to those who are trapped in sexual sins. Pastors, can God count on you to avoid the damaging effects of committing spiritual incest? Husbands, can your wives trust you to shun the immoral acts of adultery/fornication? Fathers, can your daughters lean on you to steer clear of raping them of their innocence? Teachers, can our children expect you to be mentors, and not molesters? Executives, can your subordinates rely on you to refrain from sexual-harassment violations? Officials, can your citizens depend on you to protect us against economic hardship? President of the United States, can God trust you to call this nation back to Him and snatch us out of the hand of the enemy? More than mere members of an organization or a population, we are your sons and daughters. Powerful ambassadors of God, will you cover us in our imperfections and not continue to exploit our vulnerabilities? "For the time is come that judgment deliverance through investigation or examination] must begin at the house of God..". When the Kingdom of God does not influence the nation through truth and righteousness, the leadership of the nation is not equipped to positively affect its citizens. However, the nation cannot be healed until the church has been cleansed. Thus, we can not afford to remain complacent to the issues of clergy misconduct and the abuse and misuse of spiritual power. Secret issues can only be eradicated by exposing old wounds; otherwise, hidden infection will inevitably spread throughout the Body. In presenting this 21st-century exposition of the consequences of making ungodly decisions, I minister based on where I am, after I have judged myself - based on where I was. "Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not; but have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the Word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscious in the sight of God" (II Cor. 4:1-2).

The Book is Titled Mentally Challenge due to its relative views on the definition of the words. Many will bring eyes to the title and then lead their mind into believing that this is a book about Mental retardation. It is, but in fact the mentally challenged are ourselves. My book will chapter by chapter explain what and how we are more mentally challenged than those whom we label as such. The focuses of the book are directed in many ways, some pin pointing thinking and choices. It will break down how certain situations with ourselves as individuals can lead us to discovering specific mental challenges that we may have. Certain chapters will help your mind collect information effectively. The book core purpose is to help us develop questions for ourselves that only we have the answers to. I completed this book based solely off of what the people we live, breath, and interact with everyday have shown me. I pray you enjoy the book as much as I did writing it. Thank you