Helping Your Socially Vulnerable Child

Eisen and Engler have provided parents of socially vulnerable children a wonderful resource. They skillfully discuss the various reasons children may be anxious in social settings and what parents can do about it. This book will help parents, mental health professionals, and others who work with youth sensitively assist those children who have much to offer but are standing by on the sidelines of life.

—Mary A. Fristad, Ph.D, ABPP, professor of psychiatry and psychology at the Ohio State University and director of research and psychological services in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

Eisen and Engler have authored a truly valuable work. Social problems in children are often complex, misunderstood, frustrating, and difficult for parents. Helping Your Socially Vulnerable Child provides a reasoned and reasonable guide to understanding and helping children with social problems. These authors speak from science and experience. Their case-study approach provides an exceptional framework to assist parents in seeing the world through the eyes of their struggling children and providing much needed guidance and support. I will recommend this book without reservation to all of the families I work with.

—Sam Goldstein, Ph.D., research professor of psychology at George Mason University and coauthor of Raising a Self-Disciplined Child

The book is filled with practical, easy-to-understand strategies that parents can use to help their socially vulnerable children fit in better with their peers. If your child is shy, withdrawn, impulsive, easily frustrated, or difficult to get along with, you should read this book!

—Martin M. Antony, Ph.D., ABPP, professor of psychology at Ryerson University and author of The Shyness and Social Anxiety Workbook

Edward Decy maintains that 'the need to feel that you belong and are connected' is the first among the needs that are most motivating to a child. The development of social competence is as much an educational responsibility as is the development of academic skill. Unfortunately, this responsibility is often overlooked because social skill is expected to develop incidentally to being involved in the process of going to school. Where the system falls down, Eisen and Engler use their experience, empathy, and insight to give parents the means to stand up to the challenge of the socially vulnerable child. Helping Your Socially Vulnerable Child provides parents the objectivity to recognize when a problems exists and the tools to fix it.

—G. Emerson Dickman, III, attorney specializing in the representation of children with disabilities and president of the board of directors of the International Dyslexia Association