Your Anxious Child : How Parents and Teachers Can Relieve Anxiety in Children [Hardcover]

John S. Dacey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 9, 2000

Katie freezes when she's asked to perform. Jose is a clinger. Damian is terrified of animals. Felicia always worries that she's going to make a mistake. It's hard being the parent of an anxious child, watching your son's frustration grow, or seeing how your daughter tries to cope with her fears but gives up so quickly. Filled with solid information, a proven four-step program, dozens of engaging activities, and insightful personal vignettes, Your Anxious Child gives you easy, fun, and highly effective tools to help your child become a creative problem solver. Parents and teachers alike will find excellent strategies in this essential guide.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Concerned about the patterns of anxious behavior exhibited by your child? From simple, specific phobias to general anxiety, these problems can start early and cause tremendous stress for families. Your Anxious Child presents a thoroughly mapped-out program called COPE to deal effectively with anxiety when it starts. While this is a multistep program for fairly complicated mental health issues, information is presented simply, broken down into smaller steps and specific actions. (Plenty of real-life stories provide context, too.) The first step in the program is teaching kids methods of self-comfort, ranging from meditation and prayer to easy breathing exercises and biofeedback. The second is developing plans to relieve anxiety, focusing on improved communication and problem-solving skills. Since each plan will need to be as unique as your child, only a few concrete examples are given; but the directions for creating individualized plans are straightforward. The third step could be the most important: persist! Anxiety problems aren't solved overnight. Lastly, evaluate the program's success. What can be changed to increase effectiveness? This book's clear-cut approach can help parents and children wade through the difficulties of anxious behavior to get positive and long-lasting results. --Jill Lightner

Review

"With today's kids confronting an increasingly stressful world, Your Anxious Child is a book that every parent, teacher, and therapist needs to read and put into practice." —Alex J. Packer, author, Parenting One Day at a Time

"Your Anxious Child will help parents (and teachers) to help children grow and develop. I gladly recommAnd this delightful and persuasive book." —Timothy Dugan, M.D., director of training in child and adolescent psychiatry, Cambridge City Hospital; psychiatry instructor, Harvard Medical School

"Well thought-out strategies by experienced therapists." —Susan Shnidman, psychotherapist and psychology instructor, Harvard Medical School

"Filled with hands-on advice and activities that can tell parents, teachers, therapists, and relatives what to do to relieve anxiety." —Neal Klein, psychotherapist and associate professor, Lesley College

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 1 edition (February 9, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0787949973
• ISBN-13: 978-0787949976
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #581,057 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

54 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Guide, February 29, 2000

By 

Joshua Davidson (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Your Anxious Child : How Parents and Teachers Can Relieve Anxiety in Children (Hardcover)

Although there are many texts which address anxiety in children, I found this book to be far and away the best available. Dr. Dacey and Dr. Fiore provide an excellent framework for parents who want to help their children. It can be difficult for parents to deal with these complicated issues, but Fiore and Dacey make everything clear and to the point. With a Masters Degree in Public Health I have reviewed several modalities of care for anxious children. This one is simply the best. I highly recommend this book to all parents, especially those with anxious children.

28 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read, April 2, 2000

By 

Carol (Los Angeles, CA, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Your Anxious Child : How Parents and Teachers Can Relieve Anxiety in Children (Hardcover)

For parents and concerned friends and relatives of anxious children, Dr. Dacey and Dr. Fiore have co-authored the definitive guide for dealing with anxious children. As a parent, and now a grandparent, I highly recommend this informative, reassuring and inspiring book.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Ideas and Information, May 16, 2005

By 

CPTScott - See all my reviews

This review is from: Your Anxious Child: How Parents and Teachers Can Relieve Anxiety in Children (Paperback)

I was reading this book at the same time as "Helping Your Anxious Child" by Sue Spence, Vanessa Cobham, Ann Wignall, and Ronald Rapee.

I quickly found myself preferring "Helping Your Anxious Child" to this one though this certainly had a lot of good information.

While this book certainly gave me a lot of insights into the nature of anxiety it seemed that some of the techniques would be much harder to implement than the approach of the other book.

Regarding relaxation techniques. This is approached in both books, but the best resource I have found for helping a young child learn relaxation techniques are the wonderful CD's by Lori Lite.

Her CD's "Indigo Dreams", "Indigo Ocean Dreams" and "Indigo Teen Dreams" are produced specifically with young children as well as teenagers in mind. They are guided meditations, affirmations, relaxation and visualization techniques that are truly suitable for kids and if you are in the same room as your kids you will benefit as well.

While the concepts contained in the above book are certainly excellent, these CD's by Ms. Lite make it considerably easier for children to relate to.

Plus they can be used to help your child sleep more soundly and can help them relax if they have bad dreams. They have very relaxing, healing music and wonderful narration that helps these wonderful stories gently lead children to a more peaceful state of mind and overall being.

Of course the material in this and the other book I mentioned are very important for dealing with the broad scope of anxiety and for knowing what tools may help. The CD's have provided an excellent and immediate safe haven for my own child as we work together on tackling the roots of her anxiety.

In fact my child was having some anxiety before school today and my wife drew a little picture of a spider and web (to represent Lori Lite's "affirmation web" which she learned from the CDs) and it helped my daughter to go to school and have a reminder throughout the day if ever she felt anxiety starting up.