The Essential Companion Workbook To The National Bestseller "Raising Your Spirited Child, " In this companion workbook, Mary Sheedy Kurcinka brings readers into her world-famous workshops, where she offers parents and educators insights, emotional support and proven strategies for dealing with spirited children. The key word that distinguishes spirited children from other children is "more" -- more intense, more persistent, more sensitive and more uncomfortable with change. Through exercises, observations and dialogue from actual groups, Kurcinka helps readers learn to identify the triggers that lead to tantrums and challenging behaviors. Included are clues to help you identify the little things that can make or break a daytips for profiling your child's temperament and your owncues that indicate intensity is risingsuccessful strategies for reducing and eliminating power struggles By combining the intuition and compassion gained from parenting a spirited child with the wisdom of an expert who has worked with thousands of families, Mary Sheedy Kurcinka helps parents and educators view their unique challenge with perseverance, flexibility, sensitivity, and, most of all, enjoyment.

Reviews

Kurcinka's now-classic guide to raising children who are "more"-more intense, more sensitive, more persistent, etc.-gets a greatest-hits treatment in this brief audio version read by the author, a teacher and parent educator. The abridgement can be abrupt at times; in the effort to condense a 300-page book to a three hours, many memorable and useful examples, illustrations and anecdotes have been excised in favor of general principles and descriptions of the basic traits common to spirited children. Helpfully, though, each CD is imprinted with track titles and time signatures, a great boon to parents who want to retrieve specific information quickly. Kurcinka's voice can sometimes be a problem; it tends to trail off to such a low end-of-sentence volume that listeners may have to strain to catch what she is saying. Kurcinka never really achieves a deep or comfortable vocal resonance even at the best of times, though she does exhibit a quiet dramatic intensity despite the brittle, high tones. In all, it's difficult to justify the additional $10 this audio costs over the far meatier trade paperback version, which offers considerably more bang for the buck. HarperCollins paperback. (Dec.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

"The book will prove to be a real lifesaver." --Louise Bates Ames, author and association director, Gessell Institute of Human "Through excellent examples and easy-to-read text, this book provides parents with a pathway to understanding their child's temperament and to a place where parents can balance the needs of their child's unique temperament with their own needs and those of their family." -- James Cameron, Ph.D., executive director, The Preventive Ounce, Berkeley, California