Developing Differently: A Guide for Parents of Young Children with Global Developmental Delay, Intellectual Disability, or Autism

Parenting isn't easy, and parenting a child with a Global Developmental Delay, Intellectual Disability, or Autism can be challenging. However, a lot of parenting strategies are straightforward once you get your head around them. With the right knowledge, environment, interactions, responses and understanding, you can help reduce your child's anxiety, build their confidence, and help them develop learning and communication skills.
Based on his work as a Clinical Psychologist working with children developing differently, Dr Joshua Muggleton provides a comprehensive, step-by-step parenting plan that will support you to embed good practice at home from day one. The book outlines how to provide the right environment for your child to learn and grow, how to model and encourage new skills, how to organise routines, and how to make these strategies work in family life. By getting things right for your child early on, you can help prevent emotional and behavioural challenges before they arise, and will be better able to understand and support your child when they do. These strategies are designed to work across all neurodevelopmental conditions, and take into account co-occurring conditions such as ADHD, meaning none of the advice in the book requires your child to have a specific diagnosis. It also includes downloadable examples of charts, how-to guides for creating visual resources tailored to your child's individual needs, and downloadable chapters on sleep and siblings.

Dr Joshua Muggleton is a Clinical Psychologist. He is also autistic, and from a neurodiverse family. From an early age he was interested in how and why he and other young people saw the world differently. Combining this personal interest with academia, he gained undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Psychology, including a doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the University of Edinburgh. Since qualifying, Josh has been working exclusively with children and young people developing differently, many of whom have developmental delays, physical health issues, or neurodevelopmental conditions such as Intellectual Disability, Autism, or ADHD.