Free to Feel Great: Teaching Children to Excel at Living

Elizabeth Levin is a psychology professor at Laurentian University.

This book is about “teaching children to excel at living.” By this,
the author means helping children build self-esteem, cope with stressful
situations, look for the positive, and in general enhance their quality
of living now and in the future. Numerous practical activities are
suggested for achieving these goals.

The first chapter discusses the power of positive thinking and offers
many suggestions for enhancing self-esteem. Several chapters then focus
on the pitfalls of too much stress, and provide activities for reducing
stress. While the suggestions are designed for parents, teachers, and
coaches to use with children, adults may learn a few strategies they can
use for themselves. (A later chapter deals specifically with stress
control for adults.)

The next chapters deal with focusing attention, and include activities
for sustaining focus, and for shifting focus from the negative to the
positive. For example, one activity recommends dealing with
stress-related pain and anxiety by “throwing it away.” While this
method is based on sound psychological principles of conditioning, not
all pain can be wished away and one shouldn’t assume that all
childhood pain is stress-related.

Suggestions are also provided to help children reinterpret things in a
more positive, less stressful light—for example, the coach who yells
may in fact mean well. It is doubtful that the entire burden for
accepting this situation should be placed on the child. Do we want or
need this kind of coach in the first place?

The chapter on personal performance enhancement, although claiming to
provide skills that can be applied not only to sports but also to school
and work, focuses on improving physical performance skills.

The author, a sports psychologist, is at times an overly insistent
cheerleader for the pursuit of excellence in sports, but his book
provides many useful and practical suggestions for children and all
those who deal with them.