By Steven E. Curtis, Ph.D.; 160 pages. Subtitle: A Guide for Parents of Children With Behavioral, Social, and Learning Challenges.
Figuring out what a child's behavior means is one of the great challenges of parenting. Addressing one thing when another thing is causing the problem can be frustrating for both parents and kids, but how do you properly put the puzzle together to get an accurate picture and plan? Child psychologist Steven E. Curtis offers a small book-full of charts and steps to help you do just that, and while it won't take you all the way, it's a good start.
- Describes a compassionate way to consider your child's behavior challenges
- Includes charts and specific steps for behavior analysis
- Offers descriptions of what a wide variety of professionals may be able to do for you
- Empowers parents to take control of difficult behavior
- Text is short and easy to read
- Maybe it's a little too short -- there's not much detail on how to implement change
- Author seems to discount diagnoses and favor alternative explanations
- Focus is restricted to ages 3 to 12
- Letter to Parents
- Chapter 1: Introduction
- Chapter 2: Framework for Understanding and Finding Help for Your Child
- Chapter 3: Five Specific Steps to Finding the Right Solution
- Chapter 4: When and Where to Seek Professional Help
- Chapter 5: Parent Resources
- Glossary of Terms
- Index
If you're a hands-on parent accustomed to dealing with your child's behavioral oddities, chances are you've had some exposure to behavior analysis -- the idea that the things kids do often have roots much deeper than simple misbehavior. A child may seek trouble and punishment to avoid a difficult activity, for example, or ignore instructions due to auditory processing issues. Meting out discipline based on misconceptions can be not only ineffective, but actively harmful.
In Understanding Your Child's Puzzling Behavior, Dr. Curtis offers five steps, accompanied by numerous charts, for analyzing behavior and piecing together the puzzle that is your child. He also identifies areas in which behaviors that seem to fit a particular diagnosis may in fact have nothing to do with it, or be related to an entirely different difficulty. And he recommends looking at the whole child, strengths as well as weaknesses, to determine strategies and solutions.
And that's great, as far as it goes. I love the basic ideas here, and the charts -- also for purchase from the Lifespan Press site -- are really useful for helping parents observe and focus their thinking. But the ideas remain just that: basic. After providing parents with tools, and assuring them that their opinion is more reliable than that of any professional, the author more or less leaves them to their own devices.
And we're a resourceful lot, sure. But I wish the author had gone into more depth, with more than one sample set of filled-out forms. I've whined in the past about books that had too many pages or too many case studies, yet this is one where I would have appreciated more of both. Perhaps a future book or workbook will develop the ideas more. In the meantime, if you're already into behavior analysis, this will give you some fun new toys to try.
