It's Just My Nature! by Carol Tuttle

Title: It's Just My Nature! A Guide To Knowing and Living Your True Nature
Author: Carol Tuttle
Reviewer: Karen
Genre: Non-Fiction Self-Help
Rating: Love
Alerts/Warnings: None
Premise: "Reveals a startlingly accurate method for assessing your personality and behavioral tendencies with a new system called Energy Profiling TM" (King County Library).
Opinions: This book explains that everyone's personalities down into four types: Air, Water, Fire, and Earth with a thorough explanation of the reasons and science behind this breakdown. Everyone has all four aspects to their nature, but this book suggests that everyone has one of the types that is dominant over all the others. And then explains that if you accept what your true nature is and to live by it that you will feel more at home in your own skin.  I had heard about this premise before from several friends who have already read into Carol Tuttle's Energy Profiling system. When a friend loaned  me this book I was eager to see what all the hype was about. The intriguing thing is it made a whole lot of sense to me. Eventually I was able to pin down that I am a Type 1: Air person who lives by hope and looking up and having an upbeat personality. Secondly, I am a Water type as I tend to be sensitive and also try to make others feel comfortable. The break down of each type is fully explained including the strengths and difficulties a person of that type would face. It also suggests how to work with someone of a differing type then yourself, which I found extremely helpful. The more I read, the more I began to understand other family members better and what it is that I could modify in my own behavior to help meet their needs. I was grateful for the insight in how to work better together as a family to help each other grow closer together. I am looking forward into reading her book Child Whisperer to help me further understand my children's personalities and how I could be a better mother to support who they are. I especially enjoyed being able to go back to my friends who recommended this book and see if they agreed with my assessment. It's a great topic of discussion.

Understanding Your Child's Sensory Signals by Angie Voss

Title: Understanding Your Child's Sensory Signals: A Practical Daily Use Handbook for Parents and Teachers
Author: Angie Voss, OTR/L
Reviewer: Karen
Genre: Adult Self-Help/Non-Fiction
Rating: FABULOUS
Alerts/Warnings: None
Premise: "A practical, daily application handbook for parents, teachers, and caregivers to help understand sensory signals versus behavior and how you can help! This user friendly "go to" handbook is geared for daily use and as a quick sensory reference guide. Enjoy the simple, organized format to give you the essential and useful information for over 110 sensory signals. The handbook provides simple every day sensory strategies and techniques to help ALL children; including SPD, autism spectrum disorders, ADD/ADHD, APD, and developmental disabilities. This handbook provides guidance and understanding as to why children do what they do in regards to unique sensory processing differences and needs" (GoodReads.com).
Opinions: Okay this book is simply remarkable. Two of my children have recently been diagnosed with developmental delays -- Sensory Processing Disorder and Autism. We have found wonderful programs to help my children build on their strengths and identify tools to help themselves to overcome their delays. However, my biggest struggle has been in regards to my role in their development. When my kids come home from their various appointments and schools I often feel overwhelmed by all the data I was given that explains what my children are experiencing.  Very  little made sense to me, and I wasn't sure how to do practical application as their mother with the information overload I was given. Then one day my daughter's Occupational Therapist showed me this book.  Oh my GOSH!!!! Is it ever fantastic. 

This guide is a hands-on tool for parents and teachers to help them understand what kids are experiencing as they are experiencing them.  This book breaks down by action what your child is doing at that exact moment, why they are doing it, what questions you need to consider, and then tells you what you can do to help your child.  For example, my daughter has difficulty processing all the sensory signals she was seeing and sometimes normal physical movements wouldn't register the same with her as other children. So she would repeatedly run into walls or objects to trigger a physical impact that she could register. Now that I have this book, when my daughter runs into something I look up the sensory signal from the list at the beginning and it leads me to the page that describes why this is occurring and what else I can have my daughter do to safely get the same sensation without damaging herself or my wall. 

This is a practical, handy, easy to understand guide that has changed the way I view my children and has helped me to feel a sense of control knowing that there is something that I can do to help my children.  I highly recommend this book to everyone, not just families with special needs. This book is great for teachers, administrators, parents, church leaders and so much more.  If you work with children and often wonder why they do some of the things they do, then this book will definitely help you.  As for me, I went out and bought my own $10 copy off Amazon to keep on hand. And, whenever I can afford it, I'm going to buy several more copies to hand out to. . . oh just about everyone I know and love.  It's that helpful and great.

How to Hug a Porcupine by Dr. John Lewis Lund

Title: How to Hug a Porcupine: Dealing with Toxic and Difficult to Love Personalities
Author: Dr. John Lewis Lund
Reviewer: Karen
Genre: Adult Self-Help
Rating: Love
Alerts/Warnings: None
Premise: "Dealing with toxic and difficult to love personalities." (King County Library System)
Opinions: This book is fantastic if you want to learn how to deal with a loved one who you love, but simply can't trust or like at the moment due to the way they treat you. It explains how someone with a toxic personality "is anyone who adopts manipulative behaviors and attempts to control others in selfish ways" (pg 5). It is full of insights and stories, citing examples from Dr. Lund's own patients who struggled with family or friends with very toxic personalities. This book teaches you how to protect yourself so that you can choose to stay in the relationship if you want without letting it destroy you. It also gives you clearer ideas to know when the best option is for you to leave. Later in the book Dr. Lund also discusses what to do if you realize that you are the one who is toxic and want to overcome yourself. I found this book very helpful for me personally and highly recommend it for anyone else dealing with toxic family or friends.

On Becoming Baby Wise by Gary Ezzo

Title: On Becoming Baby Wise
Author: Gary Ezzo and Robert Bucknam
Reviewer: Karen
Genre: Self Help/Non-Fiction
Rating:Love
Alerts/Warnings: None
Premise: This book focuses on learning how to help your baby sleep through the night.
Opinions: Being a new mom for the second time over I was eager to learn how to avoid the mistakes that I made when it came to getting my daughter to sleep well. My daughter is now approaching two years old and has only started sleeping through the night within the last two months (thanks to a fabulous mother-in-law who trained her while I was on bed rest with my son). A trusted source recommended to me that I try the Baby Wise method as several of her family members (including herself) have followed it and are now rejoicing with children who learn to comfort themselves to sleep.


The main focus of the Baby Wise method is that if you allow your child a semi-structured routine during the day that 96% of the children following this method will be able to sleep through the night by 8-12 weeks old. Now the idea is not to keep the child on a strict schedule, but to make sure that during the day they have a clear start time for morning feeding and then make sure that throughout the day the child has clearly defined periods of sleep time, followed by eating time, followed by awake time. Then the cycle repeats. The parent is responsible for following this general routine, but ensuring that you still focus on the baby's hunger cues. Granted my newborn son is only 5 weeks old and I'm still working on the process, but I'm finding this book really helpful and informative and highly recommend it to anyone with a newborn on the way.