Elaine Taylor-Klaus - The Essential Guide to Raising Complex Kids with ADHD, Anxiety, and More

with ADHD, Anxiety, and More

What Parents and Teachers Really Need to Know to Empower Complicated Kids with Confidence and Calm

Elaine Taylor-Klaus, PCC, CPCC

Praise for The Essential Guide to Raising Complex Kids

This book is rich with highly useful ideas and new perspectives that can help you and your child succeed while establishing a more peaceful and loving relationship.

Russell A. Barkley Ph.D., author of Taking Charge of ADHD

Speaking from years of practical experience Taylor-Klaus dispenses wit, wisdom and effective strategies.

Sam Goldstein Ph.D., co-author of Raising Resilient Children

Deftly written with humor and compassion, this book offers a framework for developing a collaborative approach in working with your child, opportunities for self-reflection, and action-oriented solutions to some of lifes most difficult parent-child issues. This book is a life saver for many struggling parents who may feel they are barely holding on.

Mary Anne Richey, M.Ed., co-author of Raising Boys with ADHD

With wit and wisdom that can only come from experience, Elaine Taylor-Klaus reminds fellow parents that they really can make a difference in the lives of their complex kids.

Susan Stiffelman, MFT, author of Parenting Without Power Struggles

My favorite parenting book, bar none! Raising complex kids is tough and Taylor-Klaus nails it. A must-read lifeline for parents of struggling kids. This book will transform your life.

Melissa Orlov, author of The ADHD Effect on Marriage

This book is smart, engaging, and written for busy (and sometimes chaotic) families. It teaches parents to use reflection and self-care to connect with the radical acceptance and the "bring it on" attitude needed to take on parenting challenges.

Lidia Zylowska MD, author of The Mindfulness Prescription for Adult ADHD

The situation doesnt call for blame or punishment; it calls for understanding and compassion. Thich Nhat Hanh

Full disclosure: Ive known Elaine Taylor-Klaus for years, and I like and respect her very much. So I was not impartial when I opened the pages of this book. I really wanted to like what I read. After all, having agreed to write this foreword, it would have been awkward to have to find an excuse not to write it.

To my delight, the book proved to be even better than I hoped it would be, at least in my estimation, that is. I dont know about your estimation, of course, because I dont know you.

But, since you picked up this bookmaybe even bought itI can make a pretty good guess as to who you are. Likely, youre a mom. Maybe a dad, but more moms read books like this than dads (which is too badnot that moms read them, of course, but that more dads dont!). And likely you have at least one child youre worried about and want to understand better, as well as better serve.

Of course, you might also be a teacher (I love teachers. My dad was a grade-school teacher, and teachers saved my life all along the way. So if youre a teacher, heres a huge thank you from me!); you might be a grandparent (a close male friend of mine recently told me, Being a grandparent is the only part of life that isnt overrated; Im not a grandparent yet, but I look forward to being one some day); you might be a parent in the making, or a sibling of a complex kid, or maybe you were once a complex kid yourself. Who knows, you might just be someone who picked up this book by chance in a waiting room in Kansas.

But whoever and wherever you are, read on. This is a book that emerges triumphantly and with dignity out of suffering. Elaine has done the hard part. With a glimmer of hope following a difficult decade of parenting, she had what she calls her Scarlett OHara moment while sitting by herself on a cabin porch in the woods. She stood up, shook her fist at the sky, and said to herself, As God is my witness, no parent should ever have to go through alone what I did those first ten years.

With this book, she makes good on her promise. The ideas and methods she developed and describes in this book are what she needed to know, and I suspect theyre what you need to know too.

I watched this book grow over years. Elaine took great care to get it all right. She put in the sweat and tears required to make a book good. Books dont just happen. Especially if you write them yourself (I know, having written quite a few), they grow fitfully, have to be trimmed and cut, fed and watered, fertilized, and let lie fallow until finallyif youre luckythe moment of harvest arrives.

Elaine has harvested a magnificent book. Chock-full of practical ideas and solutions, teeming with hard-earned nuggets of wisdom, always a friend to the reader but never a lecturer or preacher, this book will live for many years to come, helping all who read it and sparing those who do (as well as those they love and care for) the unnecessary suffering that lack of understanding, knowledge, and skill always inflict.

So reader, relish and enjoy! Take the knowledge and wisdom in these pages, so engagingly presented, and incorporate them into your daily life; practice the principles, share with others the same, and watch your world and the world of all you touch, from your own children outward, bask in the benefits and grow strong.

Edward Hallowell, M.D., author of Driven to Distraction and The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness

If, however, we are preoccupied with the fear and despair in us, we cant help remove the suffering of others. THICH NHAT HANH