Your Child's Path - by Susan Engel (Paperback)

About the Book

"Previously published as Red flags or red herrings?"

Book Synopsis

This "compassionate guide for parents and readers" (Kirkus Reviews) reveals how to distinguish between the childhood traits that are cause for concern, and those that are not.

Every parent hopes their child will grow up to be happy, smart, popular, and successful--and as a result, many are anxious and eager to find clues to what their child's future will be. But with websites, media, and other parents providing an endless stream of advice about how to raise your children to be perfect, whom can a parent trust?

Susan Engel draws on her years of experience as a developmental psychologist, educator, and mother to help parents and teachers identify behaviors that require intervention, while also providing reassurance about those that do not. Unlike many parenting experts, Engel encourages acceptance and perspective. Rambunctious children will calm down as they age and find activities to absorb their intellectual energy. Shy kids don't need to become "un-shy"--they simply need to learn how to reach out to others on a one-to-one level.

Blending stories about real children with new ways of thinking and up-to-the-minute social and clinical research, Your Child's Path is both an absorbing narrative and an indispensable tool that will help restore parents' sanity and put the joy back in child rearing.

Review Quotes

"A technically thoughtful and beautifully written book to help parents get a better sense of what their children are likely to become when they're grown -- and why." --Jerome S. Bruner, PhD., NYU Professor of Psychology and author of "The Process of Education"

"In this eye-opening book, Susan Engel offers us a provocative new look at how children attain successful lives --and, indeed, what success in youth development really means. She has a deep understanding of children's lives." --William Damon, Professor at Stanford University, Director of the Stanford Center on Adolescence, and author of "The Path to Purpose: How Young People find the Calling in Life"

"Insightful...the author knows her stuff and is a wonderful storyteller." --"Publishers Weekly"

"Refreshing, lively...should reduce the worries of the many parents who do not appreciate the extraordinary capacities for change present in all children, who have the opportunities to exploit new experiences that permit them to grow closer to their personal ideal." --Jerome Kagan, Ph.D., author of "The Nature of the Child"

"Susan Engel's book will ease your mind, and help you separate the things that are nothing to worry about...from the things that might really signal that something is wrong. An important and reassuring addition to any American parent's bookshelf." --Robin Marantz Henig, author of "Pandora's Baby: How the First Test Tube Babies Sparked the Reproductive Revolution "

"The perfect antidote to the high anxiety that pervades parenting these days, Susan Engel's lovely book tells the wonderful truth that parents don't need to worry much, that children will grow up and become wonderful people if given a parent or two who loves them and the basic necessities. She urges parents to enjoy their children and bask in the warmth of their childhoods, rather than spend these glorious years in fretful states of apprehension and feckless fear. A superb and smart book." --Edward Hallowell, M.D., The Hallowell Center, New York City, and author of "The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness"

"This is a liberating book for all parents who worry too much about how to direct their children's development...Parenting has become uncomfortably competitive and many mothers and fathers turn themselves around in confused circles trying to identify what will guarantee their child's success. This book will help parents learn that children should be our primary guide in providing the conditions that support them to become the best of who they are, rather than who we want them to be." --Roger A. Hart, Professor, PhD Programs of Environmental and Developmental Psychology, The Graduate Centre of the City University of New York.