Parenting a Child with Sensory Processing Disorder

Sensational Kids
The Out-of-Sync Child
< Parenting a Child with Sensory Processing Disorder
The Mislabeled Child

Parenting a Child with Sensory Processing Disorder

by Christopher Auer and Susan Blumberg, Ph.D.
Parents of SPD children

The book is titled "Parenting a Child with Sensory Processing Disorder: A Family Guide to Understanding and Supporting Your Sensory Sensitive Child" (Christopher R. Auer with Susan L. Blumberg, Ph.D., New Harbinger, December 2006). Lucy Jane Miller, Ph.D. has written the foreword.

The book introduces sensory processing disorder (SPD) and offers an overview of what it means to advocate for a child with the condition. It describes a range of activities that help strengthen family relationships, improve communication about the disorder, and deal with problem situations and conditions a child with SPD may encounter.

Throughout, the book stresses the importance of whole-family involvement in the care of a child with SPD, especially the roles fathers play in care-giving. Many of the book's ideas are illustrated with case stories that demonstrate how the book's ideas can play out in daily life.

Don Meyer, Director of the Sibling Support Project, The Arc of the United States; Jane Delgado, President and CEO of the National Hispanic Health Alliance; J. Neil Tift, Director of Professional Advancement, National Practitioners Network for Fathers and Families; and Kathy Marshall, Executive Director of the National Resiliency Resource Center - University of Minnesota have contributed interviews.

Parenting a Child with Sensory Processing Disorder: A Family Guide to Understanding and Supporting Your Sensory-Sensitive Child (Christopher Auer, MA with Susan L.Blumberg, Ph.D., New Harbinger Publications, December 2006) www.newharbinger.com

Sign up for our free newsletter !! www.spdresources.com

— Submitted by Christopher Auer

REVIEWS

In raising children with or without special needs, nothing is more important than the family unit. This book will enable you to enhance your child's sensory development. Additionally, it will help you ensure that your child and all family members not only survive, but, indeed, THRIVE! When your whole family thrives, you can best ensure your child's optimum development over the short and long range of life.

– Ann Turnbull, Ed.D., Co-Founder and Co-Director, The Beach Center on Disabilities – University of Kansas

Auer and Blumberg have lent their insight, passion, and compassion to this workbook. In so doing they have also provided a guidebook – and a preamble of advocacy for children and their families.

– Morton Ann Gernsbacher, Ph.D., Vilas Research Professor and Sir Frederic C. Bartlett Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

It has been said that a family of five is akin to five people lying side-by-side on a waterbed: whenever one person moves, everyone feels the ripple. A child with sensory processing disorder can have a devastating impact upon the day-to-day functioning of a family. There are several books available that provide data and information on the nature of this puzzling disorder, but Auer and Blumberg have written a valuable book that finally provides parents with specific strategies and practical solutions to the daily challenges faced by these special children and their families. While other books define the problem, Auer and Blumberg offer techniques to minimize the effect of the disorder on the child's daily life. I strongly recommend this book to any adult who is parenting a child with a sensory processing problem–and to the professionals who are assisting moms and dads on this challenging journey.

– Richard D. Lavoie, M.A., M.Ed., author of It's So Much Work to Be Your Friend and executive producer of How Difficult Can This Be? The F.A.T. City Workshop

Finally a book that treats SPD in the full context that it deserves: not as a co-condition or as another obstacle but as a full fledged challenge to the complete inclusion of individuals with unique learning styles. The collaborative integration of the senses accounts for your picking up this book, examining it and deciding on whether to make it part of your library. Auer and Blumberg walk you through how that process is both derailed and rekindled.

– Rick Rader, MD, editor-in-chief of Exceptional Parent magazine and director of the Morton J. Kent Habilitation Center

Read this with a highlighter in hand, because you will want to refer many times to the wise and wonderful ideas in this splendid how-to book. The authors are not only sensitive and resourceful parents of kids with SPD, but also articulate, honest, and sensible writers.

– Carol S. Kranowitz, MA, author of The Out-of-Sync Child

Back to the top