Self-Reg
How to Help Your Child (and You) Break the Stress Cycle and Successfully Engage with Life
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- 9,99 €
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- 9,99 €
Publisher Description
There’s no such thing as a bad kid. That’s what a lifetime of experience has taught Dr. Stuart Shanker. No matter how difficult, out of control, distracted, or exhausted a child might seem, there’s a way forward: self-regulation. Overturning decades of conventional wisdom, this radical new technique allows children and the adults who care for them to regain their composure and peace of mind.
Self-Reg is a groundbreaking book that presents an entirely new understanding of your child’s emotions and behavior and a practical guide for parents to help their kids engage calmly and successfully in learning and life. Grounded in decades of research and working with children and parents by Dr. Shanker, Self-Reg realigns the power of the parent-child relationship for positive change. Self-regulation is the nervous system’s way of responding to stress. We are seeing a generation of children and teens with excessively high levels of stress, and, as a result, an explosion of emotional, social, learning, behavior, and physical health problems. But few parents recognize the “hidden stressors” that their children are struggling with: physiological as well as social and emotional. An entrenched view of child rearing sees our children as lacking self-control or willpower, but the real basis for these problems lies in excessive stress.
Self-regulation can dramatically improve a child’s mood, attention, and concentration. It can help children to feel empathy, and to cultivate the sorts of virtues that most parents know are vital for their child’s long-term wellbeing. Self-regulation brings about profound and lasting transformation that continues throughout life. Dr. Shanker translates decades of his findings from working with children into practical, prescriptive advice for parents, giving them concrete ways to develop their self-regulation skills and teach their children to do the same and engage successfully with life for optimal learning, social, and emotional growth.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Though this book takes children's needs as its focus, it is really focused on providing guidance and even a degree of consolation to adults as they navigate the often tricky parent-child relationship. What child psychologist Shanker refers to as "self-reg" can easily be summarized as mindfulness and as the practice of reframing stressful situations. Yet heightened awareness, simple in theory, is especially difficult to practice in a world that promotes mindlessness to an epidemic extent. These are elusive concepts to grasp, but Shanker gives readers clear explanations of even the more complex neurological information, such as the role of the limbic system, as well as ample diagrams. And the discussion does not stop at the early childhood stage, moving ultimately into adolescence. This book might be less appropriate for more extreme situations as some of Shanker's many case studies indicate, significant stress can warrant professional intervention. But if the stressed populations most in need of this book's lessons can find the time to read it, they will appreciate its potential to bring the minds of both parent and child to a state of heightened attentiveness with minimal anxiety.