Helping Children and Adolescents: Evidence-Based Strategies from Developmental and Social Psychology
Professor Robert Woody, with doctorates in clinical/counseling psychology, public health, and law, writes with great authority in this outstanding and very readable book for all professionals on how best to help children and adolescents. By bringing together evidence-based practices from scholarly literature and social/developmental psychology as well as information from case studies and a wide range of professions, he shows how mental health professionals, professional helpers, schools and teachers, community services, parents, and extended families can identify, acquire, and propagate skills needed to develop and run both preventive and treatment programs. The wide range of pragmatic evidence-based methods he describes cover all the main areas, including adult responsibility, dealing with kids, preparation for learning, character and social development, maintaining health, adolescence, delinquency and crime. This is a unique and outstanding book! ----Edwin L. Herr, EdD, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Education and Associate Dean Emeritus, College of Education, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PAProfessor Woody has taken on a significant challenge by collecting essential evidence-based strategies for child rearing from research in developmental and social psychology, as well as clinical fundamentals. He has also quite successfully tackled two areas often ignored when offering practical advice to carers and parents: adult responsibility and character development in children. With Professor Woody's book, mental health professionals - as well as parents and other carers - will be better placed to address the problems faced by children and youth, and also consider how to grow the children into responsible adults. In so doing he draws effectively on well known principles of psychology and current research. The resulting volume provides well-grounded invaluable guidance for both parents and professionals --Gerald P. Koocher, PhD, ABPP, Professor of Psychology and Associate Provost, Simmons College, Boston, MA Lecturer on Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA[...] an important contribution to the body of literature [...] a primer that crosses biopsychosocial dimensions of development. It is well written and is an accessible discussion of what it takes to foster psychological and physical health in a child. [...] I was captivated by how the material was presented in a style that made the content accessible to any interested reader. [...] a careful and scholarly distillation of the literature [...] An interested parent could pick up the text and find a valuable set of principles to follow in parenting, while practitioners or helping adults could read it and understand how important they are in the fabric of a child's life. --Norman A. White in PsycCritiques, Vol. 56, 2011