When Your Child is Afraid: Understanding the Normal Fears of Childhood from Birth Through Adolescence and Helping Overcome Them

Explains what kinds of fears are normal for every age of childhood and adolescence, discusses specific fears--death, strangers, animals, burglers--and shows how to handle children's fears before they become disruptive phobias or permanent neuroses

Psychologist Schachter, director of New York's Children's Phobia Center, and McCauley, author of Pregnancy After 35, cover an intricate subject in this extensive guide. Supported by case histories, the text pinpoints "normal" fears affecting children from infancy through age 16. Descriptions of various fears precede advice on how to deal with childhood dreads before they become inhibiting phobias. Parents, guardians and teachers can learn to recognize symptoms listed in the book's Fear Survey Chart and in boxed paragraphs that summarize each chapter's focus. For example, babies and very small children are terrified of loud noises, losing their parents when left with a sitter, etc.; by stages, older children worry about rejection, failing in school, nuclear war, sexual assaults and many other possibilities, real or imagined. The authors provide guidance on behavior modification and other therapies when professional help is indicated. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Psychologist Schachter, director of New York's Children's Phobia Center, and writer McCauley help parents and teachers alleviate over 40 "normal" fears that develop in children from birth through age 16. A structured format incorporates helpful information under the headings "definition," "symptoms," "motivation," and "what to do," with anecdotes enlivening an otherwise didactic yet readable text. Despite organizational devices, some discontinuity exists. While Schachter espouses behavior modification and his own "kinetic psychotherapy," Joel Feiner and Graham Yost's more substantive Taming Monsters, Slaying Dragons ( LJ 12/87) advocates family therapy. For larger collections.Janice Arenofsky, formerly with Arizona State Lib., Phoenix
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.