A Sympathetic Understanding of the Child: Birth to Sixteen

by David Elkind

This unique book is an accessible, "child-centered" introduction to child growth and development. It presents the most up-to-date information in descriptive terms to inform readers about how children look, sound, and behave. Practical and research-based, without being research oriented, it looks at children over small time periods to reveal patterns of growth and development. Courses in Child Development, Educational Psychology, Introduction to Early Childhood Education, Child Psychology, and Parenting courses.

Genres: Parenting

250 pages, Paperback

First published January 3, 1978

About the author

David Elkind is an American child psychologist and author. His groundbreaking books The Hurried Child and Miseducation informed early childhood education professionals of the possible dangers of "pushing down" the elementary curriculum into the very early years of a child's life. By doing so, he argued, teachers and parents alike could lapse into developmentally inappropriate instructional and learning practices that may distort the smooth development of learning. He is associated with the belief of decline of social markers.

He also wrote Ties that Stress: The New Family Imbalance (1994), All Grown Up and No Place To Go (1988), and Reinventing Childhood (1988). His most recent article titled, "Can We Play?", is featured in Greater Good magazine (published by the Greater Good Science Center), and discusses how play is essential to positive human development but children are playing less than in previous eras.

from wikipedia.org

Reviews

[Nicole Turner · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book, while partially helpful to my research, aged like milk. Some descriptions, such as "childhood autisims, a schizophrenic-like disorder" are jarring.

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm still not sympathetic