Reviews & Mentions

Praise for Parenting Children with Mental Health Challenges

Readers who feel overwhelmed by the numerous and ever-present challenges of parenting a child with mental health issues will find opportunities to feel connected, supported, and hopeful in this book. Vlock has been living with these challenges since her four-year-old started talking about suicide. Her willingness to share her experience along with the stories of other parents, input from psychiatric experts, and "open mic" time with children who live with a range of mental health struggles will help others navigate life at home and in public.

Booklist

A must read if you are feeling lost or in need of help in parenting a child with mental health challenges. This book contains useful resources to get help, therapeutic options based on recent research and anecdotes from parents who have been there and done that in discovering the most effective approaches to mental health parenting.

Douglas Haddad, award-winning author of The Ultimate Guide to Raising Teens and Tweens

Parenting Children with Mental Health Challenges by Deborah Vlock is a gutsy, no-nonsense read about just what it's like to parent a child with special needs. Vlock tells it like it is, which is not only refreshing, but vital for anyone who loves a child with a mental illness. Vlock's meaningful book teaches about the good, the bad, and the ugly that comes with a mental illness diagnosis—and offers tips, techniques, and hard-earned wisdom that will, no doubt, help many parents. And in turn, help children who live with mental health challenges.

Deborah Serani

Vlock brings her personal experience as the mother of two children with mental health challenges to a realistic, empathetic guide targeted at ensuring her parenting peers "don't try taking this trip solo" and "feel stronger and better," rather than isolated and overwhelmed. ... Vlock avoids jumping into clinical and diagnostic material; she uses her family's stories for illustrative purposes rather than full-blown memoir and recounts distressing case studies compassionately but without sensationalism. Chapters about daily management of behavior at home, school, and out in public are spot-on, and Vlock's advice on working with educators and clinicians is practical. ... Parents in the same boat as she will find this a valuable addition to their self-care toolbox.

Publishers Weekly

Empathetic and practical, this important book offers much-needed advice from a mother with years of personal experience in coping with mental health issues in her children. Replete with her own stories as well as many other parents experiencing similar or related problems, and not shying away from the most heartbreaking problem of suicidal behavior as well as capturing the daily struggles, this book is a must-have for any parent whose child or adolescent has troubling and serious emotional or mental challenges.

Christine Adamec, co-author of When Your Adult Child Breaks Your Heart: Coping with Mental Illness, Substance Abuse, and the Problems That Tear Families Apart

Mentions

A few days ago, I wrote about societal fear by way of a lovely article in The Washington Post comparing America's increasingly insular behavior to the symptoms of agoraphobia. Riding on a similar wave, Deborah Vlock has a nice piece over at Psychology Today about how the 24/7 news cycle fuels the irrational fears the irrational fears of overprotective parents...Vlock draws upon her experience raising a child prone to anxiety and self-harm in writing her piece, the theme of which is “overparenting does not work.”

Robert Montenegro, Overprotective Parents Don't Understand How Probability Works

I joined my second workshop of the day, which was called Parent Intel: What it is and How to Use it in Parenting and in Collaboration with your Child’s Clinicians. The presenter, Deborah Vlock, recently wrote a book called Parenting Children with Mental Health Challenges: A Guide to Life with Emotionally Complex Kids. I was sitting in the back of the room and I saw many heads nodding in agreement across almost everything she said. I was in a room of people who got it and it was reassuring to see. Besides sharing stories, Deborah taught us tips and ideas on how to share our wisdom of our kids “stuff” with clinicians in a way that can improve clinical outcomes.

Parent/Professional Advocacy League (PPAL) Conference participant

No one knows more about helping children with mental-health challenges than Deborah Vlock, author of Parenting Children With Mental Health Challenges: A Guide To Life With Emotionally Complex Kids (Rowman & Littlefield), which was published in November last year. Vlock has been living with these challenges since her son started talking about suicide when he was just four. When he was 11, he asked his mother to help him kill himself. Vlock gave up her academic career as an English professor to be with him 24 hours a day.

"Childhood and adolescent mental illnesses are a waxing public-health issue here in the US, in South Africa and everywhere else," she says. "Kids reside and are barraged with the kinds of pressures that go hand in hand with our 24/7 global bad-news cycle, 'hypercyber-connectivity' and good old fashioned bullying. Add to those forces a general sense among young people nowadays that the world is coming apart at the seams, and no wonder so many kids are anxious, depressed, suicidal, and exhibiting other signs of trauma."

In some cases, a psychiatric disorder emerges at a very early age and appears to be genetic rather than a function of external stressors. "Of course, sometimes you get both," says Vlock. "But the bottom line is … we have a big problem on our hands. And it’s not just the kids who attempt—or complete—suicide who are suffering: it’s their friends and classmates who bear witness to that anguish as well."

Good Housekeeping South Africa, Help Your Child Support A Friend