You’ve done your best.

How do I know? No one ever lands on this Web page before they have tried everything humanly possible to solve their problems on their own. The people I work with come to me after they’ve read books, talked to friends, scoured the Internet, and spent many a sleepless night trying to figure it out.

Exhausted? Losing patience?

I’ve successfully helped families for whom simple things that other kids seem to do without any problem have become a very big deal. For example, a road trip starts out fun but quickly turns sour when the child gets so anxious from forgetting a toy that parents must turn around and go home. Parents are dismayed when their son is crying in the school nurse’s office, because he can’t bear to be without mom and dad. At the pizza parlor, a daughter being loud and angry ruins what could have been a sweet night out with the whole family.

Embarrassed? Blaming yourself?

When our kids are doing well, it’s normal and expected; when they are not, parents get blamed. She has no control over that child. In our house, that behavior would never be tolerated. That child must really be disturbed.

You start to internalize the judgement, and it makes you feel even more exhausted and less effective.