Written by Jeaneen Tang, MS, CCC-SLP, guides you to mindfully under-anticipating the child's needs and creating opportunities to practice language.
In this book, you will learn:
How to identify areas where you over-anticipate a child's needs.
How we are doing children a disservice by doing so.
How to mindfully under-anticipate a child's needs.
How to create opportunities to practice language in functional ways.
Strategies to apply to everyday activities to help develop effective communicators.
Discover some insights, practical tips, and evidence-based techniques that empower you to create an enriching linguistic environment.
Sarah is a feisty and determined four-year-old with autism and a unique genetic blueprint. Her mom Jenny is equally feisty and determined, which leads to clashes and strife but also leads to phenomenal connection and progress as Jenny runs a Son-Rise Program for her, calling it Sarah-Rise.
The Son-Rise Program is an approach to working with people with autism to foster social connection. It provides intensely loving, focused one-on-one therapeutic play time, meeting Sarah where she is and never stopping her repetitive behaviors. Sarah’s language explodes, her eye contact intensifies, she plays games, plays imaginatively, uses the potty, eats healthily, reads, and writes.
Playing with Sarah is deeply rewarding for the volunteers who spend time in the Sarah-Rise room. While Jenny sometimes doubts herself and criticizes her parenting, she also explores new pathways to gentleness, joy, and laughter. She celebrates Sarah’s successes, marveling at the depth of love and creativity that her volunteers bring to the scene and stretching her own creative self. Accompany Jenny from Sarah’s birth through the decision to run Sarah-Rise, and follow the years of Sarah-Rise, pretending that markers are flowers and number flashcards are snowflakes. Have your heart warmed and your socks knocked off by this momentous journey.
From this sacred beginning comes Petals of Love: Chronicles of the Imperfectly Perfect Mother—a global anthology curated by Dr. Tiesha N. Bryant, celebrating the raw, real, and redemptive journeys of motherhood in all its complexity.
This is not just a book.
It’s a healing garden.
A sisterhood in print.
A bouquet of truth-telling, tear-jerking, and triumphant stories from women who dared to mother through the unthinkable.
Inside these pages, you’ll meet mothers of every kind:
A teen mom who refused to become a statistic
A grieving mother learning to breathe through the ache of loss
A mother raising a child with complex needs, diagnoses, or behaviors
A military mom balancing purpose and presence
A divorced mom rediscovering her identity
A bonus mom navigating blended family love
A woman who never wanted kids but found her soul stretched in unexpected ways
IVF warriors, single moms, empty nesters, elder moms—and every kind in between
Each chapter is a petal—imperfect and sacred—plucked from the lived experiences of women who loved, lost, fought, cried, healed, and still chose to show up.
Dr. Bryant invited women from around the world to share the stories they never thought they'd tell—and the result is a collection that honors the unseen, the unheard, and the unforgettable parts of motherhood.
You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll see yourself.
Jason Heffler is an author whose stories help young readers overcome speech disorders and fears around speaking. Drawing from his own childhood experiences growing up with a stutter, he writes uplifting tales that build confidence in kids who lack self-esteem.
As a child, Heffler was cruelly bullied for his stutter, knocking his self-acceptance. But he eventually decided to "own" his speech disorder rather than be defined by it. This hard-won self-love became the driving inspiration behind his writing career, crafting relatable narratives that empower young people to embrace who they are.
Letting kids know they are not alone in their struggles, Heffler's uplifting stories are empowering resources that turn feelings of difference into strength, pride and unshakable confidence in finding your unique voice. They reinforce core messages about believing in yourself-despite insecurities-through simplicity, humor and heart, like in Tongue-Tied.
Cadence was a kind and caring chameleon, but she was shy because of a speech problem that made it tough to get her words out. She constantly stumbled over her own tongue and camouflaged into the forest because she was scared she wouldn't fit in with the other animals. Through eye-opening encounters with a compassionate cricket friend and a mean frog bully, this is a story about how Cadence learned that her speech did not hold her back from saying or doing amazing things.
As a child, Ryan DeLena had difficulty controlling his emotions and he was placed in therapeutic schools that relied on detrimental methods of behavior modification such as physical restraint. Nothing helped from a team of doctors to heavy medication. Then in 2010, Ryan was voluntarily committed to a mental hospital for further evaluation. His parents Rob and Mary Beth were counseled to place him in a group home. They refused. Two years earlier, after an impulsive decision to take Ryan skiing, Rob discovered a different child than the version experts were so sure about. By his second day of skiing, Ryan was executing advanced runs, and with each conquest in the winters that followed, Rob began to question the path laid for his son by the professionals paid to judge him. He later convinced Mary Beth to fight the medical and educational complexes over Ryan’s care and school placement, and together they fostered the freedom Ryan needed to pursue his dream of becoming a professional ski mountaineer. Written in two voices, Without Restraint is a joint father-son memoir told with both pain and levity, struggle and strength, adventure and heart. It is the story of a misunderstood boy, a father’s growth, and a shared love of the outdoors that formed their unbreakable bond.
(Coming Soon)
