This would be a good book for all parents. If you read this while your child is still an infant, you will save a lot of frustration for yourself as well as your child.

The Difficult Child is a self-help book for the parents of children with difficult temperaments. While all children have characteristic behavioral quirks, temperaments are so deep-seated that they manifest in infancy and are usually retained for a lifetime. Since temperaments can be inherited, they are probably linked to specific genes. In fact, one behavioral trait -- high activity level -- in mice seems to be associated with a specific gene (along with other characteristics), but such traits have not yet been genetically identified in humans.

This book concentrates on nine particularly difficult temperaments: high activity level, distractibility, high intensity, irregularity, negative persistence, low sensory threshold, initial withdrawal, poor adaptability, and negative mood. A child who exhibits some or all of these temperamental characteristics is usually not the child that the parents expected and therefore can be difficult to handle properly.

High activity level is obviously wearisome for the parents, babysitters and other caretakers. Distractibility is often irritating since the child can't stay with one thing very long. High intensity refers to habitual loudness, which causes its own problems. Irregularity refers to confused circadian rhythms, which means the child is often not ready to eat or sleep at any fixed time. Negative persistence refers to lengthy whines and tantrums, drawing out every disagreement to the point of absurdity. Low sensory threshold refers to physical sensitivity to clothing, noises, colors, tastes and other sensory stimuli, leading to definite likes and dislikes. Initial withdrawal refers to timid reactions at first to new things. Poor adaptability refers to difficultly changing activities, clothing, or even locations. Negative mood refers to grumpiness, showing little or no cheerfulness.

These temperamental types are particularly difficult for parents to understand or manage. At first the parents believe something is wrong with the child, particularly when the child cries at odd times, stays up late, and so forth. When their pediatrician states that nothing is wrong with the child, except maybe a little colic, the parents are mystified when this behavior continues for months and years.

First, these temperaments are normal, although not extremely common. They do not indicate any defect or disease in the baby, just different ways of responding to the world. Once these differences are identified, they can be managed. Moreover, the child can be trained to control these traits to some extent by learning good habits. However, these temperaments are part of the child and so the child would be more comfortable in surroundings where these temperaments are known, expected, and allowed a certain amount of free rein.

Of course, there are various ailments that can produce similar behavior patterns. Some of the more common are touched on within this book. However, the authors assume that you will have already had your child examined by a qualified pediatrician, will continue to take your child for regularly scheduled checkups, and will bring any subsequent problems to his attention. If you always keep him informed, you can let the doctor worry about such things.

Read this book. Even if none of this sounds like your child, read the first chapter of the book; you will learn a lot about your own child, despite their lack of difficult temperament. However, if any of these temperaments fits your child, read the whole book and have your spouse do so also. If nothing else, this book will give you some of the right questions to ask your pediatrician the next time you corner him in his office.

Once you have read this book, you will want to find out more about temperament and human differences. This book is only the first step in the rest of your career as parents. And as grandparents.

-Bill Jordin

Firstly, I found his assumption that there is one type of "difficult" child annoying. One person might find a high activity level child difficult whereas another is more likely to find a low activity level child difficult. He mentions "goodness of fit" but doesn't seem to fully grasp how that concept means the term difficult is relative. A personal example: many people say autistic kids are difficult, but as an autistic child, I find NT kids more difficult.
And that gets me to the next point. He seems to be saying "these kids are OK, but not those kids" with his statement about how traits of autism aren't temperament. Well, poor adaptability in autistics isn't much different from poor adaptability in the "difficult" children, just more common. And much of the stuff about valuing different temperaments applies to valuing other kinds of differences. I value how my mind works, and as far as I can tell (having never experienced firsthand an NT mind) my mind is quite different.
Also, it seems like in describing the "effect" of certain temperaments on the family, he blames it all on the kid's temperament. When I find noisy kids upsetting because of my low sensory threshold, it's neither the fault of my temperament or theirs, but simply a clash between us.

I just actually finished reading this book yesterday. It was given to me by my counselor, to whom I seem to talk to quite often about my son's behavior and how frustrating it is to me. I was amazed with each new section of this book at how many of these behaviors are caused by temperment. I've been told in that past that my son (7 years old) has a difficult temperment, but I never really "got it" until I read this book. I didn't realize that a lot of what goes on isn't even in his control a lot of the time....that's just how his temperment causes him to act or react. I couldn't believe how much of this book "hit the nail on the head" as I was reading it. It really made me feel like there may just be something I can do about my son's difficult behaviors and his attitude and "freshness". I can't wait to try all of the suggestions that Stanley Turecki gives. I can finally now see that things my son did even as a small toddler relate to all of his tempermental issues and that I am not being a "bad" mom like I've so often felt I was.
I highly recommend this book to any parent of a hard-to-raise and hard to understand child. You'll surely walk away with some enlightenment and some great tools to help you with your child and also to help your child to better his/herself.