Infant-and-Toddler-Development Books

I read this book while I was pregnant with my daughter. I reread it later. It is a cogent work that helps us to understand the brain. I think my daughter has benefited tremendously! A must read for any expectant parent or anyone with young children.

Neither my daughter or I have made much progress reading it. It's not really written for a lay person.

This is a fascinating account of how the brain develops in early life, and how this maps to changing behavior. "What's Going On in There?" is written for a lay audience and is very accessible.

I only have two grievances with this book. The first is that although it is written in a very readable narrative format, I wish she put a reference section at the end with diagrams, timelines, references, etc to summarize the narrative - because you probably won't memorize all of the fascinating detail on first read, but then it is difficult to locate specific information later on when you are trying to remember something. The other grievance is that she makes many assertions without citing references - a pet peeve of mine, but this is not something that is likely to bother most readers. But again, this is a good book, and it is the only one I know about this fascinating topic.

I found this book really insightful and full of great practical infomation that helps me understand my baby girl.

I was disappointed. It's all about the scientific aspect of the brain (developing in the womb, how it compares to animals brains, how it develops in childhool). There's only 1 chapter at the very end on what you can do as a parent to help positively affect the growth and development of your child's brain. Skip this one!

I was looking to try anything to get our 8 month old to sleep at night. This was a last hope purchase. It was AMAZING. Within 3 nights our little guy was sleeping for 8 1/2 hours. I am a true believer in this system.

Our six-month old daughter was doing well sleeping through night, but we had to go through an elaborate process of rocking her and putting her down several times to get her to sleep. She was also sleeping in an Amby-bed and it was time to move her to her crib. The first two nights were difficult, with crying for 45 minutes, then 25 minutes. But the results have been great since then. She is sleeping more at night and during her naps and seems much happier because of it. I was avoiding Ferber and "cry it out" methods and chose this book because it is advertised as the "least cry" method. Really, though, I don't see that it's much different than Ferber. So, be prepared for some good solid crying the first few nights. But it works very well, and the benefits to your baby of getting good sleep day and night far outweigh a few nights of crying. I would also read Marc Weissbluth's book (Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child) for good background information on the importance of sleep for babies.

This is a good book with good insight. It is a cry it out method. Unfortunately I haven't done the steps yet because my baby has been going through some transitions and growth spurts. Basically, it's a system that gets baby to sleep through the night gradually weaning off his nighttime feedings and feeding him more during the day. I think it's a good book with a good theory as long as you DO IT!!! I guess that's the only way for any baby, just let them cry and always have a good routine for them. I was kinda hoping for something that wouldn't involve so much crying. Oh well!

I felt this was the only book to recognize parent's fear of crying, as well as having a healthy time expectation of not training before 4-5 months, when babies should still be getting nighttime feeds. It also offered lots of good ideas on how to get ready to train, to minimize crying, and reasonable advice. Such as not going cold turkey with crying it out or dropping all of their sleep-associations such as swaddling and pacifiers, all at once. This allowed us to gradually get our daughter used to falling asleep without her pacifier, THEN we worked on getting her out of her swaddle (which she was SO ready for and happier out of---but she was just used to it).
Some hardcore attachment parenting types may get indignant at the thought of their child crying, but my daughter now cries LESS, now that she knows how to soothe herself. I hear her cooing as she gets put down to sleep and she wakes up LAUGHING. (no lie) she is SUCH a happier baby now! And she never had to cry for more than 7 minutes, from the very start of her training. now she rarely cries for 1-2 minutes, if she wakes in the night, and then zonks right back out and the whole family is happier! You do your child no favors by denying them the skills to make themselves happy.

Ok - I haven't read the whole book yet, but skipping to Chapter 2 it says that you can start this method as soon as your child is 4months old!!! Hello - why does the title have in it from 'birth to 5 years'. Right now I am completely sleep deprived with a one month old, looking for solutions, and relize that I was dupped into buying this book.

I read this book when my son was about 9months old and I was exhausted. It saved my life, or certainly my nighttime. Very helpful. It's not rocket science, but it helps to guide an exhauted and weary parent through allowing your child to figure out how to put him/herself to sleep. My son is now nearing 2 and I am still thankful everyday.

This book literally saved my sanity. My son was co-sleeping and practically nursing all night long. Not to mention naps were very difficult. I wasn't getting any sleep until I found this book. I'm a firm believer that every child is unique and you have to do what's right for you so I was able to adjust the method to work for me and my son. It worked miracles. Within a week my son was sleeping through the night in his own crib. After I had my second son I used this book as well. It has helped me so much. Now I am a much happier mommy with much happier babies:)

I must admit that I was skeptical at first, but I am happy to say that Kim West's methods really work. I was very pleasently surprised. Our baby has gone from waking up a minimum of three to up to six times per night to now one waking at around 5AM. And I think there is still room for improvement on that as we are still in the middle of our "sleep training". I would encourage you to give the book and methods a try even if you are a skeptic like I was. Just be prepared for things to get worse for several nights before they get better... but it is well worth the sacrifice for a week in my mind.

It is also worth mentioning that our baby was not able to fall asleep unless she was feeding. The feeding calmed her down, which is natural, and eventually soothed her to sleep. This is the only way that she knew how to fall asleep. Now she can fall asleep on her own without having to be feeding to do so.

Good luck!

This book allows us to give our child the marvolous gift of learning to soothe themselves. The method WORKS! For those of you that judge the book after one night of crying...you are missing the wonderful results that come after 1 or 2 nights of crying...and 2 or 3 weeks of total training...THE RESULT IS many years of being able to fall asleep by themselves, soothe themselves, and stay asleep. With the Sleep Lady's method my son cried the first couple of days, yes, but even though it was hard to hear I knew that by being with him in the room I was making sure he was fine and the crying was just a period of adjustment. I taught my son with this method when he was 8 months old, after only 2 nights of some crying, and 2 weeks of staying up in his crib for maybe an 1 hr (without crying) while I was still in the room, self-learning a soothing technique (I did use pacifiers at first)...HE DID IT, he learn to go to sleep by himself and to this day (he is 4 years old) he has sleept for 10-11 hrs straight every single night of his life!!!! Even when he is sick and might awaken for a few moments, or have to be waken up for medicine, I can just after kissing him goodnight turn around and leave the room and peacefully from my baby monitor witness that he can fall asleep all by himself again. It's a great feeling and I owe it to the Sleep Lady Shuffle! I'm sure my little one thanks me for that :-)

At 5 months my son would only fall asleep in our bed, with pacifier in his mouth and me holding his hand. Then he was up every hour and half to nurse. I was so sleep deprived I could barely do anything around the house, so my friend gave me this book. At 5 month and two weeks my son was sleeping through the night, falling asleep by himself, in his crib and without pacifier!!!!! He never cried for more than 5 minutes when we were teaching him!!!!!!!!!! I am soooooo happy this book exists!!!!!!!!!!!

Very impressed with the speedy service of this order. Arrived in excellent condition and very pleased - will use Amazon again.

I'm enormously grateful for this book. When I first picked it up 5 years ago, in theory I agreed with the style of parenting the author encourages; however, I had zero experience ever being around a parent who parented like this or a person who had been brought up like this - neither had my husband. For about the first year of kiddo's life, this book was constantly within reach and went on all trips with us. I read it well into the 2's and some of the 3's. Lately, at 5, he's been having some issues - I picked up this book again and voila!, rightaway is the answer of what we as parents had completely overlooked, and the book steered us immediately into the right direction. It's the only parenting book we ended up needing. I am SO thankful to the author for having written this book.

This was recommended to me by another mom and I took it out of the library for the maximum # of renewals and then decided it was worth buying. It's not a book you turn to to solve a specific problem like sleep issues, illnesses, etc. It gives you an idea of how babies develop and what to expect. She suggests things without being preachy or judgmental in a way that makes me trust her opinions on childrearing.


I keep this book around and read parts of it when my son is approaching a new stage. My husband also reads it if I leave it in the bathroom and he is receptive to the author's information and opinions too.

As far as I'm concerned this book is HANDS DOWN the best parenting book available, at least for babies. It's the only one that manages to give you advice that seems to be grounded in common sense as well as experience, and it somehow boosts your confidence as a parent just reading it. Plus I love her writing style. Excellent.

There are many parenting books available to new parents who are looking for advise and information on the subject, but if you were to choose one book, this is it. Informative and well written, Penelope Leach speaks in a voice that supports the new parent and provides information on many topics. I highly recommend this book!

this was another gift for my daughter she enjoys readin she liked this one also

Small's book is a must read for prospective and new parents. I was amazed to discover how bizarre some American child-rearing habits are, when viewed with a global perspective. One of the passages that struck me most is where Small examines non-human primate behavior, and she describes a female gorilla in a zoo that kept getting pregnant and having babies only to lose them for lack of knowing what to do. She would hold the baby gorilla to her chest, but facing outwards! The zookeepers brought in a new mother-- a human mother-- to breastfeed her baby in full view of this otherwise isolated gorilla mom, and she learned by observation how to do it right! Amazing. Like many Americans who are newish parents, as a kid I didn't see many babies close-up, certainly not breast-fed ones. I was lucky to have a sister-in-law that gave me this book while I was pregnant. Small's cross-cultural perspective makes a lot of sense wtihout being proscriptive, and she gave me the courage to trust my nurturing instincts despite many relatives and well-meaning friends of my parent's generation who gave me contradictory advice. I see other reviews that claim Small has some bias toward the !Kung society, but it's probably because that is the last example of what early human societies were like (i.e., hunter-gatherer), and is most similar to the evolutionary context in which humans developed. Nothing in biology makes sense, exept in light of evolution (said T. Dobzhansky), and it's true for human behavior as well.

I have found this book to be so interesting and useful that I recommend it to all of my friends. One friend credits it with helping her decide that she does want to have children! Small does not make judgements in her book about parenting choices. She is a scientist who presents information based on biology and anthropology. More than any "parenting" book I've ever seen, she gives details about the biology of breastfeeding. She explains the process, hormone shifts, and even evolutionary theory on the origins of nursing a baby. In my opinion, every new parent should know the biological expectations their new baby has of them. If someone is going to use a crib, bottle feed, let their baby cry themselves to sleep every night, etc. then they should at least know the costs those things will have. Educated decisions beat out "choices" any day.

I've been reading this book for the past few days and I am appalled at how biased it is against any Western practices in child rearing. Any American or European practices are considered lacking at best and abusive at worst. I found this to be highly offensive. I have to say that I am surprised by the many positive reviews for this book! Perhaps those who enjoyed it are strong supporters of attachment parenting.

This book gave an anthropological, evolutionary, perspective on infant care. I thought the most valuable insight this book gave was identifying the Western culture's focus on independence and how common parenting practices subconciously and consciously focus on independence. It gave me some perspective on why I was doing what I was doing.

You can tell she is a proponent of cosleeping, babywearing, and breastfeeding. So she emphasizes the positive health advantages of doing these things and how doing these things are more in line with meeting the biological/evolutionary needs of a baby, but she does continue that not doing these things, or doing these things on various continuums, do become cultural norms in order for parents to get the things done that they need to do. And that other cultures, (besides Western culture) do wean their babies, or allow other people to carry their babies, or have the baby sleep in their own bed, but in the same room. She notes that the Western culture is extreme in not doing these things, which is fine, but because it goes against a babies evolutionary/biological needs the trade off is generally a baby who cries more.

I liked the fact that this wasn't a how to book. I liked it because it described how some primitive cultures care for their baby, and I liked the fact that primitive cultures had behaviors that I felt weren't perfect. I liked it because it allows you to think about various parenting choices and analyze the motivations of your choices and whether or not you are willing to accept the possible consequences.

This is a beautiful, engrossing read. Any new mother can relate to the joy and the struggles that Lu experienced in her new motherhood. The beauty lies in HOW Lu responded to these struggles. Her doubts and fears, instead of sending her down the path of traditional reward and punishment parenting that would have been so harmful to Nicholas, sent her into self-discovery, questioning, thinking, and consciously choosing to allow Nicholas to lead her way through motherhood. These are the challenges that all mothers face, especially with a strong-willed child like Nicholas, but most are drawn by the voices that call them so temptingly toward controlling parenting. Lu listens to her inner voice, even through her doubts and fears, and lets it connect to the needs of her son.

The author is all about attachment parenting. If you are an attachment parent, particularly a full time stay-at-home mom, you may get a lot out of the book.

I personally did not identify with her and would not have made all the same choices. She complains that no one understand her, she's contemptuous of anyone else's advice, she resents help when it is offered, she feels like her husband can't possibly understand / doesn't get it - AND she complains that she feels so isolated. Part of me sympathized, this is a smart woman dealing with a very emotional, tough time. Mostly I grew impatient with her self-imposed martyrdom. But she is clearly a thoughtful writer and I'm sure a lot of people do go through what she went through. It's not a bad book, so I'll give it a 3-star rating.

this book saved me. as a new mom scared to death and reading everything and everything, it is so hard to decide which approach to take. this book talked to me where i live... getting to know the baby and let him show me the way. there is no one set way to mother this amazing creature. trust your instinct and your heart... my favorite quote, "this twosome shall pass". enjoy every amazing moment.

The book is well-written, and often moving about the early experiences of motherhood. As it goes on, however, you really start to wonder about her choices. It seems she puts aside no burdens, imposes no boundaries or thinks that it is important her child learn to engage with other children outside of his mommy-centric world. The whole book is basically a defense of this tactic, all the while wondering why she feels so isolated in her suburban bliss. There are some good points, but I personally am tired of seeing our modern world over-run with kids and parents raised to expect the whole world to devise entirely new rules & systems just for their 'special' ways.

She ends the book mentioning the importance of finding a 'fine line' between a child's uniqueness and sociability, thought the enire book is really devoted for us to witness this kid doing & saying whatever he wants, while she brings out small violins for herself. Ugh.

I have read probably 50 different baby books from the time I was pregnant til now with my 7 month old...I am an information addict of sorts. Well, I knew this was goign to be a really good one when I started crying through the first chapter about the early days of becoming a mom. I even read some of it outloud to my husband to help explain to him how I've been feeling these past months with our new baby. I felt like finally FINALLY someone is writing about what it REALLY is like to become a mom. For me, the book showed me I was on the right path in listening to my heart and intuition ...not the din of voices and opinions and ideas and theories and techniques and hypothesis etc about what you should or shouldn't do with your baby. I do love knowing about all these different theories and ideas, but when it comes down to it... she's right, "Let the Baby Drive."

My daughter has three year old identical twin boys, and what doesn't think of, the other does. I sent this to her and she can't stop raving about it. She also has a brand new baby boy, so her time is precious, and this is one book that she makes time for.

This is the Toddler Bible in my eyes. Suddenly my little lump of a baby boy turned into a person whose eating, sleeping and pooping habits changed in the blink of an eye, leaving me flustered and searching for answers. This book gives you a map through the maze of toddlerhood; it consolidates all of the 3.4 million toddler "how-to" books into one easy- to-read format. The authors--one a Pediatrician Mom, the other the co-author of the definitive guide to baby purchasing ("Baby Bargains")--guide and recommend, but empower parents to think and decide for themselves. An essential addition to any parenting library.

My wife bought this book when our grand daughter was turning two and has used it countless tiimes. Good price and fast service, she now passed it on to our daughter who is expecting her second.

Thanks! We received the book in a couple of days of ordering it! Thanks!

I bought this as a gift for new parents. I was impressed with the amount of indepth information in the book. A great "go to" book for answers regarding your toddler. They loved it.

I think this is a great reference guide for people who are new to parenting. I had never really been around a baby before I had my own, so I was clueless on how to play with her outside of peekaboo and rocking her. The pictures are nice and it's an incredibly easy guide to follow. Also, as a new parent looking to pick this up, don't get your hopes up. Yes, there are alot of activities to do with your little one, but don't expect your baby to be interested enough to participate in some of them. My daughter wouldn't have been interested in at least HALF of what is offered (especially if it has to do with any tummy time), but that's because at the end of the day, she's gonna do what she wants to do. It's just a great tool to keep playing with your baby fresh and interesting. As the parent of two now (that are less than two years apart), I have to find activities that will entertain both of them, so while I liked giving the book a look through, I wouldn't buy it. If you have the ability to give your baby some good one on one time, this book is for you.

My daughter is only 14 mos, so I have to admit, this review is based on the first part of the book. The best thing about this book is that I learned some new songs and accompanying singing activities that my daughter seems to really enjoy. The regular activities are pretty basic and you are probably already doing a lot of them. For instance, stacking, looking in the mirror and pointing out body parts, and playing with bubbles! I'm glad I bought it used :)

If you are someone who has not worked with children or been around children for an extended period of time this book would be very helpful. It has creative and fun ideas for playtime with the ones under 6 months that my husband found very useful. I recommend it for husbands, grandparents and new moms.

I love this book! It is filled with great ideas, and organized by age range. The pictures are large and very helpful along with the descriptions of the activities. Even if you think you may have thought of some of these ideas on your own, it's hard to know when to introduce each activity and what specific skills it is building. This book is a great resource.

i found the activities in this book uninspiring. i was already implementing 99% of them just in my everyday interactions with my infant. i was hoping for something that would further enhance the development of my child, but it turns out the things that naturally occur to a parent are just fine. my baby is only 3 months, so perhaps the activites for older babies will be more interesting. the play for newborns was a disappointment.

I think this is a very good informative book. It explains things in a simple and understandable manner.

I really appreciate this "baby owner's manual." Published by a large professional group effort of the American Academy of Pediatrics, it is down to earth, up-to-date, and clearly written. They cover everything-- physical, social, intellectual, and emotional development, safety issues including products and food safety, and of course, health information.

I just call it 'the book.'

Highly recommended, especially for first-time parents. Great value for the price. (Who can spend more when there are diapers to buy???)

This book is pretty general and its sections are broken up into newborn, 0-3 months, 4-7 months and so on. What I wanted was a book that talked about each month individually since baby's change and develop so much so quickly. This book is just too general for me. It does have good info, just not as much as I'd like.

As a father, I have had to put up with several books that are "meant" for dads. In Norway, that means having to read through a lot of semi-funny and useless knowledge.

This book is exactly what I have been looking for!
It is to the point and easy to read, with a good reference section. Covers everything I wanted to know. Highly recommended for all parents!

This book is not as great as I had hoped. I am a first time mom and wanted a book that would help when I have questions, like how to help baby feel better when he has a cold, when to take him to the doctor, and how to get through teething. This book did not really offer much on what I've had questions about so far. I would choose something else next time.

Love this book. I bought it when my daughter was 6 months old and I have repeatedly referred to it looking for signs for different things. It does not have signs for everthing. I did buy another book at the same time I bought this one but this is the one that I consistently use almost on a daily basis. I love that my daughter can sign somthing to me because it means she doesn't get flustered trying to make me understand what she wants. Even now that she is 19 months old and speaking, she still uses signs along with her words.

This is a very tiny book. But full of very practical information. I've heard so many good things about it from others too.

My son and daughter-in-law are very excited to begin teaching sign language to their first child.
Our purchase arrived in a timely manner and it was just as we expected from the information given in the ad.

This book is wonderful. It provides great reference for understanding the basics of sign language for babies.

Wonderful pocket size beginner book. It has helped my tremendously with my granddaughter. We've been using this for months. She is now 16-months-old and uses sign language everyday to tell me what she needs. I love being about to take this along with me in her diaper bag.