The Challenging Child: Understanding, Raising, and Enjoying the Five Difficult Types of Children - Hardcover

}Most children fall into five basic personality types that stem from inborn physical characteristics: the sensitive child, the self-absorbed child, the defiant child, the inattentive child, and the active/aggressive child. Stanley Greenspan, M.D., is the first to show parents how to match their parenting to the challenges of their particular child. He identifies and vividly describes these five universal temperaments and then, with great empathy, shows parents how each of these children actually experiences the world and how to use daily childrearing to enhance an individual childs strengths and talents.A profoundly optimistic book, The Challenging Child reassures parents that they do not have simply to live with or adjust to their childs temperament, but that by creating new parenting patterns based on the childs characteristics, they can help the child overcome behavior problems and develop his or her emotional and intellectual capacities to the fullest. Parents will learn how to spot personality differences in the earliest years, and also how to build relationships that nourish growth from the start.As parents, writes Dr. Greenspan, we are not the cause, but we can be the solution. } *The Highly Sensitive ChildIs a new sweater, a new shampoo, or even a raisin in the cereal a huge crisis? Do you expect a monstrous tantrum with each babysitter? Is a clown too frightening, and is teasing at school unbearable for your child? *The Self-Absorbed ChildIs your child hard to reach? Was she almost too easy as a small baby? Does she withdraw into an elaborate fantasy world and leave you talking to yourself? *The Defiant ChildWas his first word No? Has a fierce tyrant taken over your house? Is clean-up time an all-out was and a visit with gentle grandparents potentially mortifying? *The Inattentive ChildAre you trying to keep up with a restless de rvish? Is she distracted, tuning out, or dreaming instead of listening to you? Does she routinely forget homework or get sidetracked on the way upstairs? *The Active/Aggressive ChildDoes your daredevil seem to court every possible danger, going down the slide headfirst? Does he hog all the toys and wrestle, bite, punch, and kick to get what he wants? Is he the class rabble-rouser, the scamp neighboring parents avoid?. For each of these children there are parenting patterns to avoid and kinds of caring that help the most. The Challenging Child makes it possible for parents to construct a parenting style suited to their childs individual personality, from infancy to adolescence, helping each child build on strengths, master weaknesses, and embrace life with confidence and skill.

Jacqueline Salmon is an editor at the Washington Post.