Product Description

The spirited child — often called "difficult" or "strong-willed" — can easily overwhelm parents, leaving them feeling frustrated and inadequate. Spirited kids are, in fact, simply "more" — by temperament, they are more intense, sensitive, perceptive, persistent, and uncomfortable with change than the average child. Through vivid examples and a refreshingly positive viewpoint, Mary Sheedy Kurcinka offers parents emotional support and proven strategies for handling their spirited child. Raising Your Spirited Child will help you:

• Understand your child's — and your own — temperamental traits
• Plan for success with a simple four-step program
• Discover the power of positive — rather than negative — labels
• Cope with tantrums and blowups when they do occur
• Develop strategies for handling mealtimes, bedtimes, holidays, school and many other situations

Filled with personal insight and authoritative advice, Raising Your Spirited Child can help make parenting the joy it should be, rather than the trial it can be.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21228 in Books
• Published on: 1998-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.com
Recently, temperament traits have come to the forefront of child development theory. In Raising Your Spirited Child, Mary Sheedy Kurcinka's first contribution is to redefine the "difficult child" as the "spirited" child, a child that is, as she says, MORE. Many people are leery about books that are too quick to "type" kids, but Kurcinka, a parent of a spirited child herself and a parent educator for 20 years, doesn't fall into that trap. Instead, she provides tools to understanding your own temperament as well as your child's. When you understand your temperamental matches--and your mismatches--you can better understand, work, live, socialize, and enjoy spirit in your child. By reframing challenging temperamental qualities in a positive way, and by giving readers specific tools to work with these qualities, Kurcinka has provided a book that will help all parents, especially the parents of spirited children, understand and better parent their children.

From Publishers Weekly
Kurcinka's now-classic guide to raising children who are "more"—more intense, more sensitive, more persistent, etc.—gets a greatest-hits treatment in this brief audio version read by the author, a teacher and parent educator. The abridgement can be abrupt at times; in the effort to condense a 300-page book to a three hours, many memorable and useful examples, illustrations and anecdotes have been excised in favor of general principles and descriptions of the basic traits common to spirited children. Helpfully, though, each CD is imprinted with track titles and time signatures, a great boon to parents who want to retrieve specific information quickly. Kurcinka's voice can sometimes be a problem; it tends to trail off to such a low end-of-sentence volume that listeners may have to strain to catch what she is saying. Kurcinka never really achieves a deep or comfortable vocal resonance even at the best of times, though she does exhibit a quiet dramatic intensity despite the brittle, high tones. In all, it's difficult to justify the additional $10 this audio costs over the far meatier trade paperback version, which offers considerably more bang for the buck. HarperCollins paperback. (Dec.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From AudioFile
Parents with overactive, intense, and overly sensitive children will appreciate the support and practical guidance offered in this program. Written and delivered in the style of a parent education seminar, the material generally avoids intellectual conceits and mental health language while offering clear descriptions and prescriptions for children with these emotional features. The children the author targets are those who are busy and difficult, but who have many strengths and are less impaired than those with attention deficit or hyperactivity syndromes. These children present a sometimes grueling challenge to parents, a challenge that this audio speaks to with compassion and with many nonthreatening suggestions. T.W. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Customer Reviews

Cause, Effect and Practical Solutions!
Mary Sheedy Kurcinka does an excellent job of providing good common sense answers to why children are spirited and practical ways of dealing with the behavior. Observation, analysis and then appropriate action are keys to dealing with this behavior.

For example, in one Section called CHECK SIMULATION Levels Kurcinka writes:

"I always tell parents in my classes that if they ever feel like they are the only parent in the world with a sensitive spirited child, they should drop everything and head for the largest, noisiest, most congested store in their area. There they will find spirited kids dropping like little bombs. Two down one isle. Three in aisle four--the candy shelf--and six in aisle seven--the toy department. At first glance it will appear that the explosions are triggered by a denial to buy a candy bar, a desire to push the cart, or some other insignificant issue. The real trigger, however, is hidden in the fluorescent lights, piped-in-music, flashing signs, colorful packages, and crush of people that create more stimulation than a sensitive child can endure, especially if his or her energy bank is low."

She goes on to write:

"As a parent of a spirited child, you have to become aware of stimulation cues and recognize the breaking point for your child. The level of stimulation that pushes her beyond her ability to cope."

Kurcinka also explores subjects such as introverted and extroverted children, how they recharge their batteries and how to handle them. Other subjects include: How to deal with tantrums, Getting along with other kids, Motivating kids to listen and much more.

Overall an exceptional book on looking at cause, effect and practical solutions for addressing spirited children. Highly recommended.

The Re-Discovery of Common Sense: A Guide to: The Lost Art of Critical Thinking

Great Info !!
VEry useful and easy reading for parents. I am using with parents of strong willed children.

Good, but not great
It's a good book. I know I'm not alone but it lacked in offering true advice. I was left with a "what now?" feeling.