Dr. Stephen Nowicki's Raising a Socially Successful Child: Teaching Kids the Nonverbal Language They Need to Communicate, Connect and Thrive emphasizes the importance of cultivating non-verbal skills in children to ensure future social success.

Dr. Nowicki begins by highlighting the importance of non-verbal skills during social interactions and the ways in which non-verbal communication has been inhibited first with the rise in technology and secondly, with the pandemic and resulting public health orders.

Dr. Nowicki then details the six main types of non-verbal communication, ways to foster these skills and how they relate to the four stages of friendship.

Dr. Nowicki's book is heavily based on research and his own personal experience in the field. It includes valuable information for parents, caregivers, teachers and other individuals who are working with children.

I found the book informative as a mother to a toddler. However, I did not find the book as engaging as I had hoped. I found it read a more like an essay than other books I have read.

Overall, this book was well-researched and informative but was not as compelling to read as I had hoped.

I would like to thenk NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for my copy.

This book is useful for parents wanting to assist their child (and perhaps themselves) at strengthening nonverbal skills, and when to recognize that more help is needed. It focuses a little too much on pandemic-era times when we had these issues well before C19 so I'd have liked to see more pre-pandemic examples. But the book was easy to understand.

Raising a Socially Successful Child by Dr. Stephen Nowicki serves as a fantastic primer for parents eager to assist their children in honing nonverbal communication skills and recognizing when professional guidance may be beneficial. Dr. Nowicki adeptly guides readers through cases in various developmental stages, spanning from early childhood to adolescence, without imposing rigid definitions of what constitutes 'correct' behavior. Instead, he focuses on fostering connections and reducing social isolation among children. The book provides invaluable insights for parents navigating the complexities of their child's social world.

This book was provided to me by Net Galley and I appreciate the opportunity to read and review it. I am a parent of small children (ages 6 and under). I can say that out of all of the parenting material that I have read or consumed via social media, none has dealt with the topic of nonverbal communication exclusively. This is an area of skill development that I think is very well explained in this book. It is presented thoughtfully with examples of how to address shortcomings and ways to help foster nonverbal skill development in children, both very young to older. This was an interesting read for me, and as a parent with young children, I appreciated the information.

This book provides a detailed view of the areas of nonverbal communication that children require in order to be socially successful no matter what age they are. It also provides a very structured and practical view of how to teach children to be effective nonverbal communicators. He spends a lot of time unpacking the loss of COVID, which is helpful since it is such a big issue in our lives, I do think he could have used a few more examples from non-pandemic life within the school to make this book really effective for caregivers in post-pandemic life. I really enjoyed how this book was strucutred - detailed looks at the major components of each type of nonverbal communcation and how to assess your child and approaches to take to further develop these skills. You can tell the author is an expert in his field and that he is passionate about helping children succeed and become successful adults. This is a really good resource for parents and an approachable/effective book.

This was a really great book set up as a how to guide on nonverbal communication with children. I loved all the different examples from children in infancy to pre-teens if you will. You can tell this book had a lot of evidence based information as well as “real life” situations that helped to be relatable. I enjoyed the way the book was broken into sections and it was super organization and easy to read/understand. I would recommend anybody read this.. parents, educators.. really anybody who has children in their live especially! Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars
This book was entirely focused on nonverbal communication. Chapters covered the six types: rhythm, facial expressions, personal space, physical touch, vocalics, and body language. There was lots of research to back up the ideas. I did like that each chapter covered ideas for infancy/early childhood and then later childhood (elementary school) separately.
This book would be good for parents who have noticed their child struggling in one or more of the nonverbal communication areas, or for new parents looking for best practices on teaching these somewhat ambiguous social norms as their kids grow.
I had hoped there would be some additional info on helping kids socially outside of just covering the nonverbal subjects, and I do think the book missed an opportunity by ending the advice around late elementary school/around 10 years old. What if your middle schooler or high schooler is still struggling?
It would also be great to have some example conversations for helping your kids - the book had examples of kids who were struggling, determined the root of their troubles, and sort of stopped with saying that the problem got pointed out and the kid improved. I wanted more detail.

Amazing Resource for Parents/Teachers!
Life post-pandemic has been a bit of a shock for me as a new parent! Our eldest was born in 2020, and since bringing her into a the craziness of the world, I have often worried about if we are doing “enough”. Raising a Socially Successful Child is a resource that I will definitely keep referring back to since non-verbal communication is so important. I love how the activities are focused to address each different component of non-verbal communication and then separated by stage of childhood (young children and late childhood). If you work with children or are a parent, I would definitely recommend this book!

This book really breaks down each aspect of nonverbal communication and offers practical solutions is just fantastic. Whether you're a parent, teacher, or school counselor, there's a lot to gain from this book.

Thanks NetGalley and Little, Brown Spark for letting me review the ARC!

This book was hard for me to read. I was the child who didn’t understand why it was hard to make friends, and didn’t pick up on a lot of social cues. Eventually I did, and learned to make the behaviors that were non preferred by my peers. But I would come home exhausted and with a lower self worth thinking “ Why can’t I make friends just as I am?”
I worry with this book that we are raising people pleasers, and children who lack adaptability. While the opinions make sense, it was almost less about social success, and more about teaching your child to take up the least amount of space in a room as possible which to it’s core I just don’t personally resonate with. I believe you can be socially successful without sacrificing taking up space in a room.

This was an enjoyable and educational read. As a parent of 3 and 5 year old children, I was intrigued by the title and I wanted to learn how to sharpen my kids' nonverbal communication skills. The chapters were broken down into very easy to understand segments, each one based on the six types of nonverbal communication. Not only did this book make me think about how I parent, it also made me think about how I interact with colleagues in a professional setting. Perhaps more importantly, it made me aware that my interpretation of a person's nonverbal communication may be counter to their intention.

This book discusses the importance of nonverbal communication development in children. I found this book so helpful to understand how friendships are formed, common issues with communication, the value of rhythms, and body language. Both the content and the outline of the book are excellent. I appreciate how the author offers multiple solutions to each aspect of nonverbal communication. Any parent/guardian, teacher, or school counselor could benefit from this book.

Thank you NetGalley and Little, Brown Spark for this advanced copy. All opinions are my own.

I love love love this book. First off, the way it is written just flows and makes you want to keep reading. This is huge for me when reading. It also uses lots and lots of science and research to confirm everything it talks about. Such a great book on non verbal communication and children.

Wow this is an incredible book that every parent should read!

I initially requested to this book on Netgally because I was curious about the title. But from the first few pages I realized what a treasure I found.

This book deals with non verbal communication. The language we heavily rely on to communicate our meaning; but also the one language that no one actively teaches us and can make or break budding friendships.

This book kept me engaged from the first paragraph. It is written in a very easily accessible style while still adding statistics and research.

Each aspect of non-verbal communication is very well described and explained. They each have a variety of easily doable suggestions of how to foster, correct, and improve on each communication style. Furthermore, it is broken down by when and how in love a child learns each aspect and when and how it will become important to their social live.

Honestly, reading this book made me review my own childhood and realize where and how I failed to connect to my peers. I’m happy to know that I will have the tools to help my child navigate one of the most important and most untaught aspects of live; building relationships.

While I, personally, didn't relate to much of this as a parent yet for my toddler, I found a lot of this was directly applicable to the teaching world. I've been teaching middle school for about ten years now and found that a lot of tips and strategies offered in this book have helped me to become more mindful of how I interact with my students on a daily basis. I did feel that some of it was common sense, but having it physically written out forced me to truly stop and think about more reasoning and background when it comes to child socialization and understanding. Thanks so much for the ARC!

Sole good insights here. Parenting books are hard to review because I think so much of how well the book resonates with you depends upon how much is relatable to you and your childs particular needs.

I read this book because, as a parent I want to have an arsenal of parenting tactics available to me to help my children succeed. This book however was all about nonverbal cues that children need to learn to be socially accepted by their peers. I feel like many kids just learn these things on their own over time and while I did feel the book had helpful information, I feel it would be best utilized by parents whose children are having trouble fitting in. If your school age children are adapting well to their peers socially there probably won’t be a whole lot to learn from this book. However, for parents who need to help their children learn these non verbal cues this book would be a great learning tool

This is a very informative book if you have children who do not understand nonverbal cues or social cues. I have a child who sometimes doesn't and has a hard time. And I found some good ideas to try out with him that I hope will help.