Developmental-disabilities Books

This is a great book, not just for Asperger Syndrome. It relates and explains all of the sensory systems really well and in easy to understand terms.

I like how this book breaks down each sensory area and identifies it with a sensory character to help you navigate through the book. I really liked the "Incident, Interpretation & Intervention" table that walks you through many different specific sensory issues to help offer advice in addressing issues that arise. Offers strategies. I found the book quite insightful. Joanna Keating-Velasco, Author, A Is For Autism, F Is for Friend

This book brings to mind June Carter Cash's beautiful, fair-minded statement to husband Johnny Cash: "I'll meet you halfway." A more fair and loving statement has yet to be made.

I did feel it was helpful in many respects. It is good to get the voice of a man who has intimate, personal knowledge of a/A and explaining some of the sensory issues that accompany this neurobiological condition. Since people on the a/A spectrum are expected to make concessions to the NT world just to get along socially, it is nice to have books like this that provide explanations of what people with autism contend with. The world is for everyone and not just for the NT population. Shore does a good job of encouraging NT and a/A to meet one another halfway. This is about cooperation.

I am an adult with Aspergers and bought the book after reading the great reviews here. Although it is a good book that shows some aspects of the Aspergers world to outsiders, for us who live and swim in it, this was an unsatisfying book. It merely scratches the surface of our world. Buy it if you want just a glimpse in.

This book brings a much more detailed perspective on early adult life on the autistic spectrum than many others. The fact that it is looking at AS through a man's eyes is also worth noting. The author touchs on career choice issues that many with AS have agonised over. To disclose or not to disclose being the Big Question. I won't spoil your reading by recounting the author's experiences.

The book describes 'relationships' in candid AS terms. There is a huge amount here for researchers and professionals to dwell on. However, the book is not a guidebook for managing relationships better (or even getting into them) and a crucial metacommentary on events in the book is largely absent.

Overall I enjoyed this book. Most readers will find the latter half of the book dealing with college and adult life more revealing than the first half, in my opinion. The book presents AS in sharp tones on occasion. It is a 'warts and all' narrative, but I highly recommend reading it.

A must for law enforcement who are unfamiliar with autism and related behavior. It should be used in conjunction with "Dangerous Encounters--Avoiding Perilous Situations with Autism" by Bill Davis. In 2007, Raymond Lee Mitchell, a young man with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), died after a struggle with sheriff deputies from alleged autism-induced "excited delirium syndrome" , a condition theorized to lead to sudden cardiac arrest. Raymond was throwing a tantrum and the mother felt forced to call the police. The deputies got into a struggle with the youth, who died as a result. The officers in this case may not have realized that a person with ASD has difficulty understanding verbal commands and body language. To prevent tragedies such as Raymond's, guidelines provided in this book can be used by police and correctional officers regarding identifying aggression and challenging behavior in these youth. It should be used with real-life examples and in-depth training.

Although I admit I haven't read the entire book - most of the parts I read were right on target.

I will tell you from personal experience with 2 step children - the police are actually becoming much more sensitive to a child or adult with Asbergers/Autism/Bi-Polar disorder. They seem to be a lot more knowlegeable and helpful to both the offending and - offended parties.

The only thing that concerns me with developing policies toward advocacy of protecting people with HFA is the fact that most of these kids, at least in my experience know that what they are doing (some of these things are sexual deviance and some are violent acts) is wrong morally.

The kids I have dealt with are not "acedemically" learning disabled. They get good grades in school. They know the difference between right and wrong.

It has been my experience as a step-parent of two boys (One with Asbergers, the other with Bipolar) these children will do the "bad stuff" behind a closed door or when they "believe" they have no supervision or they believe no one is watching them. (Understanding they don't really always know when they are being watched)

When you ask them why they did something bad after the fact - the Asbergers kid will tell you exactly why he did it. The bipolar kid is smart enough to know telling you why could get him into more trouble and he won't tell you.

It has been my experience they both can/will react violently when they realize they have been caught. Getting caught doing anything wrong makes a normal person nervous but to a person with autism or bipolar it can make them do something drastic to evade capture...or injure you or damage property - which to me is the real danger to law enforcement. My advice to law enforcement - if the autistic person is over 12 years old...don't approach one of these people alone without some kind of help or back-up if you can help it.

It is a very complicated problem. I am not unsympathetic to the advocates of the disabled. However - I am not an advocate of throwing out "accountablity" for the autistic perpetrator of a sexual or a violent crime. If someone is capable of doing something violent or sexually deviant once, they will do it again - and they do not belong out in the world loose to harm or violate other people.

I don't buy the argument these kids just need to be drugged after a violent outburst and sent back to a half-way house, back to their parents house or an adult foster care home. Some of these people do need to be locked up in a hospital or a criminal facility for their entire life.

This was a very informative book regarding the difficulties law enforcement individuals face when confronted with what looks like "red flag" criminal behavior by individuals who are rarely in control of their behavior and who generaly do not respond to verbal commands. While written five years ago, this is still a timely topic, not just for law enforcement professionals, but for families who care for loved ones diagnosed with Autism. The perspectives of the author are definitely written from the heart as well as from a solid professional foundation. Anyone who is caring for a loved one afflicted with Autism should read this book and put into practice the recommendations identified.

This is a must read for all law enforcement personnel, fire departments, emergency medical technicians and especially parents of children with autism. It is so important that communities use this resource to recognize the characteristics of persons with autism and strategies to help should they encounter a person with this neurological disorder. As a parent, this was a real eye- opener and made me realize how much work and education needs to take place in my own community. Thank you Mr. Debbaudt for this book!

Debbaudt does an excellent job on two fronts" First, explaining to law enforcment professionals how to identify and deal with autistic people, but also encouraging parents and caretakers to take responsibility for educating their loved ones on how to deal with the police in order to avoid tragedies. People with developmental disabilities are seven times more likely to interact with the police than people without disabilities. This is an important issue, and this book is an important contribution towards helping ameliorate a significant problem.

I've never read a book by people with Down Syndrome before, and haven't gotten to meet many people with Down Syndrome either, so it was a real pleasure to get to meet and understand what these two young men are thinking and feeling on a variety of topics from having Down Syndrome, school and interacting with others, what their dreams are for their future, how they feel about women, marriage, and children, etc.

It was a hard book to sit down and read front to back because the book was structured as a series of quotes from both boys or conversations between them and their family members, and also because the way they phrase things is different from what I am used to, so I instead enjoyed reading a few chapters a day.

I was a little taken aback at some of Jason's attitudes towards women at that time, but I appreciate that he was a high school student at that time and may have matured in his viewpoints since then - I know I am very different from when I was a high-schooler! People with strong religious convictions may prefer to read this book before handing it off to their teen with DS, since the views are largely secular.

This was a valuable and unique look inside the heads of two strong young men who are working hard to be accepted and beloved contributors to society, and I am so glad they wrote this book to share their thoughts with us.

I read this book when my son was just a baby, and I was still full of misconceptions and misunderstandings about Down syndrome. The story of these two young men, told in their own words, did more to help me begin to envision a life full of hope and potential for my baby than any other book I'd read. I want to thank them for helping me learn, and grow as a person, and be a better mother to my own son.

This is a book written in their own words by two young men who have Down's Syndrome. They share the ups and down's of their lives . Although my son is only nine, I found this book very helpful because it gave me some preview of things to come. Because the book was written in the boys' own words, it gives a unique picture into the minds and lives of older children with Down syndrome. It also gave some insight into familiar problems, as well as some events that were unique to these boys who authored the book. I found myself wishing that my own son had a close friend to help guide him through the ups and downs that await him in his teenage years. Then I realised that I could actively seek out peers for him to become friendly with at my local Down syndrome chapter, and maybe I could find some friends that he could become close with in a similar fashion to the authors of this book. I highly recommend this book to all parents, caregivers, teachers and other professionals who work with children who have disabliities similar to Down Syndrome, because the experiences of these boys could cover a broad spectrum of disabilities, not only Down Syndrome. So many books are written from an outsider's prespective. This book comes straight from the sourcel.

I read this when my son was a baby and the book was new. I couldn't relate to ANYTHING about these boys lives. As a woman, I just couldn't relate to their male view of the world. We did not share any interests either. This book might be more appreciated by an adult male relative, professional, or family friend, but I wouldn't recommend it for a teen. It is nice that these two boys with DS are so capable, but their book would be more interesting for someone that shared their viewpoint and/or interests. If you are a woman, read something more uplifting.

i think this book should go to individuals to learn about issues that might be dealing with. these two advocates have learned a lot and how their parents has taught them i think i definitively recommend this book to go to many libraries and bookstores so that other men can learn how to do things on their own just like any other men. i am a women and i have down syndrome to i have read this it made me realize that having down syndrome is a celebration

I am not a supporter of vaccinations, so I approached this book with great interest. I was sorely disappointed. This book is difficult and tedious to read, says almost nothing about vaccinations, and makes ludicrous leaps of illogic.

Instead of discussing vaccinations themselves, Coulter centers this book largely on interviews with parents of neurologically damaged children and some literature review of neurological impairments. He starts by stressing the rising numbers of developmental disabilities in the USA. He describes the symptomology, chapter by chapter, of five major disorders: autism, minimal brain damage, post-encephalitic syndrome, allergies, and the sociopathic personality. In each chapter, he delves into such symptoms as "ego weakness," "alienation," and "egotism," heavily illustrating with case histories obtained from his interviews. He then makes considerable effort to convince the reader that these symptoms are neurological in nature by describing "symptomatic parallels" with post-encephalitic syndrome, such as seizures and doing poorly in neuropsychological testing. Next, he ventures that because individuals with these disorders share so many neurological sequelae in common with those who have had encephalitis, they must have had encephalitis as well. Finally, he reasons that because vaccines often causes encephalitis, "the childhood vaccination program is the only possible cause of a mass epidemic of clinical and sub-clinical encephalitits."

In short, Coulter believes that "developmental disabilities are nearly always generated by encephalitis. And the primary cause of encephalitis in the United States and other industrialized countries is the childhood vaccination program." His hypothesis may be intriguing, but he offers nothing to support it besides conjecture and spurious arguments. At best, there might be some correlations of interest. But to determine a causal link is as silly as stating, "Air makes lifevests float. Wood floats. Therefore, air makes wood float." If you are looking for intelligent arguments against vaccinations, you won't find any here.

If you think you are doing the right thing by getting your child vaccinated, think again! And truly investigate it. There is enough evidence now to conclude that S.I.D.S., asthma, autism, ADD, ADHD, epilepsy and Epstein Barr are linked to childhood vaccinations.

A vaccine in and of itself is a great thing, however, it is the addition of toxic heavy metals, and other ingredients used to attenuate a microbe that make it deadly. ...

When a child is born, it is born without myelin (a fatty protective coating) attached to the nervous system. When we introduce these toxic substances to a baby's unprotected nervous system we are gambling. Gambling that the child will not react violently to the stressor. Many of these affects are not reported, those that are, are labeled, "underlying brain conditions." Now I have been reading that the CDC is now working on a vaccine that has 95-100 different vaccines in one shot. The issue today Look out, Be careful, Investigate first, then decide.

The arguement here is; either you are considered a freeloader (herd immunity - protected in a population by those vaccinated) by protecting your right to good health, or you are a conformist. The conformists believe in the vaccine and its health benefits, and those that question suppositions are considered the "outcasts" - or the ones who "are not part of the team." The CDC is now using the September 11 attacks to mandate small pox vaccine.

As for the book, I think despite other criticisms that the author is very knowledgable about the issues and presents a good case for not vaccinating. Harris presents parents who have had children who have been damaged by - what he believes -are the vaccinations. Harris suggests that previosly mentioned "non-reported" effects of vaccinations are creating socially handcapped people. Harris Coulter has my respect for service in 2 presidential cabinets as an interpreter, and for investigating this topic and taking a stand. Well written.

5 Stars!

...

You would think that this is all dry and medical reading, but you would be wrong. If you have ever met anyone with a temper or a compulsion you understand after reading this book. I was captivated from the beginning to the end. I found myself evaluating my own signs, signals and symptoms. If Mr. Coulter is partially correct . . . his work could be (and should be) the beginning of a total examination of the theory and contents of all vaccines. Well done. I will be continuing my investigations with this information as a corner stone.

Coulter's premise is fascinating. Few authors have addressed the long-term consequences of vaccination. Hopefully, this work will stimulate further research.

...I think despite other criticisms that the author is very knowledgable about the issues and presents a good case for not vaccinating. Harris presents parents who have had children who have been damaged by - what he believes -are the vaccinations. Harris suggests that previosly mentioned "non-reported" effects of vaccinations are creating socially handcapped people. Harris Coulter has my respect for service in 2 presidential cabinets as an interpreter, and for investigating this topic and taking a stand. Well written.

5 Stars...

I'm amazed such a serious subject is given this cutesy treatment, but then, this is just the sort of book educators love to write. Nothing really practical here, just sweet little anecdotes about kids who fight over the swingset at recess and inner musings of the author on how much he "admires" the passion of abused children. The format is about one paragraph per page, so if you're looking for detailed instruction and explanation, this book ain't it (it's also a shameful waste of paper). A nice book for those who want to keep the subject clean and simple, but not recommended for those who desire real information or understanding. Silly and slightly insulting.

This is a book that is easy to read but has a lot of helpful information on a difficult subject. There aren't a lot of "answers" in this book but it gave me a lot of food for thought in dealing with difficult children.

If you have the "instinct" for working with children who have emotional and behavioral difficulties, this book is for you!! In the format of an experienced E/BD teacher's "thought journal," its short anecdotes touch your heart and remind you that even though sometimes your best is not enough, it's all that you can give these tough kids. I, too, keep this book within easy reach and give it to all my friends, student teachers and aides. (Additional suggestion: I also have been known to give it to those folks who don't "get it" in an attempt to bring out that empathy gene -- works well with administrators and grumpy regular ed teachers.) GREAT BOOK!!!

This book has brought me peace within the first part of my journey of educating emotionally disturbed teenagers. I am grateful to have purchased this book and read it every night before I go to bed. There are many things the author says that are just "food for thought". I find that these 'morsels' really apply in terms of dealing with my students. I recommend this book to ALL teachers, both new and veteran who work with emotionally disturbed children.

This is an excellent book to have at your desk. I give a copy to every student teacher I supervise once they've completed their training with us. It's anecdotal format makes it easy to refresh yourself quickly and the information is useful for kids grades k-12. I highly recommend this book. It's the best $16.00 I've spent!

Reviewed by Ann Penhallurick, for Intellectual Disability, Australasia: March, 2002 pp. 16-17

This book is definitely a "must read". Forget the "Multicultural" in the title, or, more precisely, do not limit yourself to Australian definitions thereof. This is not a how-to guide for, say, Chinese-Australians to work with Lebanese-Australians: the book's concept of culture is much broader than nation-of-origin. Lilah Pengra was originally an anthropologist with an interest in culture not usually recognised as relevant in the delivery of social and disability support services. However, she began working with people with disabilities who were also people of indigenous American culture and, in the book, she cites some wonderfully thought provoking examples of the conflicting sets of values that brought her anthropological training into play and eventually resulted in what is evidently excellent practice, and also this remarkable book.

And it is remarkable; one of the most accessible reads that I have come across in a long professional career while, at the same time, one of the best informed and informative books I will have on my shelves for, I suspect, a long time. Having said that, I have to also say that I do, personally, have some problems with what seem to me to be inherent contradictions between Pengra's assertion that culture is learned and her lack of analysis of the learning that has taken place for her clients: it seems that she accepts and even promotes their values without thinking about how we all acquire values that are, for example, market-driven or gender-driven and not necessarily consistent with either ourselves or our well-being. However, the examples of value conflict and resolution that Pengra so eloquently cites are essential to read and to think about because, quibbles aside, good practice in disability support cannot become excellent practice without a very clear awareness of the issues she is raising.

Your Values, My Values is also more than extremely readable presentation of information about how culture (which could be class culture, gender culture, national culture and so on and on) affects service direction and delivery. Pengra also deals with the way culture is embedded within our cognitive schemas, providing a well researched theoretical basis that moves away from the simple behaviourist theories that have dominated thinking in disability services for too long. The 256 page book is divided into four parts: Principles of Values-Based Service, Designing Values-Based Services, Values-Based Services in Context and My Own Values. There are three chapters in each of the first three sections and one in the final section. Sub-sections of chapters like "Identifying Problem Behaviour and Designing Interventions", and "Identifying the problem from the person's point of view" seem standard but present an easily accessible, alternative analysis of approaching a "problem" that we are all familiar with. The book is well referenced, too, and has a good index, particularly given that it is not written as an academic text so would have been much harder to index than most.

I've already made a dozen notes and whipped off half a dozen overheads from this book in planning for various talks I am giving in the near future. I would recommend the book for ALL services which support people with disabilities, ALL policy makers, and just about every academic course in disabilities that is around. It's focus is American and as aforesaid there are times when I find it perhaps overinclusive or perhaps overgenerous in its notion and analysis of culture, but, if you will forgive the cliché, Your values, My Values really is a giant step forward.

I have worked in an urban school district for over 15 years as a Physical Therapist. My work started out mostly in the schools, where the values of the teachers/administration in each school were accepted without question. "You came to my class/school, you hold my values" was a given. As I moved "down" the scale to work with younger children - preschoolers and infant/toddlers - I found myself more and more in the homes of these children. What started out as "I am in your home to help you with what I think you need" has, over time, and through lots of food-for-thought sessions on my part turned into "what can I do to help you with what you know you need". I have turned into more of a listener than a doer - which seems to be what many folks are wanting the most. I think it becomes the most clear that I need to listen when I have to depend on an interpreter to tell me not only the words that are spoken but the values the family holds and how they view my intrusion into their lives. "Your Values, My Values" affirmed my experiences and helped me to go many steps further into considering how important it is to understand the values of each person and to be sure that I am providing assistance that they view as helpful and meaningful. I will never again form an opinion about a person or his/her behavior without first listening and allowing the situation to "play out" awhile before I jump in with my "solutions". The examples the author gave of actual situations were quite helpful to explain the principles she wrote about, as were the summaries at the end of the chapters. I found myself saying, "Aha!" many times as I read the book - especially in the areas of control and privacy, as these are issues I deal with often in working with families with infants and toddlers who have developmental delays. The assessment of the schema of theft was most interesting - in fact, I shared it with my husband, and we think about it when we find ourselves in some of the situations that were described in the assessment. A big THANK YOU goes to Pengra for her insights and experiences and for her efforts to share them through her book. I found it very interesting and helpful, and I know that others will also benefit from her experiences when they read it.

S. Jarratt PT, MS   

Beyond "Cultural Competency" reprinted, with permission of the author, from Disability Studies Quarterly summer 2001 special issue, "Engaging Anthropology in Disability Studies." Beyond Cultural Competency by Devva Kasnitz, Ph.D., Mary Switzer Fellow In Your Values, My Values: Multicultural Services in Developmental Disabilities, Lilah Morton Pengra (2000, Paul H. Brooks, Baltimore) has written an unusually successful and useful book. Marketed for service providers, it also belongs in the collections of disability studies scholars and applied anthropologists. And, it is a good read. It is not a research piece. For those interested in Pengra in research mode, I direct you to her dissertation. This book is both theoretical and practical. She uses a theoretical framework of "value based services" and "schema analysis," the analysis of groups of meanings and norms that together underlie "definitions and beliefs that specify what features of the environment to notice" (p. 26). This framework is well described and documented with scholarly care. Her bibliography alone is valuable. In the heart of the book each new topic is introduced with reference to the literature and demonstrated with examples of real-life situations. She culls these examples from her South Dakota career in social services to people considered developmentally disabled, many of them Dakota or Lakota. She then follows with service protocols. These are actual fill-in-the-blanks and check-off assessment, progress, and evaluation tools. She closes each chapter with "Points to Remember." At first this seemed too "teachy" to me. Then, I realized, that is exactly the point. You can read the book on many levels. Why not remind those who may skip some of the scholarly text and go directly to the protocols what to remember during their use as you photo-copy and enlarge and try to decide if you will need to retype and edit a protocol for your own situation. The book also hangs together if you skip the protocols entirely and read for the theory and its implications. Taken together, policy makers and service directors will gain insight. I called this brief book reviewing "Beyond Cultural Competency" out of my biases. I remember Cultural Competency as an idea creeping in and around medical anthropology more than twenty years ago. It started innocently enough with the assertion that service providers needed to understand the culture of the people with whom they work. However, it quickly devolved into a cook-book approach, this is what to do with a Latino patient, this is how to treat a Chinese person, Native American, Black, etc. This is more dangerous than a travel phrase book without a dictionary. And who certifies "competence?" Hiring a token person of the culture in question then became the next step. This, of course, puts tremendous pressure on the supposedly "representative" staff member. First, it ignores intracultural variation. Second, if the individual wants to succeed in their career in the service sector they can usual only do so by bolstering the existing structure. They effectively become the one who helps their cultural group reinvent themselves in the image of the dominant culture so that they can fit in and receive services through the existing structure. We all know that minority culture groups adapt to new bureaucracies much faster than bureaucracies change to reflect diversity. What are needed are approaches that expect and value cultural diversity. We need scholars, policy makers, and service providers who are skilled at recognizing, including, and protecting cultural diversity. This book makes a significant contribution in that direction. Read it.

Very well thought out book, which could be used as a neat reference for all who work in the helping profession. Ms. Pengra establishes herself as knowledgeable in her assesments of people espeacially ones with disabilites. She cuts through the analytical language making it understandable for all. Thus, giving them the ability to apply towards one's own daily living. Highly recommended.

I am a city planner for an older, industrial, urban city. While I do not work with developmentally disabled people, I do work with community groups on land use issues. Decisions I make affect where people live, work and play. The nature of my work influences the values of my community and hopefully should be reflective of it. Hence my interest in this book.

One section I found valuable was a discussion on decision making. I deal with community groups trying to reach a consensus on a variety of land use issues or elected leaders trying to make a decision. Learning how values influence decision-making styles opened my eyes and allowed me to evaluate how I communicate with the public, structure my decisions or make policy recommendations. The information provides a good guide to assist in determining where changes in the "routine" can be used to provide better services to the public. Dr. Pengra provides recommendations on how to address situations where your values are either unknown or different from a service receiver's. I could draw corollaries to working with community groups and other consumers.

While the book deals with providing services to individuals, it provides easy to use assessments to assist the reader in making determinations about themselves on various issues. (Easy to use does not imply you like what you learn!) It provides a practical tool to learn more about yourself, your customers and provides the information necessary to create positive, effective action that will ultimately gain a happy consumer. The book will challenge you to change your behavior.

The book also delves into such topics as anger, pain and empowerment -- topics near and dear to all public officials' daily work. Learning how culture influences the expression of anger and pain was almost scary. Realizing a change in approach could help empower the consumer was refreshing. While it may seem obvious that there are cultural barriers -- the author offers practical advice and assessments that can be applied on the job to do something to overcome the barriers. You begin to see that flexibility might not seem like a bad or terrifying thing. I am sure as a service provider there will a certain level of discomfort but the rewards of a satisfied customer should eventually outweigh those feelings as it appears to have occurred in the author's experiences.

Well written and beautifully illustrated children's book. My children and I both enjoy this sweet story!

A terrific children's book that will satisfy adults too. The story of a dog who feels dislocated by the arrival of a new child in the family and then discovers that the child is hearing impaired, only to become the child's guardian angel and the "best big sister in the world". The author's wry style and the sensitive treatment of the issues of both sibling rivalry and disability are impressive. A great way to read something meaningful to your kids.

I am a 3rd grade teacher. I used this book in my class to introduce the topic of deafness and how helpful pets can be. This is a touching story that is both informative and funny. I loved it and so did the kids!

My aunt Gloria wrote this book about my cousin Elana. It's a true story, down to the name of the dog, Lacey. It was was very cute and funny. I hope everyone out there can read it and enjoy it, even if it doesn't relate to them personally. :)

My mom, a speech pathology teacher, recommended this book tome. I thought it was very well written and offered a lot of insightinto what it must be like having someone you love be hearing impaired. I would recommed this book and feel it could be used effectively in a classroom setting.

I had to read this book for a report for school. Otherwise, I would have never picked it up. It took me a long time to get through the book, because I found it to be quite technical. However, it was fascinating to find out what these people went through. It's scary to think that there actually was a comittee that was set up in 1914 with the sole purpose of irradicating the mentally retarded from this world!!

After working in this field for ten years, I finally found something that gives me a history of what has happened to those that came before me and I am making it required reading for my staff.

I have been teaching classes on the history of residential facilities in America for several years. This book brings a new light to me, and to all of us who work for people with disabilities.

James Trent has written an excellent comprehensive history of mental retardation in the U.S. Readers will also find pertinent photographs, and a full bibiography. This volume is a resource for students, human-services professionals, and historians. I highly recommend it.

I spent a good deal of time in libraries looking for information that was ALL CONTAINED IN THIS BOOK. Trent does an amazing job of piecing together a social/medical history of mental retardation. No medical book, no first person type accounts, no histories of institutionalization touched this book. This book draws from all the different disciplines to present a complete picture (as good history books do). It is highly readable and engaging. It's academic and rigorous yet entertaining. I recommend this book wholeheartedly.

It arrived in decent shape and with fair promptness. A better description of the emphasis of the book would have aided selection.

If you like to travel and are challenged physically, this book is well worth adding to your library. Each of the 101 vacation chapters is full of information that is otherwise hard to find. Any one such item is worth the price of the book. That said, only about 3 pages are devoted to each vacation, so don't expect it to be complete. It's a great start to begin further research or a great resource to add knowledge about a place (or a place nearby) that you're already planning to go to. The book is organized by activity rather than geographically and the table of contents uses chapter titles that often don't tell you the geographic location of the vacation. I found it helpful to write the locations in the table of contents for later reference.

As a person struggling with PPMS (primary progressive multiple sclerosis), I was depressed by what I thought was the reality that I would not be able to travel. Not so! This book makes visiting all the places I've wanted to see doable. Thanks Candy Harrington for this book and your enabling outlook on travel.

101 ACCESSIBLE VACATIONS BY CANDY B. HARRINGTON is a practical and innovative travel guidebook for the physically challenged traveler. Candy is well known in the field of accessible travel and is the editor of Emerging Horizons Magazine. She discusses the previously held theory that all disabled travelers should go to Disney World for vacations because it is know for being well planned for the handicapped tourist. But not everyone likes theme parks, so there must be many alternatives, of which most travel agents are unaware. In this book she tells of many, many different choices for ideal holidays for anyone who has difficulty traveling. She details holidays of every kind in places in many states and in several international destinations. This is a wonderful book for any handicapped traveler and for all travel agents.

Ingersoll and Goldstein give an excellent overview regarding what is known, and what is not known regarding Attention Deficit (Hyperactivity) Disorder. For me, the most important part of this book is the way in which the authors show how wild claims for untested treatments should be analyzed. Too much pseudoscience pretends to be real science, and parents waste time and money that could be spent on proven treatments. An essential book for everyone involved with AD(H)D.

This might've been a very helpful book 12 years ago, but a lot has happened since. Heaps of researches have made their debuts since then that seriously outdates this book... by 12 years.

For example, the author's list of ADD symptoms only covers the hyperactivity element and neglects the symptoms of a child with inattentive type ADD (without hyperactivity). An inattentive type wouldn't necessarily have a hard time sitting down. Contrary to many of the items on the list, a child with inattentive type ADD would more likely be day-dreaming (similar to being hyperactive in one's own mind.. as I'd like to think of it).

Try to stay away from this one.. (unless if you're writing a paper or something and need to comepare differences/similarities between what we USED think and what we know/think NOW.)

I was so confused when my child was first diagnosed with Learning Disorders. This book helped me to break things down and understand the components of my child's disorders. It is an excellent guide to understanding Learning Disorders and how to reach out for additional assistance - suggestions and ideas.

This is an easy-to-understand book on all aspects of understanding, diagnosing and treating those with ADD and other learning disabilities. I am going to order three copies of this book to pass out to our local schools with instructions that all teachers read it. If our teachers knew more about these disorders I'm sure my son would have received help BEFORE he was 16 years old and my questions to them would not have been so easily dismissed.