Caring for Your School-Age Child

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This newest child-care guide from the American Academy of Pediatrics concentrates on the middle years of childhood. To make sure that parents don't become complacent after making it through their child's infancy, toddler and preschool years, the introduction warns that years five to 12 are most definitely not ``a time when nothing much happens.'' This successor to 1991's highly popular Caring For Your Baby and Child is encyclopedic. Schor (an associate professor of pediatrics at Tufts University School of Medicine) and his contributors cover subjects ranging from runny noses to racism, with ten chapters devoted solely to such school-related issues as homework and learning disorders. Uniformly bland prose and a determinedly nonjudgmental, continuously reasssuring approach, however, make for less than compelling reading. Mothers and fathers with five or more years of parenting experience may yearn for less encouragement and more direct, forcefully opinionated points of view, and readers searching for answers to particular problems might be better served by a more specifically focused child-care book. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Nov.)

Library Journal

This companion volume to the American Academy of Pediatrics' Caring for Your Baby and Young Child (LJ 4/1/91) and Caring for Your Adolescent: Ages 12 to 21 (LJ 9/1/91) offers comprehensive information about the growth, development, and behavior of children from five to 12 years of age. Written in a warm, reassuring, nonjudgmental tone, the book provides outstanding current information on both medical and psychosocial topics. Bicycle safety, latchkey children, dealing with violence and crime, guns in the home, prejudice, gender identity and sexual orientation, and physical and sexual abuse appear along with the usual information about immunization, diet, school problems, illness, and first aid. The text also offers sound, practical advice about how parents in traditional and nontraditional families can handle a wide variety of situations, stating clearly when they should seek professional help. This guide is more up-to-date and offers more depth than classics such as Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care (Dutton, 1992. 6th ed.) and covers a wider range of ages than Arlene Eisenberg and others' What To Expect: The Toddler Years (LJ 3/1/95). This book belongs in all parenting and consumer health collections.-Barbara M. Bibel, Oakland P.L., Cal.

Kathryn Carpenter

Numerous contributors and reviewers helped in compiling this authoritative, comprehensive guide--the third volume in a parenting series--under the imprimatur of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Its brief chapters cover health, physical development, nutrition, fitness, personal development, social skills, behavior, discipline, emotional and behavioral disorders, family life, school concerns, chronic health problems, and common medical problems. The material is presented in a warm, reassuring, but firm style that emphasizes the importance of parental modeling, communication, mutual respect, and child advocacy in contemporary parenting. Given the limited number of parenting guides addressing the needs of school-age children, this is a welcome introduction to caring for children during the years in which the basis for their future health, well-being, and success as an adult is usually laid.