Raising Your Spirited Child: A Guide for Parents Whose Child Is More Intense, Sensitive, Perceptive, Persistent and Energetic [Paperback]

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.

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. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

"A well-written, comprehensive, and above all loving and positive approach to understanding that oh-so challenging child." -- -- Evonne Weinhaus and Karen Friedman, authors of Stop Struggling with Your Child and Stop Struggling with Your Teen

"The book will prove to be a real lifesaver." -- -- Louise Bates Ames, author and association director, Gessell Institute of Human

"This book is a major work on temperament and parenting that should be in every family library." -- -- Nancy Melvin, associate dean for graduate programs and research, Arizona State University College of Nursing

Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, M.A., has more than twenty years' experience as a teacher, an award-winning parent educator, and an international trainer. The founder of the Spirited Child and Power Struggles workshops, Kurcinka is also the bestselling author of Raising Your Spirited Child and Kids, Parents, and Power Struggles. She lives in Minnesota.

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 --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.