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Your Anxious Child:
Raising a Healthy Child
in a Frightening World
Tapestry Press: 2003
By Dr. Mary Ann Shaw
Reviewed by Loi Eberle, M.A.
Dr. Mary Ann Shaw, a licensed psychologist, has been helping
parents and their children since 1959, serving in various
hospital and university settings. The book was first published
in 1995, then updated in 2003, to reflect “our post-9/11
world,” which has “become an increasingly frightening place
to raise children.” Dr. Shaw wrote this book to help parents
with children up to age fourteen, suggesting that “the earlier
parents begin to recognize and address anxiety problems in
their children, the better.” She also points out that “it’s
important to understand that parents’ behavior does have
significant and lasting effects on children,” and writes
the book “to help parents recognize and understand their
own anxiety as well as their children’s.” Her goal is to
“teach parents how to focus on their children in a positive
way.”
She draws upon her extensive experience dealing with children,
offering tools for working with a child’s temperament and
anxiety, and learning how to distinguish between the two.
She explains that anxiety in children has been “underrecognized
and undertreated in the medical community, in part because
parents don’t immediately seek help for “internalizing” problems
such as anxiety.” She lists the signs and symptoms of anxiety
and physical conditions that are either mistaken for, caused
by, or exacerbated by anxiety. She gives many suggestions
for ways parents can help their anxious child, both in commonplace
situations like school, as well as when more intense issues
arise such as upsetting media coverage of crime and terrorism,
or a family divorce. This book offers a brief overview of
a very wide range of diagnoses, complications, and specific
coping skills that relate to the general area of anxiety
in children and young adolescents that is based on Dr. Shaw’s
many years of experience with this population. |
