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

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.

Roz Shafran is professor of translational psychology at the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health. She is an honorary Consultant Clinical Psychologist, a member of the Health Professions Council and an accredited therapist with the British Association of Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy. She founded the Charlie Waller Institute of Evidenced Based Psychological Treatment in 2007 at the University of Reading and was its director until 2012. She is a Trustee of the Charlie Waller Trust, Patron of ’No Panic’ and recipient of prizes such as the Positive Practice ’Making a Difference’ Award, British Psychological Society Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in Practice and Marsh Award for Mental Health for research that has made a difference to clinical practice. She has published over 250 research articles, received funding for research and training in excess of £5m and, with colleagues, she has written several self-help books including Overcoming Perfectionism, The CBT Handbook and The Complete CBT Guide for Anxiety. She lives in Hertfordshire and is married with three teenage children.
Ursula Saunders read English at Oxford University and has worked for BBC Radio Four as a Researcher and Producer. She has worked as a volunteer and helpline coordinator for Cruse Bereavement Care and then RoadPeace. She currently works in Business Development for OXPIP which is a project related to maternal and infant mental health. She is the parent of two children.
Alice Welham is a lecturer on the clinical psychology doctorate (DClinPsy) course at the University of Leicester. She has a broad range of interests in psychology and its clinical applications. She has two children.