children of alcoholics

David Pelzer, victim of one of the worst child abuse cases in the history of California, tells the story of how he survived his mother's brutality and triumphed over his past.

Dave Pelzer's story is the story of a child brutally beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother: a mother who played torturous, unpredictable games -- games that left one of her three sons nearly dead. Dave had to learn how to play his mother's games in order to survive because she no longer considered him a son, but a slave, and no longer a boy but an 'it'.

Seventeen-year-old Carson Speier is bored of Billings, Montana, and resentful that he has to help his mother take care of his father, a dying alcoholic whom he has not seen in fourteen years--but then he meets Aisha, a beautiful African American girl who has run away from her own difficult family, and together they embark on a journey of discovery that may help them both come to terms with their lives.

Ivy despairs when she has to leave her best friend Prairie's home, where she has been living, to move back in with her alcoholic mother. When Ivy's mother's behavior reaches a tipping point, Ivy must summon her strength and inner reserves to make the decision that is best for herself.

A harrowing but ultimately uplifting true story of a boy's journey through the foster-care system in search of a family to love.

Looks at the options available to teens who have an alcoholic parent, discussing the effects it has and ways to cope.

Reviews the developmental needs of children that are met in healthy families and then shows how these needs are not met by alcoholic parents. Also discusses the issues of codependency and the contribution of non-alcoholic memters to the ill health of the family.