Teaches parents of children of all ages who are hurt, angry, rejecting, and distant (HARD) how to effectively and empathically communicate through a variety of effective and empathic strategies.

Children who are hurt, angry, rejecting, and distant (HARD) can be challenging to parent. They can be rude, uncooperative, and disagreeable. They are hard to relate to or connect with, and they can appear to be hardened to the love and guidance of their parent. Whether hard children are caught in a loyalty conflict, are victims of parental alienation, or behaving this way for some other reason, their parents need help! Losing or feeling like you are about to lose a relationship with a beloved child, regardless of the cause, is one of the most painful scenarios a parent will ever experience. Such parents feel under fire! How to handle such children before relationships are further damaged is a question many parents have. Should the parent pick their battles or put their foot down? Should they pursue the child or let the child come to them?

This book provides parents of a hurt, angry, rejecting distant child the much needed guidance and support they need to connect with their children and repair relationships while opening the lines of communication.The book is divided into three sections, each focusing on a different form of communication. In the first section, the focus is on in-person communication and interactions, the second teaches parents the whys and hows of communicating via messages, and the final portion walks parents through the principles and mechanics of writing letters to an older hurt, angry, rejecting, distant child in an effort to bridge gaps and repair wounds. This book provides the reader with the science-based hope and inspiration they need as well as hundreds of practical suggestions about how to keep the communication loving, appropriate, and connected.

Amy J.L. Baker, PhD is a national leader in the field of parental alienation, lecturing and training on the subject around the world. Dr. Baker has conducted numerous workshops for legal and mental health professionals working with alienated families as well as for cut-off parents. She provides telephone coaching for cut-off parents and has also been quoted and/or appeared in major media outlets including The New York Times, Newsweek, Good Morning America, Dateline, and CNN. She was recently interviewed for the Red Table Talk for an upcoming episode on parental alienation.

Paul R. Fine, LCSW is a licensed clinical social worker who has decades of experience working with individuals and families dealing with a range of conflicted family situations including families with children who are hurt, angry, rejecting, and distant. He is the co-author of three books with Dr. Baker.

This fourth collaboration by Baker and Fine offers strategies to alleviate various forms of conflict that develop between a parent and child.… The authors propose that the parent is responsible for resolving any differences, and the divisiveness or estrangement reflects a child’s unfulfilled needs. They instruct parents to maintain a positive demeanor, avoid placing expectations on results, and persevere despite rejection. The dynamics of competition and rancor between divorced parents are heavily emphasized and direct much of the book’s therapeutic objectives. Comprehensive examples are given spanning from the creative to the obvious.
— Booklist

Baker and Fine have provided a fantastic book of the nitty gritty Do’s and Don’ts for parents facing “HARD” children—which can be a minefield! They give hundreds of words and phrases that parents usually wish for when stressed and on the defensive with their own children, especially when they are in a potentially high conflict dispute with their co-parent. They give many great strategies (step-by-step) for managing a shaky relationship with such a child (from how to avoid taking the bait, how to respond to a child’s false allegations, how to avoid touching your child in anger, how to strengthen your attachment, and many more tips). They are experts in this field and this book is an excellent addition to their previous books on managing difficult parent-child relationships.
— Bill Eddy, LCSW, JD, lead author of BIFF for CoParent Communication and developer of the New Ways for Families parent-skills traning method

For readers undermined by or in serious conflict with the other parent of their child, Parenting Under Fire:How to Communicate with Your Hurt, Angry, Rejecting, Distant (HARD) Child is a gift. With its practical advice on parenting better by connecting productively and compassionately with your hurting kid(s), Baker and Fines ultimate help-book for parents of dysregulated, alienated children will guide you through the wilderness of parent/child estrangement to a place of self-awareness and empowerment. Neatly organized by communication medium--face-to-face, text, letter--the book offers readers a bounty of tactics for approaching painful, flummoxing, and often exasperating encounters with kids who may be dealing with trauma or manipulation by another adult in their life. Frankly, this is one of those parenting books we all could benefit from, whether our children have existentially unfriended us or regale us with every florid and mundane detail of their lives. Positive communication is tricky. Raise the stakes one-hundredfold and toss in a tween or an adolescent? Thats what this book is for.

Ultimately, as it should, Parenting Under Fire emphasizes protecting the children caught in stressed, often triangulated relationships by teaching the adults in their lives how to make them feel safe and loved through better connection. As I see it, the book also illuminates a heartbreaking truth: here in America, parents or not, we are profoundly under-resourced, and our most vulnerable people--especially our youngsters--are the first to suffer the consequences. Access to in-the-flesh behavioral healthcare has become increasingly challenging for ordinary folks. Still, we are lucky to have experts proffering their wisdom in tidy, readable packages, like this one, which we can buy or borrow to read at home. These books save lives.
— Deborah Vlock, PhD, author of “Parenting Children with Mental Health Challenges: A Guide to Life with Emotionally Complex Kids”