The Confident Child: Raising a Child to Try, Learn, and Care - Hardcover

Terri Apter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393040585 ISBN 13: 9780393040586

Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc, 1997

Synopsis

Shows parents how to help their children acquire self-esteem, problem-solving ability, social skills, and emotional control, and how to detect dangers to self-esteem during adolescence

About this title

Review

"We understand far more about how self-esteem can be damaged in childhood--through neglect or abuse--than we do about how it can be fostered, preserved, and reinforced," author Terri Apter writes in The Confident Child: Raising Children to Believe in Themselves. Apter aims to help parents recognize problems in a child's "self theory" (a child's self-image and ideas about her potential), and to help the child "sustain positive attitudes and correct destructive ones." In clear, concise prose, The Confident Child focuses on the age span from 5 to 15, the time in life when self-esteem and confidence are at their most delicate and are the most sensitive to nurturing. Chapters cover assessing a child's self-esteem, being an imperfect parent without ruining your child's life (managing anger, grief, and disappointment), working within the delicate balance of discipline (teaching your child to be ashamed of her behavior but not of herself), success and failure at school, the effects of sibling rivalry, social confidence, and the early teen years. Much of the material in The Confident Child is original; Apter, a social psychologist and researcher and author of Altered Loves, conducted a five-year study that is the basis of this compassionate and practical book. Yet Apter also owes a debt to the works of Erik Erickson, Daniel Goleman, and others. --Ericka Lutz

From the Inside Flap

Raising confident, motivated children is a parent's greatest challenge. Drawing on her own extensive research on children and parents, and on Daniel Goleman's concept of emotional intelligence, Terri Apter has created a strategy based on emotional coaching--learning to respond appropriately to a child's feelings--for parents to promote self-esteem in children.
Children who believe in themselves and have confidence are known to experience future successes, to be less frustrated in learning, and to show overall higher performance. This compassionate guidebook shows parents how to help their child acquire self-esteem building skills and offers parents a plan for learning how to discipline, communicate, and deal with their children's emotional life, an important link to building self-esteem.
In an accessible style, with down-to-earth examples of children's lives in the family and in school, Apter shows parents how to raise a child to solve problems, to be socially active and understand others, to express feelings appropriately, and to manage emotions--all of which are crucial skills in developing confidence. Every parent and caring adult should own a copy of this necessary parenting guide.

About this edition

• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0393040585
• ISBN 13: 9780393040586
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 270