The Optimistic Child

A Proven Program to Safeguard Children Against Depression and Build Lifelong Resilience

By: Martin E. P. Seligman

Narrated by: Paul Costanzo

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 30-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 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."

©1995 Martin E. P. Seligman, PhD, Karen Reivich, MA, Lisa Jaycox, PhD, and Jane Gillham, PhD; afterword copyright 2007 by Martin E. P. Seligman, PhD (P)2016 Tantor

Critic reviews

"In clear, concise prose peppered with anecdotes, dialogues, cartoons and exercises, Seligman offers a concrete plan of action based on techniques of self-evaluation and social interaction." ( Publishers Weekly)

Amazing

Love this book, helps me a lot and awesome way to explain everything. Highly recommend to every human being.
Excelente libro, me encantó y ayudó muchísimo. Abrió mis horizontes en un tema tan difícil que por lo demás esta muy bien explicado. Lo recomiendo a todo ser humano.
Siento que he crecido con este aporte y trataré de guiar a mi familia y a mí con todo lo aprendido. Gracias!

very good descriptive book with clear guidance

very good descriptive book with clear guidance, easy to follow instructions with exact steps and a lot of examples, that make things even easier.

Wonderful

It would be better with PDF of exercises. Otherwise a life saver for parents wanting to inoculate kids against depression.

Better off getting paperback

What did you like best about The Optimistic Child? What did you like least?

There is plenty of good messaging, content and story telling in this book, but at times the audio narrations is hard to follow. Often it sounds like the narrator is translating a table of result data that is hard to follow and its unclear sometimes when the reader is moving into a new section of a chapter or reading actual content. Overall, the content is worthwhile but ultimately I would have been better off reading it myself. I feel now that I need to also buy the paperback.

Did the narration match the pace of the story?

Narration was difficult to follow at times.

amazing book

A book that references children behavior instead a self-reflection of a adult. A must read if you are planing your career in psychology.