Seligman shows adults how to teach children the skills of optimism that can help them combat sadness, achieve more on the playing field and at school and improve their physical health.

This book is fascinating. Yes, I'm reading it for my son, but generally speaking it discusses how feeling that you have some power over your situation, can alter things, can overcome things, mixed with the actual accomplishment of this at least part of the time (which requires learning how to bounce back after rejection/failure) leads to an overall belief in yourself and in a fulfilling life that you can make for yourself if you don't get discouraged. Still, I absolutely believe that inborn tendencies can make it much much harder for some people to have this "glass half full" attitude and that doesn't even get into chemical imbalances and such. Still for a non drug answer to giving your child ways to cope with life, this has been worth my free reading time. Resilience is key because life just sucks sometimes. ( )

I liked the sound principles discussed and demonstrated in this book, and I was relieved to see that we are moving away from the Self-Esteem Movement where individuals were praised regardless of their behavior. Under those circumstances, praise becomes meaningless and children move toward an attitude of entitlement. For the last decade the term "consequence" has been considered to be politically incorrect, but there are consequences to everything we do--either positive consequences or negative consequences. I found Dr. Seligman's book to be both refreshing and sound. Highly Recommended! ( )