Sue and Lou never had any fears or doubts about raising their three children. They were not like their parents. They welcomed the teenage years. They knew their kids might experiment with drugs and alcohol, just like they had. So they talked with their kids about their own experiences they had as teenagers. As a family they were very close. They took their kids camping to Glamis, the desert, the beach and the Colorado River. They went to Big Bear every winter and they golfed almost every weekend as a family. By the time their youngest was in high school, their oldest was already 24 and their middle child was 19. Their youngest would always tell them not to worry, that he would never be like his older brother and sister. Young Adam had witnessed all the trying times his parents had with his two older siblings; alcohol, drugs, house parties, and pre-marital sex. Adam's friends always came over to the house and Sue and Lou knew them all. They were all good kids. But when Adam told his mom he had smoked marijuana, it was not like when the older siblings had experimented with it. Sue and Lou would quickly discover he was using it to escape from the hurt and pain he felt after his first love broke up with him. But what Sue and Lou didn't know was that their worst nightmare was growing in their youngest son. Without having a true understanding of addiction, this family will go through a hell they could have never imagined. In order to keep from having a breakdown Sue started writing about how this all started. It all began with a story Adam wrote in his Freshman English class titled "The Day I told my Mom I Smoke Pot."

Adpoted at Age four tracks the life of a four year old that had been shunted around foster homes for the first four years of his life. In and out of the orphanage everytime returning in poorer health. He is finally adopted by a childless couple, although poor by most standards who became loving parents with great values and standards that set his life in the right direction. From there it traces his acceptance and rejection by certain members of his newly acquired extended family and his development through elementary school, high school and ultimately into the job market with all the twists and turns along the way. Searching for his original identity at birth culminates in a brick wall ending... to be resolved much later in life. He eventually is recruited into the Banking Industry as a Management Trainee and has many interesting experiences in the Consumer Loans Department of many local Branches. Because of his past experience as a Collector he at one time becomes the Bank's roving collection /repo person and some of the situations he relives are both entertaining and worth a chuckle.

'There is so much aching love in this book, such pain and beauty. Behold, and rejoice.' - Tim Winton, author of Cloudstreet Was he thinking, do I have to be this kind of boy to survive? Is this what being a boy is? As a boy growing up on the south coast of England, Howard Cunnell's sense of self was dominated by his father's absence. Now, years later, he is a father, and his daughter is becoming his son. Starting with his own childhood in the Sussex beachlands, Howard tells the story of the years of self-destruction that defined his young adulthood and the escape he found in reading and the natural world. Still he felt compelled to destroy the relationships that mattered to him. Saved by love and responsibility, Cunnell charts his journey from anger to compassion, as his daughter Jay realizes he is a boy, and a son. Most of all, this is a story about love - its necessity and fragility, and its unequalled capacity to enable us to be who we are. Deeply thoughtful, searingly honest and exquisitely lyrical, Fathers and Sons is an exploration of fatherhood, masculinity, authenticity and family.

Imagine a parent's worst nightmare - losing a child. Not to disease or accident, but to a kidnapping. Randy Anglen's only son was abducted to South America by his Chilean mother when he was 20 months old. Anglen fought to get his son for 4 years, fighting a Chilean court system that ignored international law and protected the mother. Anglen searched the streets of Santiago for his son, hatched plans to steal his son out of Chile, paid witnesses and private investigators and made numerous trips to Chile. He was as close at 10 feet from his son, but physically unable to get to him. Chilean courts handed him setback after setback, despite the best efforts of a team of attorneys and U. S. Department of State personnel. The story does not have a happy ending. Anglen writes this book so his son will know what happened -what his daddy did to try to get his son. This is a story of intense grief, fear, frustration and injustice. A story of a father's fight to save the bond between him and his son. A story of a father's love for his child. A story of a corrupt and inefficient South American bureaucratic system that destroyed the relationship between a father and his son. After reading this story, you will give your children an extra hug.

A Mother who's life that came crashing down around her in a blink of an eye!!! A Mother's Worst Nightmare....How does a Mother continue to go on living her everyday life. When her beloved son Joseph was ripped right out of her heart and life......... My Life With My SonNothing is Stronger than a Mother's Love I cannot believe when I look up at you, and see a beautiful man that use to be my little boy. I am always in awe, when I see the changes in you, but yet it saddens me because that part of my life is over. Yet all the memories that I have, will still bring all the laughter, and this warmness in my heart, and I will always have tears in my eyes. Since you where a baby up until present time, you have always given me so much joy, and so many gifts, that I cannot even count. I don't think you ever realized all the ones you gave me that where from within. We made so many memories together, but the love you gave me, was something so special it will last a lifetime.

In her galvanizing new book, A.C.E.S. - Adult-Child Entitlement Syndrome, Barbara Jaurequi provides a thorough and enlightening description of A.C.E.S., a widespread family dilemma in the United States today. Ms. Jaurequi developed her theory of A.C.E.S. through her successful work with hundreds of married couples and their Living-At-Home adult-children. Her book delivers an easy-to-understand, explicit step-by-step guide on how to compassionately compel adult-children to move out of their childhood homes and into the world of personal responsibility once and for all Through the application of a thoughtfully crafted program that will empower their adult-children to discover and achieve personal independence, couples will ultimately learn how to re-focus their attention away from their adult-children and onto other neglected areas of married life, thereby enabling them to enjoy their marital relationships as never before. This is a provocative, compelling, and particularly timely work that is sure to intrigue readers as they recognize the presence of the syndrome in their own families. A.C.E.S. - Adult-Child Entitlement Syndrome is surely one of the most important contributions to Family Systems Theory to come along in decades.

The teacher in this story was a short stocky lady, who, though mentally challenged had an uncanny ability to teach. She could not, or rather would not carry a conversation, but she did have the tenacity to cause those around her to learn whatever she was teaching: What she wished to eat; where she wanted to go; who would be her companion. Her name was Cheryl. Cheryl's mother, Beverly, was 39 when she took a tumble down a flights of steps while exiting a building where she had been the evenings keynote speaker. That fall did not show the full penalty immediately. It would be three more years before Beverly would be diagnosed as having Multiple Sclerosis. That disease would take everything from her.