eBook Alphabet Kids - From ADD to Zellweger Syndrome: A Guide to Developmental, Neurobiological and Psychological Disorders for Parents and Professionals download

This is a brilliant and fascinating exploration that will be invaluable to parents, siblings, teachers, doctors and social workers. It will help all human beings who want to understand what some people are up against daily to be more compassionate, patient, and open minded. I especially loved my friend Arlene's honest assessment of what she and her family went through trying to get a a proper diagnosis for her children who have Fragile X. A must read!

This is a great book to give you a sample of many of the common disabilities that affect kids today. I got this to share with a support group and we all love it. It is very easy to read and is not "over" the average person's head. Granted if you are looking for in-depth on one topic then google that subject to find a book just about that but again this is a great resource for those that are reviewing different disabilities (especially for a resource room or a support group).

I use this for work (I work with families who have kids with various DXs) and it is amazing. Straight, to the point, language you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand.

Really good informaiton, but hard reading. I helped me understand some of those Alphabet disorders and get information of the differences of some of them.

This book is a good resource for anyone working with children with exceptionalities. It provides information to help with the communication and with program planning for children.

Very informative text book suitable for those specialising in this area as it gives clear precise details for every syndrome.

I really thought I would like this book. I have an autistic daughter and a son that at one point was diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome, so I am a little familiar with what this book called Alphabet Kids---kids with diagnoses that run the alphabet gambit. However, I was quite disappointed with it.

First of all, like many survey books like this, it really doesn't have a clear use. If your child has one of the syndromes talked about here, you want much more in depth info. If you don't know WHAT your child has, this book is quite useless in figuring it out. It's just in alphabetical order and seems to include disorders mainly based on whether they are often referred to by initials. Even then, I think some were included just to have things starting with certain letters, like Zellweger Syndrome--I am sure there were other more common disorders that didn't make the cut.

Once you find a topic you want to read about, you still don't get much help here. Most topics start with a first person or third person account of someone with what is being talked about, like ADHD. These accounts are very uneven. Some are long and meandering and include details about small things that seem quite unimportant, some describe very untypical presentations of the disorders, and way too many describe adults, not kids. Often the accounts don't mention until near the end the main feature of a disorder, like with hyperlexia---the early reading. Another part of each section is a long list of signs and symptoms. These are totally unweighted---signs that are ALWAYS present are given just as much weight as signs that are rarely present. I think reading a list like this would be totally overwhelming if it was all the information you had.

I do think there is a need for a book parents could use as a reference source to various disorders. However, they need one that is more organized and less general than this one. With the internet, most of us can find out basics on-line. I don't know why people would buy a fairly expensive book to read the few pages that were relevant to them, when even those few pages aren't terribly helpful.

To my knowledge this is the first book of its kind published for laypeople, for parents primarily and secondarily for professionals.

This book contains summaries of many different learning disabilities and medical conditions that affect a child's ability to learn. Some conditions are medical conditions that challenge a child who is attending school while others are strictly learning disabilities, some are `behavioral' issues and some are `mental health' conditions, the author describes these as developmental, neurobiological and psychological disorders.

This book seems to me to be mainly intended as a first-line resource for parents who may suspect or have already been told by some expert that their child has condition X, Y, and/or Z. This is a good starting place to read overviews of conditions that a parent wants to know more about.

The author states in the introduction, that often children diagnosed with one condition may actually have two or three overlapping diagnoses that interact and overlap with each other, making diagnosis and treatment more complicated (especially if they are receiving treatment for just one of them). This book will help parents rule out if other conditions may be present as well. The author states that he intends that this book serve as a roadmap for parents. The book does not diagnose the child. The book is not a medical text. This book does not replace diagnosis and treatment by trained health care professionals.

By its very nature of covering a broad range of disorders and conditions, the book is not a detailed analysis and discussion of every single one of these conditions. For example many different entire books are written about Autism or Attention Deficit Disorder. This book is not meant to replace all those good books that go into depth about individual disorders.

The disorders are arranged encyclopedia style, alphabetical by the abbreviation of the disorder's name. Many disorders have one case study story about a child who has that condition, sometimes telling how they were misdiagnosed at first. The "did you know" section tells in layman's terms, about the disorder in paragraph format. A separate section tells how the condition is manifested in the child's life, whether it is behaviorally, suffering at school work or medical issues. There is then a `signs and symptoms' list (some are quite long). There are sections for the cause, the diagnosis process including which types of professionals help children with this condition, the treatment and the prognosis. When applicable the name of drugs used or common treatments is given. Lastly there is a list of sources and resources to go to learn more about that condition in detail.

I think this book is fantastic and it serves a definite need. Often parents who suspect their child might have a certain condition are overwhelmed by the idea of reading an entire book on that topic just to get the basic information. Often finding a good summary is difficult. Time can be wasted by doing Internet searches, and sometimes the articles found online for free can contain inaccurate information or confusing information.

Parents will appreciate having such an accessible and easy to understand book to reference.

This book is a perfect fit for a library. Parents could borrow it to reference in the beginning stages of their researching process.

Teachers and school professionals who work with special education students might find this useful as a reference tool. Although the book is marketed to "professionals", I would think that experts in a field such as occupational therapists may know a lot more about the conditions they treat than this book can provide. Perhaps that professional also wants a reference tool for some information about other conditions outside of their specialty and in that case this book would be useful.

Pediatricians may also find the information helpful that concerns conditions which fall outside their area of diagnosis.

Again this is a comprehensive overview book covering many topics. Surely some reader will find fault or complain that they feel the book lacks detail or left one thing out. To those readers I would say this is a tool for beginners who have not yet read one or more full books on the niche topic(s). For those who already know a lot about their child's diagnosis this may be too general.

One thing that I feel should have been mentioned in the Introduction or somewhere was the fact that a child can be labeled as gifted and talented yet can still have one or more of the conditions listed in this book. Those children are often described as being "twice exceptional" or "2E". Some common traits of gifted and talented children and adults can mimic some of these disorders but they are not necessarily meeting the DSM criteria but are merely expressions of their giftedness. I would recommend the book "Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnosis of Gifted Children and Adults" by James Webb PhD et al and published by Great Potential Press, for a thorough analysis of various neurobiological, developmental and psychological symptoms comparing giftedness to the DSM criteria for various conditions to determine if the gifted person actually does have a disorder or if they are merely exhibiting typical traits of giftedness.

I give this book much praise for doing what it intended to do: being a roadmap for parents and professionals who suspect or recently were told their child has one or more developmental, neurobiological or psychological disorder.

Anyone seeking in-depth analysis of just one single diagnosis should seek other books that focus directly on that one topic.