How to Cope When Your Child Can't: Comfort, Help and Hope for Parents

by Roz Shafran, Ursula Saunders, Alice Welham

Overview

Parenting and caring for a child who is struggling to cope can be painful and stressful, and can make it very hard to enjoy life yourself. Feelings of blame, guilt, sorrow, despair, fear and frustration may be swirling around alongside a desperate desire to cure their pain.

Although parenting a child who is experiencing difficulties is a common problem, we can feel desperately alone when it is happening to us. When someone we love is struggling - for whatever reason - we may become unhappy too. For countless parents and children there are problems with no easy solutions. However, that's where this book comes in. It aims to help understand for ourselves what we can and cannot do; to help us to accept any distress, worry, anxiety, sadness or loss of control in our situations; to see that we can tolerate these things; and to know that there are ways to move forward.

This book is packed with stories from real parents, combined with information from psychological research. It will show you how you can manage to obtain comfort from knowing you are not alone, get help from resources and techniques that really work, and find hope that things can and do change for the better.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472139016
Publisher:	Little, Brown Book Group
Publication date:	06/21/2022
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Roz Shafran (Author)
Roz Shafran is Professor of Translational Psychology at UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health. She is a clinical psychologist and has extensive clinical and research expertise in cognitive behavioural theory and treatment of psychological disorders across the age range. She has co-authored three self-help books and one edited book including Overcoming Perfectionism, The CBT Handbook and The Complete CBT Guide for Anxiety; she has written over 250 peer-reviewed publications. She has three children.

Ursula Saunders (Author)
Ursula Saunders is a fundraiser in the charity sector. Previously she worked for Radio 4 as a researcher and producer. She has two children.

Alice Welham (Author)
Alice Welham is a clinical psychologist and a lecturer at the University of Leicester. She has a broad range of interests in psychology and its clinical applications and has published research in a number of areas. She has two children.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Introduction 1

Section 1 True Stories to Give Comfort, Help and Hope

1 True stories 9

Section 2 Untangling Yourself from Your Child

2 Untangling yourself from your child: Why and how 41

Section 3 Strategies

Introduction to Section 3 61

3 Problem-solving 63

4 Increasing awareness of emotions and their triggers 79

5 Emotion regulation strategies 86

6 Ways of thinking 92

7 Stress and coping 100

8 How vs. why 107

9 Multitasking and time management 111

10 Empathy and compassion 115

How to Cope When Your Child Can't

11 Guilt 121

12 Shame and embarrassment 127

13 Responsibility 134

14 Jealousy and anger 139

Section 4 It Worked for Me - Top Tips from People Who Have Been Through It

15 'Small pleasures' - things that can distract/refocus/reframe 149

16 Try this at home - some helpful strategies and personal strengths 167

17 Comfort, help and hope in a nutshell 175

Section 5 Acceptance

18 Acceptance 183

19 Accepting the contents of the present moment (the 'full catastrophe') 191

20 What does accepting my own experiences have to do with my child? 199

21 What you might notice 207

22 Grief 215

23 Acceptance and action 220

24 Growing 225

25 Final thoughts 229

Further resources 231

Acknowledgements 235

Index 237