Aggression among young people is an important social issue. Fortunately, early intervention and treatment can significantly reduce the risk of harmful outcomes. Acting Out describes the causes of aggressive behaviour in young people, and discusses approaches to handling it. This book:

• explains various types of aggressive behaviour exhibited by young people
• identifies factors related to aggressive behaviour
• distinguishes between normal aggression and aggression that is of greater concern
• gives practical advice on how to address aggression in children and youth
• highlights proven prevention and intervention strategies and indicates strategies to avoid
• discusses the assessment and diagnosis of more serious aggressive behaviour in young people

Acting Out is a valuable tool for anyone who works with young people, including teachers and school administrators, day-care and recreation centre workers, youth shelter workers, social service workers, sports coaches, youth leaders, camp counselors and directors.

Anger Management Games for Children. Deborah Plummer, $29.95

This practical handbook helps adults to understand, manage and reflect constructively on children's anger. Featuring a wealth of familiar and easy-to-learn games, it is designed to foster successful anger management strategies for children aged 5-12. The book covers the theory behind the games in accessible language, and includes a broad range of enjoyable activities: active and passive, verbal and non-verbal, and for different sized groups. The games address issues that might arise in age-specific situations such as sharing a toy or facing peer pressure. They also encourage children to approach their emotions as a way to facilitate personal growth and healthy relationships.

The Behavior Survival Guide for Kids: How to Make Good Choices and Stay Out of Trouble. Tom McIntyre, $18.95

Some kids get in trouble a lot. Every day is a struggle for them. They can't seem to make good choices, no matter how hard they try. Does this sound like you? If it does, you know that behavior problems are no fun. But maybe you just don't know how else to act. That's true for many kids with behavior challenges. This book is full of ideas for you to try. They have worked for other kids and they can work for you.

Self-help for 12-and-up. Another accessible, non-condescending resource from Free Spirit.

Connected Parenting: Transform Your Challenging Child and Build Loving Bonds for Life. Jennifer Kolari, $32.00

Connected Parenting offers a unique form of therapeutic parenting based on Kolari's groundbreaking application of the concept of "mirroring," an instinctive process that helps parents bond with their children and promotes optimum growth and development. Kolari's strategy is highly effective for kids of all ages, and has been proven to reduce a child's anxiety, increase self-esteem, and allow children to become more resilient and flexible. With step-by-step advice and examples from Kolari's years of experience, this is an easy-to-follow guide to strengthening the bond between you and your children.

The Defiant Child: a Parent’s Guide to Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Douglas Riley, $17.50

The Defiant Child guides readers through the difficulties of raising a child or teenager who is attempting to ignore or defeat them at every turn. While it explains how defiant children and teens think, delving deeply into the mistaken ideas that lead them to believe that it is safe to ignore parents and challenge their authority, its chief purpose is to provide parents with a step-by-step plan to regain peace and harmony in the family.

The Everything® Parent’s Guide to the Defiant Child. Jesse Jayne Rutherford & Kathleen Nickerson, $16.95

Reassuring advice to help your child mange explosive emotions and gain self-control.

The Everything® Parent’s Guide to the Strong-Willed Child. Carl Pickhardt, $19.95

The Everything® Parent’s Guide to the Strong-Willed Child helps you work around stubborn and argumentative behavior. You’ll learn how to encourage your child to compromise and communicate with you, rather than make unreasonable demands and/or shut down altogether. By learning what makes your child strong-willed, the effects of such behavior, and how to manage it, you can help your child achieve a more tempered disposition and teach him the lifelong rewards of a positive attitude.

Forms for Helping the Oppositional Child. Whitney Roban, $45.95 (Ages 7-12)

This book features reproducible forms to be used by clinicians during treatment with oppositional children. It is full of checklists, charts and activities to aid intake, treatment, and monitoring progress.

Helping the Child Who Doesn't Fit In. Stephen Nowicki & Marshall Duke, $18.95

Teaching Your Child the Language of Social Success. Marshall Duke, Stephen Nowicki & Elisabeth Martin, $20.95

Remember the kids who just didn't fit in when you were a child? Maybe they stood too close or talked too loud. We called them hurtful names and they never understood why. Clinical psychologists Stephen Nowicki, Jr. and Marshall Duke call these children dyssemic, and have some ideas about how to help them.

Dyssemic children do not comprehend nonverbal messages in much the same way that dyslexics do not correctly process the written word. Nonverbal language plays a vital role in our communication with others, and children who understand or misuse it may face painful social rejection, which becomes a part of their lives for the rest of their lives.

In Helping the Child Who Doesn't Fit In, Nowicki and Duke reveal the range of dyssemia that may affect a child and show parents and teachers how to simply assess the extent of a child's problems. Simple exercises at the end of each chapter offer guidance for educating yourself and your child nonverbally.

Do you know what nonverbal language is? Even if you can't define it, you speak it every day through your postures, gestures, facial expressions, and tone of voice and you must constantly read these same signals from others. In fact, nonverbal messages can carry up to ninety percent of the meaning of human interaction and contribute significantly to social, academic, and professional success.

Yet even though we recognize the importance of nonverbal communication, we have generally left the teaching of this essential language to chance. Now parents and teachers can help children develop nonverbal skills so that they will be able to communicate more effectively and to interact with others more successfully.

In Teaching Your Child the Language of Social Success, clinical psychologists Marshall Duke and Stephen Nowicki and educator Elizabeth Martin describe and explain the methods and rules of nonverbal communication. Together they have created an easy-to-use guide which offers definitions and techniques for assessing a child's strengths and weaknesses in this unspoken realm, as well as case studies, illustrations, and exercises for teaching or improving nonverbal skills at home or in the classroom.

Helping Parents with Challenging Children: Positive Family Interaction. V. Mark Durand & Meme Hieneman. Facilitator’s Guide, $38.95; Parent’s Workbook, $27.95

Challenging behavior, while common, can have a significant negative impact on the lives of children and their families. A child's behavior problems can exacerbate developmental setbacks and disrupt overall family functioning. This facilitator guide, along with the corresponding workbook, aims to assist parents who have difficulty completing parent training and implementing interventions. It uses a fresh and resourceful approach, combining principles of applied behavior analysis, tools of positive behavior support (PBS), and cognitive restructuring techniques. Throughout the program, parents practice positive thinking skills, which can enhance their parenting abilities. This guide gives detailed instructions for conducting the optimism training and steering parents through the PBS process. The positive family intervention program may be useful for a variety of behavior problems and in conjunction with treatment for other disorders. It can be used with a range of ages and family situations.

The director of the acclaimed Yale Parenting Center and Child Conduct Clinic distills his thirty years of work into a step-by-step method for parents featuring effective tips for common behavior problems.

Practical and reassuring, Kazdin leads parents through each manageable step - from how to use tone of voice, when and how to touch, adjusting your approach according to the child’s age, to understanding how to involve non-offending siblings. The program is temporary, but the results are permanent, for very young children to adolescents, and beyond.

In Learning to Listen, Learning to Care. children learn why it is important to follow rules and behave considerately toward others. The activities cultivate empathy which contributes not just to good behavior, but to academic and social success. Emotional intelligence and behavioral skills are reinforced by additional thought-provoking questions. These activities can be done on their own or as part of a therapy program, and are appropriate for kids between the ages of six and twelve.

Letting Go of Perfect: Overcoming Perfectionism in Kids. Jill Adelson & Hope Wilson, $15.95

This engaging and practical book gives parents and teachers the guidance and support they need to help children overcome perfectionism and the anxieties and behaviors often related to it.

From a distinguished clinician, pioneer in working with behaviorally challenging kids, and author of the acclaimed The Explosive Child comes a groundbreaking approach for understanding and helping these kids and transforming school discipline.

Relying on research from the neurosciences, Dr. Greene offers a new conceptual framework for understanding the difficulties of kids with behavioral challenges and explains why traditional discipline isn't effective at addressing these difficulties. Emphasizing the revolutionarily simple and positive notion that kids do well if they can, he persuasively argues that kids with behavioral challenges are not attention-seeking, manipulative, limit-testing, coercive, or unmotivated, but that they lack the skills to behave adaptively. And when adults recognize the true factors underlying difficult behavior and teach kids the skills in increments they can handle, the results are astounding: the kids overcome their obstacles; the frustration of teachers, parents, and classmates diminishes; and the well-being and learning of all students are enhanced.

In Lost at School, Dr. Greene describes how his road-tested, evidence-based approach — called Collaborative Problem Solving — can help challenging kids at school.

Dr. Frank Lawlis leads parents through a 90-day program of practical steps and action plans toward building a positive, loving, and healthy bond with their children. Whether parents are struggling with toddlers throwing temper tantrums, ten-year-olds who prefer videogames to talking, or rebellious teenagers, his prescriptive and practical methods teach parents how to repair their relationships and regain connection with their children.

A no-nonsense look at the psychological importance of “no” in a child's development, No is filled with practical advice that you can put into apply immediately. Dr. Walsh's numerous anecdotes reinforce his message that establishing healthy limits is not only essential for kids' well-being, it's vital for creating disciplined, productive adults. Most important, No gives parents real, effective strategies for helping their children bloom and grow, giving them the self-discipline and confidence to become healthy, happy adults.

No More Meltdowns: Positive Strategies for Managing and Preventing Out-of-Control Behavior. Jed Baker, with a foreword by Carol Stock Kranowitz, $16.50

Meltdowns are stressful for both child and adult. Author of the award-winning Social Skills Picture Book series, Dr. Jed Baker offers parents and teachers strategies for understanding, preventing and managing meltdowns. His 20+ years of experience working with children on the autism spectrum, combined with his personal experiences raising his own children, have yielded time-tested strategies, and results.

"Jed Baker, in this excellent book, gives us the tools to deal with and prevent out-of-control behavior. Wisely, he leads us grown-ups to understand how to change our own behavior in order to help our children change theirs."

- Carol Stock Kranowitz, Author of best-seller “The Out-of-Sync Child”

Parenting a Child Who Has Intense Emotions: Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills to Help Your Child Regulate Emotional Outbursts & Aggressive Behaviors. Pat Harvey & Jeanine Penzo, $21.95

When your child has problems regulating his or her emotions, there's no hiding it. Children with intense emotions go from 0 to 100 in seconds and are prone to frequent emotional and behavioral outbursts that leave parents feeling bewildered and helpless.

Parenting a Child Who Has Intense Emotions is an effective guide to de-escalating your child's emotions and helping your child express feelings in productive ways. You'll learn strategies drawn from dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), including mindfulness and validation skills, and practice them when your child's emotions spin out of control. This well-researched method for managing emotions can help your child make dramatic emotional and behavioral changes that both of you will be proud of.

When a child is defiant, nothing seems to work. Parents, teachers, family counselors — anyone facing the challenge of raising or working with a disruptive child — desperately need to help the children in their lives overcome their conduct problems. Parenting the Defiant Child offers practical advice and the encouragement and guidance needed to bring and regain a much-needed sense of balance and joy.

Parenting Tough Kids. Mark Le Messurier, $29.95

Raising children is hard work and for some families, the struggle with one child threatens the family’s overall well-being. Parenting Tough Kids will help alleviate many common difficulties by providing practical, specific strategies to help children improve behavior and learning, and to develop emotional resilience and friendships. If you need strategies to implement in your home or would like to provide a practical resource for parents – this book is it. Appropriate for families of children ages 8-13.

Parenting with Positive Behavior Support: a Practical Guide to Resolving Your Child's Difficult Behavior. Meme Hieneman, Karen Childs & Jane Sergay, $25.95

Now the theory and research behind the positive behavior support (PBS) process — an approach already proven effective in schools and community programs — has been transformed into a practical, easy-to-use guide that’s perfect for sharing with parents. Developed by educators and families, this user-friendly handbook offers parents easy-to-follow guidelines for identifying the reasons for their children’s behavior and effectively intervening through three basic methods:

• preventing problems
• replacing behavior
• managing consequences

The included exercises and worksheets help parents easily track their child's progress, and three illuminating chapter-long case studies walk parents through PBS and show them how this process can transform family life.

Parenting Your Out-of-Control Child: an Effective, Easy-to-Use Program for Teaching Self-Control. George Kapalka, $16.95

This practical nine-step program, for children ages five to ten with impulsivity or self-control problems, guides you to better communication, effective discipline, and the implementation of a behavior contract that clarifies your expectations and your child's responsibilities.

Skills Training for Children with Behavior Problems: a Parent and Practitioner Guidebook, Revised Edition. Michael Bloomquist, $38.50

Grounded in the latest developmental knowledge and best practices, the revised edition of this popular guide addresses a broader array of behavior and adjustment difficulties and has been rewritten to be even more user-friendly. A wealth of practical tools are provided to build self-control in struggling children and teens; get social, emotional, and academic development back on track; and reduce family stress. Including over 25 reproducibles in a large-size format with layflat binding, the book is ideal for practitioners collaborating with families in clinic, school, or community settings, and also can be used by parents on their own.

SmartHelp for Good 'n' Angry Kids: Teaching Children to Manage Anger. Frank Jacobelli, Lynn Ann Watson , $35.95

SmartHelp for Good ‘n’ Angry Kids provides an innovative tool for determining a child’s individual learning strengths, and for pairing this information with specific, carefully crafted activities that teach the child about anger and its appropriate expression. A vital supplement to standard psychotherapeutic approaches such as play therapy, cognitive behavioural, family therapy and traditional anger management techniques.

Struggle for Control: Child and Youth Behaviour Disorders.  Helen Slinger & Melanie Wood, National Film Board of Canada, $19.95 (DVD, 57 minutes)

This documentary looks at the causes, symptoms, community resources and treatments of three of the most commonly diagnosed behavior disorders: ADHD, Oppositional Defiant Disorder and Conduct Disorder. Viewers see how these disorders affect the life of the child at home and at school and the effects on the family.

Taming the Spirited Child: Strategies for Parenting Challenging Children Without Breaking Their Spirits. Michael Popkin, $19.99

With step-by-step methods for every type of misbehavior and every child's unique personality, this comprehensive guide will help parents cultivate their child's spark, not extinguish it.

Treating Explosive Kids: the Collaborative Problem-Solving Approach. Ross Greene & J. Stuart Ablon, $44.50

The first comprehensive presentation for clinicians of the groundbreaking approach popularized in Ross Greene's acclaimed parenting guide, The Explosive Child, this book provides a detailed framework for effective, individualized intervention with highly oppositional children and their families. Many vivid examples and Q&A sections show how to identify the specific cognitive factors that contribute to explosive and noncompliant behavior, remediate these factors, and teach children and their adult caregivers how to solve problems collaboratively.

We’ve Got Issues: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication. Judith Warner, $32.50

In her provocative new book, New York Times-bestselling author Judith Warner explores the storm of debate over whether we are over diagnosing and overmedicating our children who have "issues." Are parents and physicians too quick to prescribe medi­cation to control our children's behavior? Are we using drugs to excuse inept parents who can't raise their children properly?

What Warner discovered from the extensive research and interviewing she did for this book is that passion on both sides of the issue "is ideological and only tangentially about real children," and she cuts through the jargon and hysteria to delve into a topic that for millions of parents involves one of the most important decisions they'll ever make for their child.

What Your Explosive Child is Trying to Tell You: Discovering the Pathway from Symptoms to Solutions. Douglas Riley, $18.95

This compassionate, no-nonsense guide explains the most common causes of explosive behaviors and tailors strategies to address the underlying cause of the behavior.

Working with the Difficult Child in the Classroom: Educating Children Today. Bryan Post & Teresa Green, $45.95 DVD 3 hours

Working with the Difficult Child in the Classroom is a system based on understanding the unique emotional needs of the challenging child in school. When normal classroom management techniques fail to yield positive results, Working with the Difficult Child in the Classroom can aid school teachers, parents, daycare staff, and administrators in preventing these unwanted behaviors and help these children become successful in the school setting.

Working With Parents of Noncompliant Children: a Guide to Evidence-Based Parent Training for Practitioners and Students. Mark Shriver & Keith Allen, $62.95

This book presents an in-depth look at evidence-based programs for training parents of children with behavior problems. Authors Shriver and Allen review the empirical support for four major programs, as well as some more popular programs that lack strong empirical support. Throughout this review they teach readers how to identify the best research in parent training, how to prepare for parent training sessions, and finally show how to translate this research into everyday practice.

Your Defiant Teen: 10 Steps to Resolve Conflict and Rebuild Your Relationship. Russell Barkley & Arthur Robin, $18.95

Russell Barkley and Arthur Robin-award-winning researchers and coauthors of a leading book on defiant teens for therapists have created a clinically proven self-help program that parents can use to restore order and rebuild trust. Your Defiant Teen demonstrates how to establish common ground, encourage mutual respect, and introduce cooperative problem solving — all without escalating the struggle for control. Much more than just a way to keep the peace, Drs. Barkley and Robin offer parents a means to teach their teenagers skills that will serve them well for a lifetime.