Help With The Hard Stuff
Lauren W. Tolle, PhD, and William T. O'Donohue, PhD
Help With the Hard Stuff is a workbook designed for teens diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes and their parents. Living with Type 1 diabetes is difficult enough for adults, but for teenagers it adds to the already increased stress of social pressures, self-awareness, and responsibility. This workbook can help the whole family better understand basic diabetes information and important facts associated with good diabetes care. It also provides evidence based cognitive-behavioral strategies that can be helpful in facilitating health behavior changes, such as when problems arise with treatment adherence. Help With the Hard Stuff is designed to assist in making the transition in care from parent to adolescent smoother and more successful. It does this by addressing key factors that are associated with better adherence such as self-monitoring of blood glucose, coping effectively with a chronic illness, gaining social support, improving family communication. It also assists parents in learning how to provide autonomy-promoting support and provides a glossary of commonly used terms in addition to a section with resources for more information.
Help With The Hard Stuff is really about its subtitle: Workbooks for Teens With Type 1 Diabetes and their Parents. Unlike many of our recommended books, Help With The Hard Stuff demands involvement of the parents and the teen. The book is divided into two main sections — the first for parents, the second for teens. Chapters typically begin with a page of true/false questions that set the stage for a discussion on a topic that is often a source of contention — for example, glucose monitoring. After exploring strategies for success, the authors present an exercise that helps both parents and teens to make progress. Help With The Hard Stuff can help teens and their families who are struggling to understand better why diabetes care is so important and to appreciate the perspective of the other side — a critical step toward becoming a team. Highly Recommended.
Published by Health Press NA Inc., Albuquerque, NM. Paperback, 210 pages. $19.95. ISBN 978-0-929173-55-9.2010