Raising Resilient Children : Fostering Strength, Hope, and Optimism in Your Child

"Thoughtful and sound in its approach, practical and clear in its suggestions, direct and supportive in its tone, Raising Resilient Children is the perfect book for parents searching for a caring method to help their children grow into healthy, happy, loving, and mature adults."­­William Pollack, Ph.D., author of Real Boys

". . . the down-to-earth strategies ensure this title will be used as well as read . . . truly valuable material." ­­Publishers Weekly

" . . . a remarkable book that pulls together the research on resilience and makes it readable, understandable, and practical."­­Work and Family Life

"A very important work. This not-to-be-missed book debunks the paradigm ('Good enough for me: I turned out OK') and replaces it with a new model fostering resilience capable of meeting obstacles head-on."­­Library Journal (starred review)

Amazon.com Review
Child psychologists Robert Brooks and Sam Goldstein are too humble to promise a "sure bet" method for fostering resilience in all children, but their book Raising Resilient Children certainly does an impressive job of upping the ante. The authors open their comprehensive study with two bold questions: Why do many parents insist on pointing out their child's weaknesses and try--in vain--to mend these, when harnessing the child's strengths bolsters self-esteem? And how can parents change their erring ways to help these kids become thoughtful, confident adults? Their answer is a wisely crafted set of 10 essential parenting behaviors ("guideposts")--a prescription of sorts, for nurturing resilience in kids. Ironically, it's the parents who may reap the greatest rewards from putting these guideposts to work.

Drawing heavily from 50 years of combined clinical practice, Brooks and Goldstein conclude that a child's resilience grows its deepest roots in the home, nurtured by parents who incorporate healthy doses of empathy, practical optimism, respect, unconditional love, keen listening skills, and the patience to administer these values every day. Sounds logical, but the gap between knowledge and action is deceptively wide. The authors knowingly share a caseload of tales from their own clients' histories--familiar scenarios of well-meaning parents who say and do counterproductive things. But they also present a treasury of suggestions for righting the wrongs, including detailed steps for rewriting negative parenting scripts, teaching and modeling empathy, and creating opportunities for kids to act responsibly and compassionately. This timely, insightful book will prove an effective tool for parents who are willing to scrutinize--and improve upon--their own resilience. --Liane Thomas

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Becoming An Awesome Parent, 2008-07-29
The really refreshing piece of information in ths book is that our kids won't change unless we do. They are our mirrors. So really it's about how to change your parenting style. If what you're doing now is not getting a positive response you need to change what you're doing. As this book points out, this is the strategy we use in all other areas of our lives we should also use it in our parenting. This book shows you how. "Raising Resilient Children" could be called "Becoming an Awesome Parent".


2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

Very little to do w/ resilience, 2008-06-18
I was really disappointed with this book. In general it's about building up children's self-esteem, but doesn't focus on helping children develop resilience with daily disappointments or problems (bullies, not making a soccer goal, etc.) Self esteem is very different from resilience. Instead, I'd recommend two books: Blessings of the Skinned Knee and Mindset. Blessings is based on practical/current applications from the Torah; I am not Jewish and still found this book to be very helpful/wonderful. The books don't have chapters on "resilience", but the overall info from both has been very helpful in that area.


2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

The Most Helpful Book I Ever Read, 2007-04-12
I would recommend this book to any mother but especially mother's of young children who feel their kids or their lives with their kids aren't what they imagined they would be. This book helps you love the child you've got without any "but if you'd onlys." This book shows you the possibility of unconditional love and appreciation for your child that can be mixed with guidance and strengthening support.


5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

A mother of two school aged children LOVES THIS BOOK, 2006-11-21
I must say I'm tempted to give away every single other parenting book I own. This book is the first book to ever "speak" to me. I've spent some time trying to figure out why this book touched me so much. It hit me - resilience is the BIG picture - I CAN operate and understand the big picture and then apply it to my life as a parent. I've spent most of my life as a parent searching for solutions to the little picture problems which change daily and spontaneously. I was never ready.

Reading Dr. Brooks' philosophy made me want more than ever to adequately prepare my children for the joys and upsets of life and in two short weeks I'm beginning to feel prepared to do so. In the moments of chaos I feel more connected to the long term and my parenting has changed. Funny how my heart seems to have grown for our two adorable kids as well.



13 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

Case Study after Case Study, 2006-05-11
Oy! If I have to read one more 'great save' case by these authors/psychologists, I will pull out my hair. This book was one case study after another outlining in great detail what their patients said and did and how wonderfully the authors managed to break through in each case, solving all problems for the troubled family, leaving them all happy and saved as the doctors ride gloriously into the sunset. Ugh! I wanted more substance, more "this is what you need to do". There was plenty of good advice in this book, but usually it came in the first sentence or at the end of a case study. By the end of the book, I was skipping all the case studies and just searching around for the moral of the story and looking for their not bad advice. I think if the authors had simply printed out their observations and suggestions in outline form, the book would be much more helpful and most importantly, shorter.

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