Author(s): Roz Shafran; Ursula Saunders; Alice Welham

Parenting

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 unable to cope - for whatever reason - we may become unhappy too. When that someone is our child - the person we feel responsible for and inextricably linked to - it can be overwhelming and difficult to even have a life of our own.

From when our children are babies, we know we would do almost anything to protect them from pain and suffering. But often, we can't. 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. It aims 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, and will show you how you can manage to find comfort from knowing you are not alone, find help from resources and techniques that really work, and find hope that things can and do change for the better.