Optimistic Child (eBook)

In The Optimistic Child, Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman offers parents, teachers, and coaches a well-validated program to prevent depression in children. In a thirty-year study, Seligman and his colleagues discovered the link between pessimism — dwelling on the most catastrophic cause of any setback — and depression. Seligman shows adults how to teach children the skills of optimism that can help them combat depression, achieve more on the playing field and at school, and improve their physical health.

As Seligman states in his new afterword for this edition, “Teaching children optimism is more, I realized, than just correcting pessimism . . . It is the creation of a positive strength, a sunny but solid future-mindedness that can be deployed throughout life — not only to fight depression and to come back from failure, but also to be the foundation of success and vitality.'

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New York Times bestselling author Martin E. P. Seligman's The Optimistic Child is "e;the first major work to provide an effective program for preventing depression in childhood — and probably later in life"e; (Aaron T. Beck, author of Love is Never Enough).The epidemic of depression in America strikes 30% of all children. Now Martin E. P. Seligman, the bestselling author of Learned Optimism, and his colleagues offer parents and educators a program clinically proven to cut that risk in half. With this startling research, parents can teach children to apply optimism skills that can curb depression, boost school performance, and improve physical health. These skills provide children with the resilience they need to approach the teenage years and adulthood with confidence. For more than thirty years the self-esteem movement has infiltrated American homes and classrooms with the credo that supplying positive feedback, regardless of the quality of performance, will make children feel better about themselves. But in this era of raising our children to feel good, the hard truth is that they have never been more depressed. As Dr. Seligman writes in this provocative new book, "e;Teaching optimism is more than, I realized, than just correcting pessimism...It is the creation of a positive strength, a sunny but solid future-mindedness that can be deployed throughout life — not only to fight depression and come back from failure, but also to be the foundation of success and vitality."e;