The First Twelve Months of Life: Your Baby's Growth Month by Month

by Frank Caplan (Editor)

Describes normal infant development and behavior during the first year

Genres: Parenting, Nonfiction

Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

Reviews

[Leigh Merryday · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are hundreds of books out there on child development that have lots of glossy color photos, pretty charts, and an abundance of white space making for a beautiful book with little information. Most are poorly organized and seemingly designed for those with a poor attention span.

This book is chock full of real information. The chapters are pure text with few visuals and only a quick information-rich chart at the end of each chapter. What impresses me most is the quality of the child development info. The authors are very specific about each stage and what a typical child is doing across all developmental strands.

Yes, the book is somewhat outdated. I have seen reviews that rage against the book's suggestions for tummy-sleeping, feeding, etc. I did not find this to be a problem. Recommendations come and go. Feeding and sleeping standards can be checked with the pediatrician. The stages of child development are consistent and have been for thousands of years. This is the purpose of the book, and I have yet to see a similar book with anywhere near as much information. Highly recommended. (I have just ordered The Second Twelve Months by the same authors.)

[Jack · Rating 2 out of 5]

Long. Disorganized. Ultimately not useless but certainly not the best resource for this subject.

As a new parent, you don’t want to read pages of deep text about the idiosyncrasies of every child’s new growth and development. I want to know when and how my baby will change. I think you could shorten this book by at least 50%.

There are two ways to organize this type of book: one is to go month by month and explain what will happen in each month. The other is to take each category of milestone (feeding, speaking, etc) and step individually month by month for each. This book somehow manages to do both. Each chapter is a month. And within each chapter, you’ll find subsections, such as one on sleeping. This subsection will show up in let’s say the Third Month chapter, and in this subsection, the book will walk through how the baby will sleep in the Third Month but then continue on to explain how the baby’s sleep will change in month 4, 5, 6 etc etc. why?? I’m reading about the third month here!! The effect is that the information I want is drowned out by a bunch of information I don’t want. I just end up confused.

Also to future readers / parents, some of this book’s info is outdated, understandably. Baby science changes so much so quickly.

[E B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some things are a bit dated with this book (at least the version I read published in 1995); I am unsure if this has been republished and updated. With that being said, it still has a tremendous amount of information to prep for the things a parent might encounter in the first year of their child's life.

Much of the information is akin to "your results may vary" and I feel that is an extremely important thing to hear as each child will be different. The differing of certain landmark accomplishments and their extremely varied timelines from one child to the next which flies in the face of those who want to espouse that their children are advanced.

[Ellee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the information is a little bit dated (most notably the parts about sleeping positions for baby), but the developmental information is very good and very helpful for me so far. Very informative. It explains what's happening as the baby's brain and body mature from a cognitive development/psychological point of view and describes the observable behaviors that indicate changes and growth. Definitely recommended for parents of infants!!

[Sarah Carter · Rating 3 out of 5]

While written several years ago, this book is a nice breakdown of what you should expect your child's development to look like month by month. The chapters are pretty quick reads, so I read one each month this past year.

[Betty Huber · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent reference book. Kind of outdated (e.g., the kind of book that tells you walker are ok), but interesting to see what was "market" in the 60s and 70s and gives a nice contrast to all the new books advocating a more "modern" parenting style.

[Reuel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good overview of infant development.

[Hannah]

Excellent for all mothers and fathers.

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

A little outdated but some good information

[Kathryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a wonderful reference and thoughtfully written.

[Jaime · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good information but sightly dated at this point. Still enjoyed looking at it month to month!