To anyone who is not a new mother, babyhood may seem like a nanosecond long--a quick blip on the radar of life. But to a new mother, it feels never-ending. A child is born, a thunderstorm comes barreling in, and the idea of buckling down to raise said baby seems like an eternity--and feels totally impossible. How will I ever make it through? This is especially true for women today, who are raised to foster strong personal and professional identities. Becoming a mother is a complete restructuring of one's life, and there's a necessary psychic reckoning that gets buried under dirty diapers and lost amid the nipple shields and mashed peas. Loaded with unfettered support from a mom who has been through it, You Are a F*cking Awesome Mom offers a welcome acknowledgement that motherhood is a mind f*ck--and that women deserve more than trite oversimplifying and sugarcoating about the miracles of child-rearing. It is not a parenting book, it's a mama book, one with an irresistible, irreverent voice, sharp insight, and some welcome doses of "truth salad," plus a few experts thrown in for good measure. It's You Are a Badass for new mothers, and a long-awaited life raft for all the mothers drowning in maternal confusion and terror.

'The best piece of nature writing since H is for Hawk, and the most powerful work of biography I have read in years' Neil Gaiman 'Wonderful - I can't recommend it too highly' Helen Macdonald 'One of those rare, enchanted books' Isabella Tree 'Beautiful - it made me cry' Simon Amstell 'I was entranced' Cathy Rentzenbrink This is a story about birds and fathers. About the young magpie that fell from its nest in a Bermondsey junkyard into Charlie Gilmour's life - and swiftly changed it. Demanding worms around the clock, riffling through his wallet, sharing his baths and roosting in his hair... About the jackdaw kept at a Cornish stately home by Heathcote Williams, anarchist, poet, magician, stealer of Christmas, and Charlie's biological father who vanished from his life in the dead of night. It is a story about repetition across generations and birds that run in the blood; about a terror of repeating the sins of the father and a desire to build a nest of one's own. It is a story about change - from wild to tame; from sanity to madness; from life to death to birth; from freedom to captivity and back again, via an insane asylum, a prison and a magpie's nest. And ultimately, it is the story of a love affair between a man and a magpie.

LEARNING THROUGH PLAY

One of the best ways for children with autism, Asperger's, and sensory processing disorders to learn is through play. Children improve their motor skills, language skills, and social skills by moving their bodies and interacting with their environment. Yet the biggest challenges parents, teachers, and loved ones face with children on the autism spectrum or with sensory processing disorders is how to successfully engage them in play.

Pediatric occupational therapist Tara Delaney provides the answer. In "101 Games and Activities for Children with Autism, Asperger's, and Sensory Processing Disorders, " she shows you how to teach your children by moving their bodies through play. These interactive games are quick to learn but will provide hours of fun and learning for your child. And many of the games can be played indoors or outdoors, so your child can enjoy them at home, outside, or on field trips.

More than one hundred games that help your child: make eye-contact, stay focused, and strengthen his or her motor skills associate words with objects and improve language and numerical skills learn how to interact with others, how to take turns, and other social skills needed for attending preschool and school

'Byrne's book is about scientific parenting, and it is very welcome indeed ... breezy and digestible ... this is such a good book' Tom Whipple, The Times Kids aren't all the same. You can't follow instructions and expect success every time. So what if parents approached their children as questions to be answered and not problems to be solved? Scientist Emma Byrne takes evidence-based information on everything from physical and emotional development to what is really happening during sleep and separation anxiety, then shows how to apply it to the unique child in front of you. She challenges perceived wisdom by focusing on the variance as well as the mean - because your child is an individual, not an average. Like all good scientists, you're going to have a few missteps along the way. You'll reach dead ends; you'll need to wrack your brain for new approaches. But by staying curious, creative and paying attention to what's really happening with your family, Emma Byrne will help you figure it out. Just in time for everything to change once again.

Poetry. Literary Nonfiction. African American Studies. In Shane McCrae's NONFICTION, the self is repeatedly re-figured as the site of rupture between truth and fiction, present and past, first- person and third-person--the rupture in which the dichotomies we live by, the dichotomies that erase us, originate. The speakers of these poems inhabit impossible situations, and the poems themselves speak neither of overcoming, nor of being overcome by, these impossibilities, but of the moment of equilibrium between extremes, the moment of uncertainty from which the future emerges. As McCrae writes at the end of his two-part poem on Solomon Northup, "in the darkness / I after a while couldn't be sure / My eyes were open." These poems assert, and foreground, possibility; the rupture they describe is hope.

The newest generation of children is exposed to ubiquitous technology, more than any generation that preceded them. They are photographed with smartphones from the moment they're born, and begin interacting with screens at around four months old. Is this good news or bad news? A wonderful opportunity to connect around the world? Or the first step in creating a generation of addled screen zombies? The truth is, there's no road map for navigating this territory. But while many have been quick to declare this the dawn of a neurological and emotional crisis, solid science on the subject is surprisingly hard to come by. In this book, Anya Kamenetz--an expert on both education and technology, as well as a mother of two young children--takes a refreshingly practical look at the subject. Surveying hundreds of fellow parents on their practices and ideas, and cutting through a thicket of inconclusive studies and overblown claims, she hones a simple message, a riff on Michael Pollan's well-known "food rules": Enjoy Screens. Not too much. Mostly with others. This brief but powerful dictum forms the backbone of a philosophy that will help parents survive the ubiquity of technology in their children's lives, curb their panic, and create room for a happy, healthy family life. Kamenetz's sophisticated yet practical thinking is a necessary cure for an age of anxiety.

In "Letters to My Sons," M. G. Bianco writes real letters to his real sons on a variety of topics from love, hate, marriage, adultery, and interpersonal relationships. His letters seek to encourage his sons, and now other fathers and men to understand the basis and nature of relationships so that both parties to the relationship can be fully human.

Relationships, rather than esteeming others in their full humanity, are often reduced to mechanical and consumer-based interactions where both parties are dehumanized. We even look at others as if they are nothing more than an object to be used or desired. This dehumanizes both the looker and the looked upon. Furthermore, we excuse our actions by our faulty views of love, hate, and the rituals that define our relationships.

In offering a humane vision for human relationships, M. G. Bianco offers wisdom to make all of us more human in our relationships. He does so through letters that can also serve as models for fathers and other men, women, and parents to imitate in their own interactions with their sons.

For a left-handed child in a right-friendly world, tasks that should come easily can seem confusing and frustrating. Parents of the more than 400,000 lefties born annually in the United States have had no resource that deals seriously with the learning difficulties their children face -- until now.

Loving Lefties is the first ever guide to address all the issues pertinent to left-handedness: the biology, the physiology, and the psychological and practical effects of being a left-handed child. An essential aid for parents, teachers, and professionals, it covers the history and mythology of the left-handed brain, and offers sound advice on:

• recognizing left-handedness in a child
• making your child's home and school lefty-friendly
• giving your child appropriate direction and encouragement
• identifying the advantages of being left-handed
• helping your child learn the skills his right-handed parents, instructors, and siblings consider basic.

Filled with resource lists, guidelines, quick tips, answers to frequently asked questions, case studies, and anecdotes, Loving Lefties is the essential guide for raising a happy, healthy southpaw.

Describes what being a foster mom is really like, the effects of foster care on the whole family, and how the foster care system fails severely abused children. Foster children are society's throwaway kids, the children no one wants-until someone finally does. Saving Michael provides an inside look Keri Vellis' struggle to secure the best possible services for two severely abused and traumatized siblings. Some doors opened, but too many closed during her ten-year journey as the voice for children in her care who have no voice of their own within the current system. Readers get a glimpse of Keri and her family's day-to-day life as she went from mother of three to adoptive mother of three more children and then the temporary caregiver of another seventeen. Saving Michael delves into issues bigger than one family's experiences and determination. Now an author and child advocate, Vellis provides a profoundly personal look into what it takes to get the best for each of the children she's had in her care. Her journey started from the first day of her first foster care situation and the urgent need for diagnoses and treatment. It continued despite the many obstacles thrown in her path to securing services for the vulnerable children in her family's care. Along the way, she details the many ups and downs, challenges and triumphs, her whole family experienced as part of the foster care system. All children deserve permanent, safe homes. The effort to obtain those for every child is a tremendous one not for the faint-hearted. But the rewards reverberate for everyone when it works. Follow Keri and her family on this heartfelt journey of love and persistence.

Open-Eyed Adoption presents a compassionate look at uncovering the mysteries of the adoptive parent/adoptee relationship Open-Eyed Adoption is written for the purpose of supplying a resource for those who have adopted children as well as those who are considering the possibility of doing so. Often adoptive parents are ill-prepared and uninformed as to the unique challenges that raising adopted children presents. For instance, the earlier a parent knows that an adoptee has trauma from the beginning, the better equipped they can be to adapting their parenting style vs what may have been the style of their own parents. Being unaware of this, they can be confused and discouraged as to what they are seeing and why their adopted child responds the way they do. They may even be bewildered, due to the amount of love they give, to see a different response than they expect. This book gives resource and tools to the parent for better understanding of what may be happening in the heart of their child. The information contained in Open-Eyed Adoption can also be used when parents are communicating with their adult adopted children. It encourages parents to look at parenting from different angles when it comes to the adoptee. Furthermore, Open- Eyed Adoption dispels the myth that they are all alone, takes a look at the importance of self-kindness and shows the way to get the support they need.