Parents of kids who have hemiplegic cerebral palsy are some of the most informed parents in the world! We asked parents to share some of their favorite and most useful books.
Daily Living for Kids with Hemiplegia
Living One Handed in a Two Handed World (by Tommye-K. Mayer). A step-by-step guidebook for managing just about everything with the use of one hand whether your one-handedness is temporary, long-term, or permanent.
Making Friends
It’s So Much Work to be Your Friend: Helping the Child with Learning Disabilities Find Social Success (by Rick Lavoie). Excellent book that explains the hidden challenges many children with hemiplegia face as they navigate the complexities of our social world.
Behavior, Emotions, and Sensory Integration
The Out of Sync Child: Recognizing and Coping with Sensory Processing Disorder (by Carol Kranowitz)
The Out of Sync Child Has Fun: Activities for Kids with Sensory Processing Disorder (by Carol Kranowitz). Each activity in this inspiring and practical book is SAFE—Sensory-motor, Appropriate, Fun and Easy—to help develop and organize a child’s brain and body. Whether your child faces challenges with touch, balance, movement, body position, vision, hearing, smell, and taste, motor planning, or other sensory problems, this book presents lively and engaging ways to bring fun and play to everyday situations.
The Explosive Child: A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, Chronically Inflexible Children (by Ross W. Greene)
Brain Change
Magic Trees of the Mind : How to Nurture Your Child’s Intelligence, Creativity, and Healthy Emotions from Birth Through Adolescence (by Marian Diamond and Janet Hopson). Dr. Diamond and Janet Hopson not only touch on the scientific aspects of brain research, but provide readers with “real-life” examples and ideas to help develop the minds of children from conception to adulthood.
The Brain that Changes Itself : Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science (by Norman Doidge, M.D.)
Inspiration
Danny Scrivano – Anything is Possible – Danny shares the story of how he lived through a serious, life changing, medical crisis that left him paralyzed on one side of his body. Not only did Danny survive, he has gone on to be an accomplished multi-sport athlete, even when it seemed too difficult, and many people underestimated him. Danny will motivate you to get out there and try new things. To work harder in your profession, your schooling, your sport and pretty much anything you will do in life. Danny does not want to live his life on the sidelines. After reading his story, neither will you!
Evie Finds a Way (by Shannon Barnes, illustrated by Herb Moore)
I See You, Little Naomi (by Stefanie Boggs-Johnson)
How we Roll : 2 Friends, 1 Wheelchair and a Lifetime of Lessons in Perseverance (by Tim Wambach)
Through a Dog’s Eyes (by Jennifer Arnold)
Remembering Alexis, Finding Perspective in Love and Loss (by Margaret Marshall Ryhnne
An Ambulance With Wings: Learning to Trust God Through the Journey of Isaac: A Special Needs Child (by Marsha N. Edens)
Knowing Jesse: A Mother’s Story of Grief, Grace and Everyday Bliss (by Marianne Leone)
Some Kids Wear Leg Braces (by Lola M. Schaefer)
Someone Like Me: An Unlikely Story of Challenge and Triumph Over Cerebral Palsy ( by John W. Quinn)
After the Tears: Parents Talk About Raising a Child with a Disability (by Robin Simmons)
The Elephant in the Playroom: Ordinary Parents Write Intimately and Honestly About the Extraordinary Highs and Heartbreaking Lows of Raising Kids with Special Needs (by Denise Brodey)
The Water Giver : The Story of a Mother, a Son, and Their Second Chance (by Joan Ryan)
Views from Our Shoes: Growing Up with a Brother or Sister with Special Needs (by Donald J. Meyer)
Thank you
A special thanks to Aileen Kavanagh-Kaiteris for her assistance in gathering these resources.
