Bringing Up Baby: Three Steps to Making Good Decisions in Your Child's First Years

by Claire Lerner, Amy Laura Dombro

Parents are faced with hundreds of questions in their child’s first years. Breast or bottle? Comfort a 6-month-old child now or let her cry? Allow some TV or none at all? But how meaningful can the answers be when they’re offered by someone who doesn’t know the parent or the child? Instead of offering answers that apply to "most" families, experienced child-care specialists Claire Lerner and Amy Dombro explain 1. How parents can understand their own parenting style and its effect on their child, 2. How parents can observe their child to understand what she is feeling and thinking, and 3. How to use those observations to make healthy and effective decisions. With this easy, 3-step approach, parents can learn to become experts on their own child’s healthy development.

Genres: Parenting

155 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Tawny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Favorite lines:
1. "Few parents, if any, had a lesson plan in mind. The transfer of information mostly took place through everyday interactions with one another" (10).
2. "Have no fear. No single mistake will scar your child for life. It is the accumulation of your interactions with your child that counts" (15).
3. "Your sensitive, responsive caregiving and interactions with your baby are more important to her development than any toy" (27).
4. "No two children, parents, or families are alike, so comparisons are often useless" (50).

[Molly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of this is "the obvious," but I think, at times, good advice that parents (and grandparents) need to be reminded of. Things like remember that not all children react the same way, but that those reactions are neither good nor bad, and suggestions on how to handle certain patterns and situations. Instead of "fixing" your child's tendencies, the suggestions are labeled, "How You Might Respond to a ______ Child."



pg. 42: "Don't label your child as [*]. Labels can stick and become self-fulfilling prophecies."
* book used shy, but I think this is wise universal advice.

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

The majority of this book's content struck me as being common-sense parenting suggestions. I think the most helpful aspect of this book was the authors' reminder that every child is different, so as a parent we need to spend the time to really get to know our child, their feelings, their temperament, what sets them off, what calms them down, etc. in the context of age-appropriate behavior.