Product Description

Good news! Shyness is not a disorder; it's the personality style of 40 percent of all children and young adults. Shyness has its good side: Your child is probably imaginative, perceptive, and thoughtful. Yet shyness can hinder a child's development. This authoritative, interactive guide is the first book to focus on the problems of shyness and provide parents and children with pragmatic, step-by-step solutions. It will help you achieve wonderful results -- stronger, warmer relationships with family and friends, and, most of all, a happy, empowered, less fearful child who looks confidently to the future.

Discover:
-- The signs of shyness in children, from infancy to adolescence
-- How the shy child responds physically and mentally to stress
-- How your child's artwork reveals his or her emotions, and how drawing together can reinforce trust and understanding
-- Scriptwriting, rewriting, role-playing, and rehearsing -- important tools for the shy child
-- Why shy children are so vulnerable to bullies and how best to intervene
-- How to teach your child to cope with anxiety-producing situations and more.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25543 in Books
• Published on: 2000-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Customer Reviews

Finally, An Up-to-Date Book on Shyness in Children
In The Shy Child, Dr. Ward Swallow finally set my mind at ease about why my child is so shy and how much I can do about it. He validated my own instinct to accept shyness as a way of being that has its place in the world--and to resist forcing my child to completely change the personality she was born with. With acceptance as a jumping off point, he helped me get inside the mind of my shy child and to understand her reticence at last.

At the same time, Dr. Swallow acknowledges that it is crucial for my CHILD to understand shyness, as well. Shy children who don't get in touch with their inner "self-talk" can become depressed when they feel limited in what they want to do in life. The book's explicit, age-appropriate approaches to handling situations that cause anxiety in a shy child gave me confidence to talk directly to my child about shyness. I now think I can help her identify things she would like to do but thinks she can't, and to summon the courage to find success in situations that previously left her in tears.

I had previously read Zimbardo's book on shyness in children, and I was dismayed to find that it offers outdated psychological explanations for different personalities, making shyness seem like a disorder, rather than a personality type. I found Dr. Swallow's approach much more reasonable and I think it offers much more potential for liberating a shy child from self-reproach.

Great book!
I spent a weekend reading and studying this book to help my 3-year-old daughter. I was able to use some of the techniques immediately, and saw immediate results. It was helpful to me, a somewhat shy person, and to my husband, a non-shy person. It really helps us to understand how she's feeling. It also helps us give her the tools to overcome some of her shyness. It's great, too, because it has suggestions for different age levels. It was quite rewarding as a parent to be able to help my daughter with her anxiety in certain situations. I would, and have, highly recommend this to ANYONE with a shy child. It is wonderful!

Not Enough Answers
I felt this book had some decent advice, but it was not detailed enough when it came to sharing specific examples. I was looking for something that would give me and my three-year-old son some ideas on how to handle leaving him at preschool when he'd cling on to me as if I were going to throw him into a lion's cage. Do you peel him off and leave? Do you sit on the sidelines with him still hanging on? How long should you plan on staying in the classroom? A week? A month? However long the child wants/needs you there? And when do you make the determination that he is not ready/ready for school?
I had SO MANY questions and was dismayed to discover this book, although shedding a lot of light on the shy child, gave too few answers on what to do in common situations.