Pediatric OCD

These books are in no particular order.

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• The Whole Brain Child, by Dan Siegel, M.D. and Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D.

  • This is a great book with general strategies for dealing with the emotional lives of young children (best for ages 0-5, but works for older kids too). 

  • Some general notes: This book is simplified neuroscience, written for a lay audience. You don't have to understand big fancy brain terms  to get it. This is good in that in can be read by most parents with a basic, high school reading level, but it also results in oversimplifications of how the brain works. Dr. Siegel could go into all that detail (in fact, one of my grad school developmental neuroscience textbooks was written by him), but he simplifies things so that they work for everyday parents with everyday kids.

  • Dan Siegel (and this book in particular) are well known for the "time in" approach, as opposed to the "time out" approach. It's easy to read this book and accidentally think that Dr. Siegel says that time outs are universally bad, but that's not accurate. What he actually believes is that time outs can be used at the wrong times and in the wrong ways. He's proposing an alternative procedure for when time outs are not warranted, and time outs are saved for very specific circumstances and combined with the time-in approach. So, if you read this book, don't misunderstand that time outs are always bad. Time outs can be very healthy ways to parent children in difficult moments.

• The Explosive Child, Ross W. Greene, Ph.D.

  • Dr. Greene pioneered the approach called "Collaborative Problem Solving," and its a great way to change your thinking about children who are prone to explosive anger or other very oppositional-seeming behaviors. This book is great for taking the blame off of children AND off their parents and helps focus instead on understanding what skills kids lack and then how to create a plan to address those skills. Dr. Greene also maintains an excellent website with additional support services for parents.

• The Highly Sensitive Child, by Elaine Aron, Ph.D.​

  • Dr. Aron originated the term "The Highly Sensitive Person" to describe a certain temperament of people who just tend to respond to their environment in a more sensitive way than others. This temperament can translate to a whole host of behavioral manifestations. Dr. Aron maintained a website too (www.hsperson.com) and has written numerous books on the highly sensitive temperament. The one referenced here is for parents of highly sensitive children, but there is also a book for highly sensitive parents, couples, and so on.​

• Helping Your Anxious Child, 2nd edition, by Ron Rapee, Ann Wignall, Susan Spence, Vanessa Cobham, and Heidi​ Lyneham.

  • This is an excellent book for parents of anxious children, written by several of the most knowledgeable people on childhood anxiety on the planet​ (and they all just happen to be from Australia, which I also think is a funny joke because everyone knows that Australia is a terrifying place of wild animals designed to kill you, and so why wouldn't some of the world's leading childhood anxiety researchers work there....haha). There are a lot of good books for parents of anxious kids out there, but I've reviewed this one personally and can vouch that it is top notch. If you have others you're considering, ask me about them and I can review those too.

• What to Do When You Worry Too Much, by Dawn Huebner​

  • This is a great workbook for kids ages 8-12 to work on and learn strategies for managing worry. It's part of a series of other "What to Do When You..." series, all of which are great. I like it because it's not very work heavy. Activities can be completed through drawing and don't require a lot of advanced writing skill like many other worry books for kids do.​

• You, Your Child, and School, by Sir Ken Robinson, Ph.D. and Lou Aronica​

  • Ken Robinson's TED talk an "How Schools Kill Creativity" is (or was at one point, at least) the 2nd most watched TED talk of all time. It's entertaining, insightful, and 20 minutes of a brilliant, scathing attack of sorts on how some forms of education are not well designed for diverse learners. Dr. Robinson asks us all to consider that academic success is not the only or even the most important outcome in every child's life. It's great and I highly recommend watching it.​

  • The book itself is a review of how parents can think about schools for their child and how to decide what schools/education are going to fit best for a child. It also talks about how to advocate with school systems to address concerns when they do arise. 

  • Having said that, my personal review of the book is that I find it richer in the realm of outlining the issues but weaker in the realm of giving new, practical advice that most parents who read the book haven't likely already tried. In other words, parents who read the book are usually driven to do so because they have already thought about many of the issues written inside and often have already tried a lot of the solutions offered inside for managing educational development in their children. Don't get me wrong, I highly recommend the book if you're interested in the topic, but approach it with realistic expectations in that tackling the monster of modern US education is a huge endeavor that involves more than just what can be done individualistically, but also on a societal and political basis.

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