Books

Practical Help For You And Your Family

Books

Practical Help For You And Your Family

Simple Habits of Exceptional (But Not Perfect) Parents

In Simple Habits of Exceptional Parents, author Ken Dolan-Del Vecchio draws from his extensive clinical and organizational consulting background to provide a first-rate, exceptionally comprehensive manual for parents striving to help their children thrive in today’s challenging world. Ken covers topics that we, as parents, face with great regularity – giving advice, negotiating boundaries, conveying respect, fostering self-esteem, and most importantly, cultivating joy. These are the tasks of daily living for parents but can often get lost in our hectic lives, our connected world, and our desire to see our children achieve – but at what cost? This highly practical book is a refreshing reminder of what is most essential in parenting – a loving approach to helping our children become who they are meant to be.

Habits are the social messengers by which parents instill values and behaviors in their children. Ken Dolan-Del Vecchio provides receptive parents with practical, useful means by which to influence how their children will love, handle conflict, appreciate differences, ask for help, mind their health and mental health, and much more. The greatest gift we can give our children is to help them surpass us, and this book shows how.

Ken Dolan-Del Vecchio is the master of offering friendly and compassionate wisdom for people in relationships. His sense of humor and willingness to share his own personal challenges with parenting renders this a joyful and satisfying read.

The Pet Loss Companion

View The Pet Loss Companion Website

Everyone who’s ever loved an animal companion will find wisdom and solace in this book. The authors share stories drawn from decades of experience leading pet loss groups and practicing family therapy. Their recommendations for taking care of yourself and loved ones during the rough spots of grief will answer all of your important questions and help you feel well-supported. I highly recommend The Pet Loss Companion for companion animal lovers like me.

Everyone who’s ever loved an animal companion will find wisdom and solace in this book. The authors share stories drawn from decades of experience leading pet loss groups and practicing family therapy. Their recommendations for taking care of yourself and loved ones during the rough spots of grief will answer all of your important questions and help you feel well-supported. I highly recommend The Pet Loss Companion for companion animal lovers like me.

Making Love, Playing Power

Men, Women, and the Rewards of Intimate Justice

…brings the cutting edge of relationship therapy to the mass market. Family therapist and organizational consultant Ken Dolan-Del Vecchio debunks superficial theories about communication styles and gender roles as he gets to the real reason so many relationships are in trouble — misuse of power. Making Love, Playing Power reveals how gender, race, sexual orientation, and money set the foundation for personal power, and how power as domination drives most conflicts whether between nations, interest groups, or individuals. Women will find Making Love, Playing Power uniquely inspiring and validating. Men will find it life-changing. This book shows how to reject the power of domination and realize the power of love. Dolan-Del Vecchio offers new and provocative “principles of love,” memorable case examples, and “action steps” that help readers make changes that bring lasting love.

By inserting inequality and power into the center of negotiating relationships, Dolan-Del Vecchio exposes the simplistic bromides of pop-psychologists like John Gray. Only by challenging power imbalances can we base our relationships on equality, and only by basing our relationships on equality can we ever really learn to communicate effectively.

Transformative Family Therapy

Just Families in a Just Society

…translates social justice values and multicultural theory into a practical therapeutic model for clinical/community practice. It links people across family boundaries to solve common problems. Provides tools and case examples that show students and practitioners how to translate social justice values and multicultural theory into clinical/community practice. Introduces a framework for recognizing the social and political contexts of privilege and oppression that shape all relationships. Describes unique intervention modalities, including social justice sponsors, social education, and culture circles.

This book offers an extraordinarily thoughtful method for helping people with their personal problems while enhancing awareness of pervasive social injustices.  Previous attempts to incorporate clinical work with social concerns have floundered as soon as they began collapsing psychotherapy into social action, essentially advocating: “Don’t waste time analyzing yourself, join in social justice struggles.”

Re-Visioning Family Therapy

Race, Culture, and Gender in Clinical Practice

(Includes Ken’s Chapter, “Dismantling White Male Privilege within Family Therapy”)

…exploring the ways that clients’ lives, and family therapy itself, are constrained by larger forces of racial, cultural, sexual, and class-based inequality, this groundbreaking volume expands the boundaries of the field and works toward truly inclusive clinical practice. Editor Monica McGoldrick, whose earlier Ethnicity and Family Therapy provides in-depth portraits of the family systems of more than 40 ethnic groups, here takes up vital cultural issues that cut across all ethnicities. Renowned contributors offer concrete suggestions for improving family therapy training and developing services that minority families may experience as more relevant to their lives.

“Reading this book was a truly invigorating experience. It captures the complex contexts of clients’ and practitioners’ lives, and puts forth suggestions for practice that are inclusive of all whom we serve. Resisting pathologizing explanations, the book provides a depth of knowledge for helping families draw on their strengths during difficult times. Chapters show how exclusion and marginalization contribute to the problems that families experience, and highlight clinical intervention approaches that are transformative. The second edition squarely confronts new forms of oppression arising in changing global contexts. This book will be most useful for graduate-level training in social work and other helping professions.

Selected Publications

  • Dolan-Del Vecchio, K. (2017). Simple Habits of Exceptional (But Not Perfect) Parents. Palmer, Massachusetts: GreenGate Leadership.

  • Brennan, W.; Dolan-Del Vecchio, K.; Emmet, W.; Goldfarb, S.; Lattarulo, C.; Mantych, C.; Miller, C.; Petit, J.; Pickering, L.; Ricci, B.; Sakraida, K.; Thompson, M.; Train, D. (2016). Working Well: Leading a Mentally Healthy Business. New York: Oberland.

  • Dolan-Del Vecchio, K. & Saxton-Lopez, N. (2013). The Pet Loss Companion. North Charleston, South Carolina: CreateSpace.

  • Dolan-Del Vecchio, K. (2008). Making Love, Playing Power: Men, Women, & the Rewards of Intimate Justice. New York: Soft Skull Press.

  • Dolan-Del Vecchio. K. (2008). Dismantling White Male Privilege within Family Therapy. In McGoldrick, M. (Ed.), Revisioning Family Therapy: Race, Culture, and Gender in Clinical Practice.New York: Guilford Press.

  • Almeida, R.; Dolan-Del Vecchio, K.; Parker, L. (2007). Transformative Family Therapy: Just Families in a Just Society. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

  • Almeida, R.; Dolan-Del Vecchio, K.; Parker, L. (2007).  Foundation Concepts for Social Justice Based Therapy: Critical Consciousness, Accountability, and Empowerment. In Aldarondo, E. (Ed.) Promoting Social Justice Through Mental Health Practice. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

  • Hernandez, P.; Almeida, R.; Dolan-Del Vecchio, K. (2005). Critical Consciousness, Accountability, and Empowerment: Key Processes for Helping Families Heal. Family Process. 44(1).

  • Dolan-Del Vecchio, K. & Lockard, J. (2004). Resistance to Colonialism as the Heart of Family Therapy Practice. Journal of Feminist Family Therapy. 16(2).

  • Dolan-Del Vecchio, K. (2002).  Respect for Human Differences?  It begins with Truth.  Journal of Feminist Family Therapy. 14(2).

  • Dolan-Del Vecchio, K. (2000).  Bringing Diversity to the Center of Corporate Training. The International Journal of Diversity & Synergy. 2(1).

  • Almeida, R.; Dolan-Del Vecchio, K. (1999).  Addressing Culture in Batterers Intervention:  South Asian Communities as an Illustrative Example. Violence Against Women. 5(6).

  • Dolan-Del Vecchio, K. (1998). Dismantling White Male Privilege within Family Therapy. In McGoldrick, M. (Ed.), Revisioning Family Therapy: Race, Culture, and Gender in Clinical Practice. New York: Guilford Press.

  • Font, R.; Dolan-Del Vecchio, K.; Almeida, R. (1998).  Finding the Words: Instruments for a Therapy of Liberation. In Almeida, R. (Ed.),Transformations of Gender and Race in Family Therapy.  Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press.

  • Font, R.; Dolan-Del Vecchio, K.; Almeida, R. (1998).  Expanded Norms of the Male Role.  In Almeida, R. (Ed.)Transformations of Gender and Race in Family Therapy. Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press.

  • Dolan-Del Vecchio, K. (1996).  The Foundation for Accountability: A Linking of Many Different Voices. The Client’s Voice: American Family Therapy Academy (AFTA) Newsletter. 64, 20-23.