Bringing up a Challenging Child at Home: When Love is Not Enough

Jane Gregory's honest account of her experience as the mother of Chrissy, her daughter who has complex needs including epilepsy, learning difficulties and challenging behaviour, should be on the reading list for every professional in the field. What is so impressive about this account is its author's ability to follow threads that have connected Chrissy to the rest of her world, and so provide a complete picture. The book not only examines the long journey to a diagnosis and appropriate provision for grandparents, and professionals.

While it covers in great detail the difficulties, trials and tribulations that Jane has experienced, it seeks always to balance this with the positives - the joy experienced in the small steps of progress; the relief felt when a professional spends time trying to understand. One of the key messages is that progress is best made when professionals listen to parents, and together they work as a team.

Social workers, psychologists and doctors do need to hear from the frontline about the anger and frustration which parents feel. The book catalogues the faults and failures of services. Frustration and dissapointment abound. Doctors fail to give diagnoses, social workers dissapoint, teachers and psychologists do their best.'

'Jane Gregory takes us through life so far with her daughter: the slow, chilly realisation that she was not developing normally, the refusals by health professionals to take her concerns seriously and the stress of coping with violent, obsessive behaviour whilst caring for two young siblings. Jane shares these experiences and the effect they had on her family candidly in a book full of energy and compassion. Her struggles to find solutions to to manage Chrissy's behaviour and healthis full of practical suggestions and information.