Raising an Optimistic Child: A Proven Plan for Depression-Proofing Young Children--For Life [Paperback]

Bob Murray (Author), Alicia Fortinberry (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 23, 2005

A program for fostering positive relationship-building habits in children to help alleviate and even prevent childhood depression

Raising an Optimistic Child offers you tools for creating a positive, supportive family atmosphere that helps children who are already depressed and can even prevent this crippling disorder. Steps and additional techniques will help you combat your own depression, tackle parental issues, and enhance learning and coping skills. It also alerts you to circumstances that put a child at risk for depression and suggests ways to ward it off.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Protect your child from depression for life--without medication

The most precious gift you can give your child isn't a generous trust fund or a top-notch education--it's the resiliency and unwavering sense of optimism that allow a person to thrive no matter what challenges life sends their way. Yet researchers are finding that increasing numbers of very young children are at risk of depression. Now, in Raising an Optimistic Child, you'll learn how to bring about lifelong happiness in your child--even as young as infants--and protect him or her from the pain and damage of depression.

Inspired by the authors' two decades of pioneering work as well as recent findings in psychology, neurobiology, and genetics, Raising an Optimistic Child offers a seven-step, relationship-based program for alleviating or preventing childhood--and adult--depression that has proven more effective than controversial drug therapies and standard psychotherapeutic approaches. With the benefit of real-life stories of families who have experienced firsthand the results of their work, psychologist Bob Murray, Ph.D., and therapist Alicia Fortinberry arm you with the tools you need to:

• Understand most common causes of childhood--and lifelong--depression
• Spot the early signs of depression--even in very young children
• Prevent your own depression from infecting your child
• Enhance your child's learning and coping skills
• Foster good body image and avoid eating disorders in your child
• Deal with ADD/ADHD and difficult behaviors without drugs

About the Author

Clinical psychologist Bob Murray, Ph.D., and therapist Alicia Fortinberry teach their groundbreaking method at leading universities and multinational corporations. They are coauthors of Creating Optimism.

www.RaisinganOptimisticChild.com

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (December 23, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071459480
• ISBN-13: 978-0071459488
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #276,150 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #27 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Mental Health > Postpartum Depression

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Sure Fire Blueprint for Optimistic Kids, February 11, 2006

By 

Real Mom "Betty" (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Raising an Optimistic Child: A Proven Plan for Depression-Proofing Young Children--For Life (Paperback)

Recently Time Magazine reviewed this book and called it "a fine blueprint for a noble aim: to send out into the world more children equipped to find the beauty all around them." I've just finished reading "Raising an Optimistic child" and I'm determined to change the way I parent my 2 and 5 year olds.

Amazingly this is the only book I can find which is written for parents of kids under six.

The authors - who wrote an earlier best-seller called "Creating Optimism" - eschew the familiar child-centered approach. Rather they take a `relationship-centered' view. What is most important to the emotional well-being of a young child, they say, is the relationships between the adults around him or her, particularly between the parents.

"Raising an Optimistic Child" is solidly how-to. The book has marvelous tips for such issues as work/life balance, dealing with ADD/ADHD, how to select the best child care, how to monitor the sort of media that children are exposed to and how best to work out the problems of blended families or even being a single parent.

At the same time as having a very, very user-friendly style, the authors back up everything they say with really solid research.

I thoroughly recommend this book to all those who are already parents, or who are thinking of becoming parents or are in the position of looking after children.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Latest and Greatest Wisdom, March 19, 2006

By 

Susan Welch "Susan" (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Raising an Optimistic Child: A Proven Plan for Depression-Proofing Young Children--For Life (Paperback)

"Raising an Optimistic Child" has captured the latest and greatest of parenting wisdoms, but that's not all. As a child therapist of 3-5 year olds and a daycare provider of toddlers, I am pleased to say that it has affirmed my intuitions and greatly informed my practice, with children and adults alike.

This book has reminded me once again of the paramount importance of our earliest years, and the caretaking relationships that surround them, in predisposing us to mood disorders later in life. It is a thorough compilation of the key ingredients that make for a healthy human, combining the most up-to-date psychological research, together with all-too-undereferenced ancient wisdoms and some refreshing new "ah-hah's."

Dare I say it? I agree wholeheartedly with most, if not all, of the book, including the authors' de-pathologizing of children and their sensitive examination of the sticky subjects of drugs and over-diagnosed ADD/ADHD.

While very easy to read, the excellent guidance may not be so easy to do. At least the best information is nearly all in one place, as is the optimism to "have a go" at it.

I am so glad I read this book. I can't recommend it highly enough - to parents, teachers, childcare providers, therapists, couples, and adults who struggle with depression and/or other psychological challenges or know someone who does. In short, everyone.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not just for parents, February 11, 2006

By 

Maysie G "Maysie" (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Raising an Optimistic Child: A Proven Plan for Depression-Proofing Young Children--For Life (Paperback)

I'll bet there'll be a lot of parents of children over the age of six who'll curse the authors for not bringing out this book earlier! I wish I'd read it twenty years ago. Still I'm now set up to be a really good grand-parent.

"Raising an Optimistic Child" is streets ahead of anything else written about raising optimistic children (and I've been reading a lot of child-raising books lately). It's clear, intensely practical and very simple to follow. In truth much of the information in the book is useful for people of any age who want to be more optimistic - even people like me in their 50s!

I never realized, for example, that a daily 20 minute walk in the park was the best cure for ADD/ADHD in children or adults. My husband has adult ADD and we tried this out - amazingly it really works!

The relationship techniques that Bob Murray and Alicia Fortinberry lay out (and they should know as they have, according to the book, been happily married for nearly a quarter of a century) are practical, simple and again, are really effective. And not just with children!

I'm giving this book to my mom-to-be daughter. It's the best present I could possibly give her - and her baby!