The Power of Your Child's Imagination

Charlotte Reznick, PhD

Imagine your frustrated four-year-old calming her own anger with a few simple breaths.  Picture your fourth grader visualizing an ice blue pillow to cool his headaches.  Or your worried eleven-year-old improving her concentration by consulting a personal wizard to help with homework.

The Power of your Child's Imagination will show you how to empower your child with easy, effective, and creative skills for surviving--and thriving--in a stressful world.  This indispensable guide provides nine simple tools to help children cope with stress and anxiety by tapping into their imagination to access their own natural strength and confidence.  Dr. Reznick illustrates how each tool can be used every day to deal with problems such as stress-induced headaches and stomachaches, phobias, panic attacks, and social anxiety, bed-wetting and sleepless nights, separation anxiety and fear of the unknown, coping with death, divorce and other losses, hurt, frustration, and anger, trouble with schoolwork and concentration, sibling rivalry and school-yard squabbles.

My Take:

I am generally not one for parenting books.  I feel that each child is an individual, and parenting books just don't account for each child's unique nature.  Many times the books give the most impractical and theoretical advice, you would have been better off not ever reading the dang book.  I can tell you wholeheartedly that this book is different.  It is all about figuring out your child, and using the tools provided by tailoring them to your child's specific needs.  I also feel that many parenting books take children and childhood too seriously, and it feels like the author is trying to transform your child into a little adult.  I think my aversion to this practice is why I was interested in The Power of Your Child's Imagination the moment I read the title.  What??? A book that wants your child to day dream?  Yup!  This book introduces the theoretical concepts, coupled with practical tools to allow you child's imagination to calm their anxiety and stress.  Being the mother of a very fiery and independent red headed toddler, I have come to love this book.  We have already implemented several of the tools given.  Our favorite is one called "balloon breath".  When I try to get my daughter to take deep breaths to calm down, even her little 2 year old mind can feel that it is a bit patronizing, so she'd never cooperate.  With balloon breath, I have her imagine that her tummy is a balloon, and she has to take deep breaths to fill it up all the way, then I have her slowly let the air out of her balloon/tummy, and voila! she's calm.  This book is filled with awesome features, like a "back track alert", warning you about what to do if the kid starts sliding back, "quick tips" (self-explanatory :), "sample scripts" to help you broach some of these sensitive topics gently, and "putting it all together" (again self-explanatory).  I recommend this book to basically every parent out there.  Our kids all have stress and anxiety, this book can really give some wonderful tools to overcome these problems.  I give this book a 1, Pay Full Price Guilt Free.

Do you agree with my review?  Do you think I'm totally off-base?  Either way I'd love to hear from you, be sure to leave a comment and tell me how you feel!

If you are interested in learning more about the author, please visit her at http://www.imageryforkids.com/

To download a free e-book with more information on The Power of Your Child's Imagination: How to Transform Stress and Anxiety into Joy and Success and Dr. Reznick , visit http://bookpromotionservices.com/reznick/.  For a limited time Dr. Reznick is offering a very special gift to each person who purchases a copy of her book, including over 80 free gifts, please visit http://www.imageryforkids.com/book/ for all details.