Shy Child: Helping Children Triumph Over Shyness

My son is sensitive and has a harder time with strangers and new situations. This book helped me realize what he goes through and now I can try and help him deal with it better. Since he started a new preschool with older kids, he's become more outgoing and talks a lot more. Hurray! I think we will always have to help him with this as it's not something that will go away completely, but now we know what works and what makes it worse, so we feel so much better about it. I also recommend "The Highly Sensitive Child" in conjunction with this book because there is a difference between being "sensitive" and "shy" and someone starting to figure it out may not know the differences. Good luck!

I did not understand the previous review of Dr. Swallow's book. It did not appear to seek to present "medical evidence of shyness," but rather attempted to present practical suggestions to parents regarding the behavior of their shy children. I found this book to be very helpful....Thanx Dr. Swallow....changed my child's life.

This is the most useful book I've read on any aspect of parenting. It is sensitively written with constructive suggestions on how to support your child at various stages of development. I'm so glad that I read this book when my son was five. It has changed how both he and I understand and respond to his shy nature. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

I spent a weekend reading and studying this book to help my 3-year-old daughter. I was able to use some of the techniques immediately, and saw immediate results. It was helpful to me, a somewhat shy person, and to my husband, a non-shy person. It really helps us to understand how she's feeling. It also helps us give her the tools to overcome some of her shyness. It's great, too, because it has suggestions for different age levels. It was quite rewarding as a parent to be able to help my daughter with her anxiety in certain situations. I would, and have, highly recommend this to ANYONE with a shy child. It is wonderful!

In The Shy Child, Dr. Ward Swallow finally set my mind at ease about why my child is so shy and how much I can do about it. He validated my own instinct to accept shyness as a way of being that has its place in the world--and to resist forcing my child to completely change the personality she was born with. With acceptance as a jumping off point, he helped me get inside the mind of my shy child and to understand her reticence at last. At the same time, Dr. Swallow acknowledges that it is crucial for my CHILD to understand shyness, as well. Shy children who don't get in touch with their inner "self-talk" can become depressed when they feel limited in what they want to do in life. The book's explicit, age-appropriate approaches to handling situations that cause anxiety in a shy child gave me confidence to talk directly to my child about shyness. I now think I can help her identify things she would like to do but thinks she can't, and to summon the courage to find success in situations that previously left her in tears.I had previously read Zimbardo's book on shyness in children, and I was dismayed to find that it offers outdated psychological explanations for different personalities, making shyness seem like a disorder, rather than a personality type. I found Dr. Swallow's approach much more reasonable and I think it offers much more potential for liberating a shy child from self-reproach.