Reviews: For your shelf

by Lesley Maroni (Jessica Kingsley, £8.99, ISBN 9781843105343, www.jkp.com).

Reviewed by Jennie Lindon, psychologist and early years consultant.

It is refreshing to read a book that focuses on this age group as young individuals, not as children who have to be fitted into an adult-determined framework. Lesley Maroni explores sensitively how they try to make sense of daily life. She offers valuable descriptions of the ways children's perspective, and confusion, emerge through their play and conversation. Like others in the Understanding Your Child series from the Tavistock Clinic, the book is written both for parents and practitioners.

The author weaves in examples from practice and family life, and possible interpretations of young children's expressed feelings and actions. Everyone has to be cautious about the sense we make of the expressed thoughts and actions of young children. So, I would have preferred the author to acknowledge that everyone does not agree with her theoretical stance. It is an adult belief, not fact, that young children have sexual feelings about their opposite-sex parent, and that they are about to enter a latency period.