The Practitioner Guide to Skills Training for Struggling Kids

Bloomquist (psychiatry, U. of Minnesota) provides practitioners with a companion guide to Skills Training for Struggling Kids: Promoting Your Child's Behavioral, Emotional, Academic, and Social Development, a guide for parents that outlines a program based on his experience providing skills-training interventions to families, training practitioners, and conducting research, which can be applied with children ages five to 17 and families in clinics, schools, community agencies, juvenile court-affiliated settings, and faith centers. He includes practice guidelines for getting started and practice illustrations. The book is based on the practitioner chapter in Skills Training for Children with Behavioral Problems (2006), and has more emphasis on preparing and motivating the parent and child to follow through in using skills and more guidance in applying the training methods for families. It has updated information on behavioral-emotional problems and methods for intervention, conceptualization of children's problems as developmental struggles and of parent/family difficulties as setbacks in coping with stress, suggestions for individualizing skills-building efforts to needs and preferences, ideas for getting families to attend sessions and motivating them to use what they learned at home, and instructions for training a family in strategies to develop a child's behavioral, social, emotional, and academic development and improve a parent's coping and broader family interactions. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)