Freeing Your Child from Negative Thinking

Powerful, practical strategies to build a lifetime of resilience, flexibility, and happiness. Several years ago Dr. Tamar Chansky, one of the nation’s leading clinical experts on children and anxiety disorders, realized that roughly half of the children she sees in her clinical practice exhibit “negative thinking.” These children see only those things that are wrong with themselves, the world, and the future. Distinct from the type of thinking Dr. Chansky encountered in children with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive symptoms, children who engage in negative thinking supersize their problems: Nothing ever works for me. There’s no point. I give up. This negativity creates emotional hurdles that often hinder children from achieving success and happiness, both now and in the years to come. Now in this landmark book, Dr. Chansky thoroughly analyzes the underlying causes of children’s negative attitudes and provides numerous strategies to help parents and their children manage negative thoughts, build optimism, and establish emotional resilience. She shows how to buffer kids from disappointment, failure, and frustration by helping them to think more accurately about their problems—to right-size them. Freeing your Child from Negative Thinking provides parents, caregivers, and clinicians with the tools they need to relieve a child from the burden of these emotional hurdles and to build the positive, confident mindset that will set them on their way to a bright, happy future.