Building Resilience in Children and Teens: Giving Kids Roots and Wings

An excellent resource for the elementary counselling office! This is a book I keep in my personal library and often recommend to parents looking to help their own children become more resilient.

As a mom of a teenager with learning differences I certainly have gone through my share of roller coaster rides that left me feeling exhausted and defeated. I am a compulsive reader, especially when it has anything to do with parenting or education so to say that I've read my share of parenting books is an understatement.Building Resilience isn't just another parenting book -- not in my book. In all honesty, I truly appreciated the fact that he was not only a father of two teenage girls but also a pediatrician specializing in Adolescent Medicine at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Effectively he saw and experienced both sides of the coin and in my eyes, that made him relevant and relatable to me. He also has this unique and refreshing ability to speak to parents vs. speaking down to them. He advocates for both the child and the parents.Building Resilience presented me with many opportunities to look back on situations through a very different lens. Some of the material he speaks about isn't new to many parents but the way he communicates and frames these situations offered me plenty of ah-hah moments. Dr. Ginsburg has a great quote that I think sums up this book brilliantly - "As we raise children, our goal has to be to prepare children to be happy, healthy 35 year olds." In the end, isn't that what we as parents really want for our children?I also want to quickly share that this is one of those books that makes you want to highlight and earmark certain pages to go back and read again when appropriate. This isn't a one time read but an incredibly valuable resource for any parent's library.

A good book which I will use within my work in the future. I will use as reference book only as it is not laid out as an easy read.

Good in parts but encourages dishonesty...

Dr. Ken Ginsburg's book, published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, is an engrossing read. The topic of resilience has been buzzing around parenting circles for several years now, and many books have been published offering advice, but Dr. Ginsburg's book stands apart for several reasons.First, as a pediatrician specializing in adolescent medicine, his writing on child development is nuanced and holistic. Not only does he understand the medical aspects of maturation, Dr. Ginsburg brings a practical, strategic, empathic stance to his subject matter.While there's no finger-pointing or blame-laying, Dr. Ginsburg is also clear in his observations how and (more interestingly) why many parents misstep. It's a compassionate view of a complex dynamic, and as a father of two himself, he understands first-hand the challenge parents face in making sense of their actions and attitudes towards their children.As a parent education programmer, I find that audiences are hungry for not only deep theory, but for counsel on how to effectively implement the theories. This book is a great resource, full of tips and strategies for addressing a broad range of issues that crop up parenting children and teens.Last, Dr. Ginsburg's concepts are "sticky" -- i.e., insightful, direct and fresh. They stay with me during the day -- that's a huge compliment in this super-saturated world we live in.