The Mislabeled Child: How Understanding Your Child's Unique Learning Style Can Open the Door to Success

The Eides take a new and refreshing approach to many of the concerns and challenges that impact our children's ability to learn. Informative and well-documented, this book is appropriate for anyone involved with children, including parents, teachers, therapists, and physicians. It is packed with important information backed by the latest research. Yet it is presented in a very readable fashion. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone who wants to find out more about the many and varied ways that children learn, including those with ADD, autism, sensory processing dysfunction, dyslexia, and those who are gifted.

The Mislabeled Child is a revolutionary book that looks beneath the labels children receive, and addresses the real underlying issues. Essential reading for parents, teachers, and health care professionals alike, this highly readable text provides specific, practical approaches to recognizing and capitalizing on children's strengths in order to help them flourish. From sensory processing difficulties to dyslexia, from language problems to poor handwriting skills, the Eides provide useful insights and marvelous advice.

On the back cover is a quote from Paul Beljan,president , American Board of Pediatric Neuropsychology where he states : "This is the kind of book that parent's will want to keep out and refer to again and again. This book provides a comprehensive, commonsense and scientifically insightful overview of the causes and behaviors associated with a number of learning problems." The Drs. Eide have demystified many learning differences and their impact on the whole child. Their desire for each child to succeed is clearly evident throughout the book. They share with the reader compensatory strategies, types of remediation, interventions and needed accommodations. "The authors describe how understanding a child's unique strengths can be used to overcome obstacles to learning." In addition they also show how some LD's actually mimic each other. For example: CAPD (Central auditory processing disorder) is often mislabeled as ADD/ADHD. Or how you can read and write yet still be dyslexic. Thomas G. West, author of "In the Mind's Eye" and "Thinking Like Einstein" said it best: " In "The Mislabeled Child", the Eides help us to differentiate more clearly between various traits and labels, always looking deeply into the diverse nature of each individual. This is important work. Some of our brightest and most creative minds hang in the balance."

The Eides figured out what was going on with our 2e son and provided practical ideas to help him. Therefore, I knew The Mislabeled Child would be excellent, yet I could hardly put the book down when I read it the first time. I must confess I stayed up most of the night reading it. I've read literally every book I can find concerning intellectual giftedness, dyslexia, dysgraphia, testing, and learning disabilities. I know I will refer to The Mislabeled Child over and over again as it is the best resource I've found. As a school counselor, I've been recommending this book to parents, grandparents, teachers and administrators. The more we understand children, the better-equipped we are to help each one succeed.

After many years trying to figure out our son, many thousands of dollars in testing and evaluations, and countless frustrations finding professionals who had an accurate integrated knowledge of the learning challenges facing our highly gifted child, there is finally a book that not only ties together the numerous domains of abilities and disabilities that describes our son, but also gives explicit examples of things we can do to help him thrive academically, social, and emotionally. For parents without the financial resources for comprehensive testing, or if lacking local testing facilities, this book also gives specific behaviors and adaptations to look for in children struggling with specific learning challenges, such as dyslexia and dysgraphia, memory weaknesses, visual and auditory problems, attention challenges, and sensory processing disorders. It also gives specific evaluations that can be done at home by parents. The Eide team (Drs. Brock and Fernette) are, in my mind, among the nations' most knowledgeable in the combined areas of neuroscience, learning disabilities, and giftedness. Together, they run the Eide Neurolearning Clinic outside Seattle, publish and present at conferences around the country and this year presented at the President's Council on Bioethics on The Fundamental Needs of Children. The transcript is worth reading and there's a link from their website. They are also board members of SENG (Supporting the Emotional Needs of the Gifted). Collectively, the Eide team is a powerhouse of insight and inspiration, not just because of their outstanding credentials and experience working with hundreds of children in their clinic, but perhaps most importantly, because of their obvious deep love for children, and desire to see each and every one of them live a happy and fulfilled life. While their book is brimming with great information and resources, it's their hearts that bind it together to create an enjoyable, and entirely approachable resource for parents and grandparents, educators, and any professionals who work with children. If you're looking for the "ultimate resource" to help your child, or maybe someone else's child, this might be as good as it gets.