Raising the Shy Child

Starred review from April 13, 2015
Addressing the parents of children with social anxiety disorder (SAD), Fonseca (Quiet Kids) provides a well-organized, powerful collection of strategies drawn from the current literature and her experience as a school psychologist. Fonseca carefully separates SAD from similar-looking personality traits such as shyness, introversion, or fear of unfamiliar situations. She also examines how SAD interacts with factors like giftedness, depression, parental anxiety, autism, and social communication disorder. Diagnostic worksheets for parents require thoughtful consideration of topics such as parenting styles, household expectations, and children's mindsets and behaviors, supplemented with awareness tasks like behavioral journaling. Worksheets for kids help them participate in documenting and understanding their own difficulties. These tools, together with carefully chosen case studies, will help parents understand their child's concerns, find the right home supports, and decide when to seek more formal help from schools or professionals. Fonseca assumes a high level of intelligence on the part of readers, never speaking down to parents or children. Parents who have seen educators minimize their child's struggles as normal shyness, felt herded into one-size-fits-all solutions, or struggled to comprehend apparently nonsensical behavior from bright children will find this comprehensive resource grounding and practical.