The confident child : raising children to believe in themselves

**A renowned social psychologist's clear-cut, thoughtful, and practical strategy for parents who want to promote self-confidence in their child.** Raising confident, motivated, and caring children is a parent's greatest challenge. Drawing on her own extensive research on children and parents, Terri Apter has created a guide based on "emotional coaching"―learning to respond appropriately to a child's feelings―that helps parents raise children to solve problems, to be socially active and understand others, and to manage emotions, all of which are crucial to developing confidence and functioning successfully in society. Hugely insightful, reassuring, and accessible, __The Confident Child__ is a truly necessary parenting guide. Winner of The Delta Kappa Gamma Society International Educator's Award.

A renowned social psychologist's clear-cut, thoughtful, and practical strategy for parents who want to promote self-confidence in their child.

Publishers Weekly

"Self-esteem is now recognized as a key to children's successful development," notes Apter, a Cambridge University social psychologist and author of Altered Lives and Secret Paths, in the first chapter of this convincing, well-written and truly helpful guide. Focusing on children ages five through 15, she details behaviors that indicate low self-esteem in children and suggests means by which parents can deal with their children's (and their own) accompanying anxiety, anger and depression. Her methods are based on a technique called emotional coaching, by which parents enourage kids to identify and accept their feelings and to find acceptable ways to express them. With withering accuracy, Apter describes mistakes every "inevitably imperfect" parent makes and suggests ways parents can correct them. Even moderate displays of anger are damaging, she warns. "When Mommy's mad a mountain grows in my throat," a 6-year-old girl told the researcher. But parents can temper anger's effects by managing it and by compensating for angerthat can't be managed through spending special time with their children and making positive feelings clearwith hugs and smiles. Here is a book that takes the vagueness out of the term self-esteem and suggests concrete ways for parents to help their children like themselves and feel confident about their abilities to deal with the world around them. (Apr.)

Raising confident, motivated, and caring children is a parent's greatest challenge. Drawing on her own extensive research on children and parents, and on the concept of emotional intelligence which Daniel Goleman brought to public attention in his groundbreaking and best-selling book 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. 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 Many years ago, as a sophomore in college, I worked as an assistant on a study of children's motivation.