Families Work Together To Grow Through Adolescence, Houghton-Mifflin, 1997; The Launching Years: Strategies for Parents from Senior Year to College Life, Three Rivers Press, 2003; and Getting to Calm: Cool-headed strategies for parenting tweens and teens, ParentMap, 2009.  She has also co-authored, with Kristen Russell, Wise-Minded Parenting:  7 Essentials for Raising Successful Tweens + Teens, ParentMap, 2013. Her latest book, entitled Getting to Calm, The Early Years: Cool-headed Strategies for Raising Happy, Caring and Independent Three- to Seven- Year Olds was published by ParentMap (2015).

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Dr. Kastner has been a keynote speaker in hundreds of settings including regional independent school conferences, hospital lecture series, child psychiatry conferences, public and private schools, business settings and teaching conferences. Although she speaks most frequently on the subject of parenting adolescents and children, she also lectures on the effects of affluence on child-rearing, launching teens to college, emotional intelligence and character education. Her books have been recommended by notable authors, including Drs. Brazelton, Dweck, Gottman, Linehan, and Siegel, and lauded for both their grounding in evidence based research and their effective solutions to typical challenges in child-rearing.

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After receiving her Ph.D. at University of Virginia, Dr. Kastner joined the faculty at the University of Washington where she teaches in the departments of psychology, psychiatry and the school of medicine. Specializing in adolescent health, the topics of Dr. Kastner’s academic articles include adolescent sexuality, behavioral medicine, teen suicide, eating disorders and the teaching of interviewing skills in primary care. She has received the Distinguished Psychologist Award from Washington State Psychological Association and been named one of Seattle’s Top Doctors. She maintains a private practice in which she treats children, couples and families. She and her husband of thirty years have two grown children.

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You can read more about her books at www.launchingyears.com, www.gettingtocalm.com and www.wisemindedparenting.com.  You can order her new book “Getting to Calm – The Early Years” at www.amazon.com.