Marilyn Wedge – författare

With more than four million American children diagnosed with ADHD and other psychiatric disorders, taking a child to a psychiatrist is as common as taking them to soccer practice. But, disturbingly, a great number of children experience dangerous emotional and physical side effects from psychotropic medications. Where can parents who are eager to avoid shaming labels and drugs turn when their child exhibits disturbing behavior? Suffer the Children presents a much-needed alternative: child-focused family therapy. A family therapist for over twenty years, Marilyn Wedge shares the stories of her patients. Wedge presents creative strategies that flow from viewing children's symptoms not as biologically determined "disorders" but as responses to relationships in their lives that can be altered with the help of a therapist.Instructive, illuminating, and uplifting, Suffer the Children radically reframes how we as parents, as health professionals, and as a society can respond to problems of childhood in a considerate and respectful fashion.

Where can parents turn when their child exhibits disturbing behavior and they want to avoid psychiatric labels and drugs? Pills Are Not for Preschoolers presents a much-needed alternative: child-focused family therapy—a brief, effective approach that involves family members in the child’s therapy. A family therapist for more than twenty years, Marilyn Wedge treats children’s problems not as biologically determined “disorders” but as responses to relationships in their lives that can be altered with the help of a therapist. Parents can now respond to symptoms of ADHD, depression, and anxiety with respectful family prescriptives, not prescriptions—and Wedge brilliantly shows us how easy it can be to understand and implement her pathbreaking approach.

Integrating strategic problem-solving, and emphasis on stories and the cultural context of meaning, this book introduces the theoretical stance of semiotic constructivism. Its main argument, illustrated in engaging cases, is that all experience is a construction of signs, and that symbolic forms such as language, myth, ritual and drama create and shape our realities, and provide useful tools for encouraging therapeutic change.