Infant-and-Toddler-Development Books

This book was very helpful to me. The games are simple and promote interaction, anyone can do them.

I bought this book as an infant caregiver and was disappointed to see that it was all the things I'm already doing with my babies...there were a few different ideas, but overall, not worth it.

This book was bought due to my concern with, "What do I do with this baby,now that I've got her home?" I've taught fifth graders for many years, but didn't quite know how to begin to "educate" my baby. This book gave me some very quick, easy and simple ideas of games to play to help my child learn. It is also broke down into ages (ie. 0-3 months, 12-18 months, etc.) I definately recommend this book to parents that want to begin the learning process in a fun manner early on.
Kari Koffman

This book is a waste of money. Most of the "games" that they suggest are so OBVIOUS you'd have to be a complete idiot not to figure these things out on your own. And in that case you have bigger problems than how to entertain your baby. One such "game" goes as follows, 'say things like good night sweet baby or rest, rest, rest your little head'. Are you serious? Gee, I don't think I would have thought of that all on my own. What I want to know is who are all these people that are giving it such a high rating? Well, I guess anyone can be a parent.

Just as a I said: Finally, a well-organized idea book! I can look up activities to carry out in my classroom by category (Bath and Dressing Games, Going to Sleep Games, etc.); by age (0-3, 3-6, 6-9, and 9-12 months); AND by theme (just for fun, colors, etc.). The activities are simple and clearly described in one page each. But they are not all commonsense ideas, or I wouldn't like this book, and neither would any other experienced under-threes teacher :p. I HIGHLY recommend this book to under-threes teachers and to new parents.

THIS BOOK TEACH THE PARENTS THE IMPORTANCE OF PUTTING THE BABY OVER THEIR
TUMMY SINCE BIRTH. THE IMPORTANCE OF CREEPING, CRAWLING AND BE ON THE FLOOR.WE ARE LIMITING THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FOUNDATION OF THEIR BRAINS.
THE FIRST YEAR IN THE MOST IMPORTANT IN OUR LIVES, IS WHERE THE BRAIN
MAKES THE FIRST SYNAPSES STRONGER. WITH THIS DISCIPLINE WE AS PARENTS CAN
PREVENT ADH AND ALL THOSE SPEECH AND LEARNING PROBLEMS THAT ARE SO COMMON
TODAY; BECAUSE TODAY THE CHILDREN GOES TO DAYCARE SINCE TWO MONTHS ALL.
THIS IS SOMETHING THAT IT'S BEEN DOING SINCE 1947.
IF SOMEONE OUT THERE CAN HELP TO EDUCATE MORE ABOUT "HUMAN NEUROLOGICAL
ORGANIZATION" THE WORLD WOULD BE BETTER. THANKS

I do not get enough time to follow all the methods, but I still did few things as per book. My son stands by himself at eactly 7 months. He started climbing stairs at 7 month. I put him on the floor more often. This book is surely helpful.
Only thing is it's difficult to make things like dowel between doors, track. They should sell those items too as part of the kit.

if you want your child(hopefully the child will want it too)to be the next huge baseball,football,soccer or olympic star,then this is the book for you.
it is packed with information on how to 'grow' your childs physical development so that by age 2.5 to 3(and maybe sooner)he or she will have the physical developmental skills of an average 6yr old achieved in half the time it takes a 6 year old to do this.
it takes time and patience,not to mention equipment,but i feel that it is worth it.
also,this is the book to help your child avoid the problems of childhood obesity that is a huge problem in europe and america now.
team this book with 'teach your baby to swim' and also 'how smart is your baby?'also by the domans and youll most likely see your kids name in lights one day.
your child will thank you for it someday.

I was somewhat disappointed with this book. It has one simple tip, keep your child on the stomach as much as possible. Ok, so thats great, the child will grow faster physically, maybe grow faster mentally also, as per what he says.

But I expected the book to be much more comprehensive. There are not that many exercises. Its largely a single point agenda on keeping the child on stomach. I can tell you that in one line.

I feel compelled to write a stern warning about this book. I was excited to order it to help out my twin daughters - born 2 months premature. My jaw hit the floor when I read the very dangerous misinformation in the first couple of chapters. The author begins with a criticism of hospitals' handling of newborns. He states that nurseries should be made more like the womb to comfort babies, kept moist and at 90 degrees. He then states that the only reason that babies are put on their backs is so that nurses can tell if they are still breathing, and recommends that babies sleep on their stomachs.

This is all good advice if you want your baby to be at significant risk of death from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome(SIDS). First, the only safe position for babies to sleep on is their back. The author seems to believe that SIDS is only caused babies smothering themselves with blankets - this is not (although smothering is always a risk. Current reccomendations are to keep healthy babies' environments on the cool side (68 deg F.). One of the major causes of SIDS is apnea due to immaturity in the brain stem. Current sleep reccomenadtions are designed to alleviate this.

Not even incubators are kept at 90 degrees. When babies are born, they go through physical changes - such as separation from the placenta. They have the largest dose of hormones running through their bodies that they will ever have in their lifetime. Very quickly, healthy babies are able to regulate their own temperature - they are mammals and not snakes after all.

Infants in intensive care units are sometimes put to sleep on their stomachs - but they are connected to heart and respiration monitors that alarm when they stop breathing or their heart-rate drops.

I am completley shocked that someone billed as a child development expert has absolutely no knowledge of the risk of SIDS. Granted, back-sleeping is not the best thing for physical development, which is where there are exercise programs to compensate for this. Tummy time is important while baby is awake and supervised.

Please do not follow the newborn advice in this book. I can't get past this, and maybe there's good advice in the rest of the book.

"I'm Two Years Old! By me" and "I'm Three Years Old! By me" as told to Jerrie Wolfe

If you are a new parent or need some help with lying, bad habits, bedtime, tantrums, or many other situations that come up with being a parent of a 2 or 3 year old then these books are for you. I needed to read over biting and toilet training myself.

Jerrie uses the voice of a child to explain what is going on with a two or three year old and shows what they are thinking. Seeing it from the point of view of the child gives parents a little more compassion, special in sight, and knowledge they might of not had before. It is light hearted, to the point, and a quick easy read.

After reading these books I would recommend these books for parents to have on the shelf for easy reference when a situation comes up. It is good for even the expert parent to have a reminder that children see things differently then we do and if they throw a fit; they do have a reason for it.

I was hoping for parenting techniques. What I got was a dialogue of feelings. Not very useful. Very disappointed.

I found this book to be very helpful when my twin boys turned 2 years old (now 4yrs). It was interesting to see what the mind of a two year old needs and wants from their parent(s). We can all guess and decide as parents what's best for them from our vantage point but do we really know with all the baggage that we bring to the table from our own childhood?

With a daughter now who just turned 2 years old I'm referring back to the book as certain situations arise. I've given copies of this book to friends in need and they're always appreciative. I also purchased the "I'm Three Years Old!" and still have it so that I can refer back to that one in another year or so!

I love the table of contents b/c it's so easy to look up your "topic of trouble" and find it fast! Each topic is no more than 2 pages long so definitely you'll get the "reader's digest" version as opposed to a long, drawn-out explanation.

You'll find that this book will help you to understand your 2 year olds wants and needs without you loosing your mind in the meantime!

...not to mention the fact that the author, speaking in the first-person voice of a two-year-old, assumes parents to be completely imbecilic when it comes to child rearing. The tone it takes is offensive in its assumption of parental ignorance and helplessness.

This book quickly, clearly and simply explains those challenging situations I find with my 2 year old. I enjoy reading about the topics from the point of view of my child, as I'm constantly wondering what is going on in her mind. Almost all the questions I have about how to best respond to her and help her are covered in this book, and I find the advice to be useful and accurate--it works for my two year old and me!

This book is not that thick but it is amazingly packed with so many good ideas. Also I love how the activities are divided by younger, young and older toddler activities. It has discovery, math, sensory, music etc... activities.

I think this would be a good book for teachers or day care workers. A lot of the activities in this book I've been doing with my daughter already, or would only work with materials that a day care or pre-school would have on hand.

When I first got this book I was bit disappointed since the activities look so simple that ANYONE could've thought them up.
the thing is that as time passes you find yourself doing the same activities and realize you need to freshen up your lesson plans.
This book is great because it does just that. Gives you great ideas and reminds you the infants & toddlers require different things when learning.
I love the way this book is set up and separated by area of interest (fine motor, gross motor, discovery, etc.) and then by age (infant, young toddlers, older toddlers)
A MUST HAVE!

This does say "For teachers, by teachers" on the cover so it isn't surprising most of the ideas are more suited for classroom settings. If you like to have a lot of resources as a parent, it's nice. For a teacher, it would be more useful.

I am a preschool teacher who has taught kindergarten and 4 yr olds. Having been asked to take a new job with 2 and 3 yr olds was a lot more difficult than I thought! With all the choking hazzards and lack of fine motor skills, it's hard to plan lessons. This book gives some excellent activity ideas. I loved it. My only negative thought is that the book doesn't really follow "themes", which almost all schools use these days. Still it's a great buy!

Some friends gave me this book and explained the system to me when my son was only a few months old. I learned soooo much! My son loved doing the "bits of intelligence" more than playing with his other toys, starting reading when he was 4, and more importantly got a real LOVE OF LEARNING. He just graduated from Fort Lauderdale High School and was the Valedictorian. He got a 2350 on the SAT, was accepted to 3 Ivy League colleges, and received a full scholarship to Vanderbilt. I tell anyone who is interested in helping their children to love learning about this book and have bought it many times as a gift for others. I definitely recommend this book and go online to their site for some of the materials they sell too. They are awesome. I was a single parent to my son since he was 3 years old and honestly, our lives would not have been the same without some of the great skills I learned from this book. Theresa Olsen.

I bought this and many other books by Dr. Doman on a recommendation by a friend, who followed these books when her children were young. Both went to Stanford and the daughter continued to Harvard Law school.
I bought these books for my 3 month old granddaughter and hope that my son and daughter-in-law will let me teach her.
The book is very clear and easy to follow.

I have no words to say how happy I am with this book. I read it just a few days before taking the course 'How to multiply your baby's intelligence' in Madrid, two weeks ago.
If you want to read a Doman book, this is the one I reccomend you to start with. It is the one that gives you the broadest idea of his thoughts and theories. it is just so incredible and exciting, and if you already have a kid and have not started the Doman program right from birth, you will probably think ' oh my god, why haven't I read this book before?'. It is not a tragedy, you can and should start a program right away.
I have two kids, ages three and one, and i have started the program with them. I guess it is working pretty well.
I also took the course and was the best thing that happened in my life, after my children, nephews and husband! I enjoyed it so very much that I am taking the graduate course next week, in Philadelphia. Travelling from Italy to the USA to meet Doman in person! cannot wait!
HIGHLY ; SUPER ;ABSOLUTELY reccomend this book.. my rate to this item is 5, but if I could write a number myself it wold probably be 5 million!
Silvia Bilacchi

First 1/2 of the book explains why intelligence is good. Second 1/2 explains how to do it. But the how-to(s) are so general. This book acts like an advertisement material to get you to buy other books so in my opionion, this book should be FREE, instead of wasting your money on it. The title is misleading...it should read "Why multiply your Baby's Intelligence-& how to buy our other books."

Doman's books are a must read, but this book is just a summary of all other books. I still give a 5 star because it gives a good overview.
Start reading How to teach to Read and then How to Teach Math. If you are into it, go to Encyclopedic knowledge. Then take their courses, in Philadelphia, but they are a couple of thousand dollars. Do it all before your baby is born. I read this book 10 years before my wife got pregnant and it changed my life... and my daughter's (I hope). Now she is 3. But don't get too carried away. Believe me, some parents do get carried away. The ones in Philadelphia seem to belong to a sect. Just enjoy your children and add this to the fun. I took the course in Philadelphia but I really don't do much of the program. Still, I raise my daughter differently from what I would otherwise have done without having read this book. You will not be the same person after you read it. And it is not about teaching your baby to read. It is about teaching your baby about life.
You will have more respect for your child and will not let your baby grow "by accident." Instead, you will be able to actively participate in the learning process and challenge your child to fulfill his or her intellectual potential. If you have a child, or if you don't but you love someone, this is the only book that you must read. Remember, read it before the baby is born. This book (or the others in the collection) are a wonderful present for an expecting mother.

Dr. Brazelton tells you. Really.

the genius of this book is that he categorizes

the active baby
the average baby
the quiet baby

He Knows! Depending on your baby's temperament, they are Very Different Experiences during that first year...

i read this when i was first pregnant and it ushered me into a sense of what it would really be like to be responsible for a baby, and not just babySITTING!

then i read the chapter on each month as my daughter grew...

i'm sure i appreciated the wonder of what was unfolding before my eyes every day more than i might have if i'd gotten lost in the neverending feeding, changing diapers chore part over and over again...

it was a Great Gift - and boon to my own confidence as a new mom - that year.

also, somehow between the lines, Dr. Brazelton gets the message across that You Can't Do It Wrong... you are that baby's mother and so by definition, you're doing it right...

there's a new pediatrician who has a book about how to get an infant to stop crying - something like the Happiest Baby on The Block...

that - and this book - are my two favorite essentials.

Full of outdated advice such as putting baby to sleep on his stomach, scheduling feedings and leaving a newborn to "cry it out." Also focuses on the worst experiences of new mothers. It's important for struggling new mothers to know that they are not alone in their doubts, fears and resentments, but I found it very disheartening to read about these mothers (and fathers) who fantasize about escaping the demands of motherhood by "accidentally" dropping or drowning the baby and who resent, dislike and ignore (that is, neglect) their newborns. I recommend either The Baby Book: Everything You Need to Know About Your Baby from Birth to Age Two / by William and Martha Sears or Caring for Your Baby and Young Child: Birth to Age 5 / by American Academy Of Pediatrics instead.

I bought this book years ago when my children were born. Five children and twenty five years later, it is my favorite baby gift especially for a first time mother.

The book describes three different infants and their temperments so clearly that no matter what kind of a baby you have, you will find your child somewhere in the book. For a first time mother, when variations of childrens sleeping, eating, and temperments are so different, it is reassuring to know that the one in your crib is as healthy and normal as the rest.

Although the descriptions of different babies' development & temperment were somewhat interesting, this book is completely out-of-date. The photos and some of the advice was so old-fashioned (i.e. letting babies sleep on their stomachs, feeding healthy babies "sugar water" to delay feedings) that it was distracting. This book needs a major overhaul to make it worth the $17 pricetag. I returned it.

My children are 9 & 6 now. I was extremely grateful to have this book when my first was born. I had very little experience with children beyond teenage babysitting and a degree in psychology (not as useful as one might think, though it sounds impressive.) It was great to know just how extreme the differences can be between perfectly normal babies.

This is a very informative and in an easy to follow format. I do not have much time to read books cover to cover anymore (I have a 4 month old) but the format of this book allows me to look up certain topics when I need them.

OK, so we've only had the baby a week, but this book has been a bummer since before the birth. Every time I open it I feel like I am about to enter a hopeless, frightening maze of difficulties. Either that or a sappy Hallmark-produced TV special. I'm sure the book is factually helpful, but I couldnt get past the style...

So many parenting books give you facts and figures about child-rearing, but don't really capture what life is like with a new baby. This book does both in a very engaging way. It captured the highs and lows of the first-year experience, steered me in the right direction on many occasions, and spoke to me in a very personal way. I recommended it to everybody at my Lamaze group reunion and several of them bought it and loved it.

OK, so we've only had the kid just over a week, but every time I opened this book, both before and after the birth, I felt that I should be tired, harrassed, at my wits end and on the way to the emergency room. That, or in some goo-goo Hallmark card scene. There must be a way to communicate the essentials of the first year without making it sound like either a life-threatening bummer, or a sentimenal mindless goo-goo fest... I'm still looking for the right book...

I have read plenty of baby books, including Dr. Sears and other experts, but I find this one to be the best there is on the subject. I really liked the author's style and format. It is divided into 3 month sections: Month 0 -3, 4 - 6, 7 - 9, 10 -12. Each section talks about all the important developmental stages of each month, plus what to expect in terms of growth, learning, etc. In addition to all the basic developmental facts, there is plenty of first hand experience stories on a variety of topics, plus a lot of psychology in terms of what to expect you will be going through emotionally and physically in each of the 12 months. They even include very well done Yoga exercises to relax and stretch out those overworked muscles! I found it to be a wonderful book and the best-organized and comprehensive one on the market. I got rid of all my other baby books since this one covers it all. It even goes into details about ear infections and common baby hazards and illnesses. It also reads very smoothly. A real page-turner and a tearjerker at times, especially the first birthday stuff. I barely got through that chapter! I highly recommend this book.

Prefect. Filled with lots of ideas and activities that also encourage new ideas. Very helpful as a teacher, auntie, sometimes nanny and one day parent. Perfect for those "I'm bored" days or when you need a different way to teach challenging concepts. Loved it

This is a very exciting book for me - as for this is my first child, I dont have a clue what I am doing.. This book gave me some wonderful ideas and they are very easy to do as well - I will definatley recommend this book to all my friends!

The book was OK as far as it went, but a little simplistic - not as much value-add as I would have liked.

I was hoping this book would give me great new ideas about what to do with my toddler but mostly it was just stuff any mother would have already thought of, I got about maybe 10-15 new ideas but I expected a lot more out of it.

I like the way this book is organized: the chapters are logical, there is a nice match-up in the back with milestones in the areas of cognitive, physical, and social-emotional development and activities to support development in these areas. Each activity lists materials, age group, time, and whether for a group or individual. HOWEVER, I bought this book with my younger toddler in mind and the majority of the activities are just beyond her. The activities are divided into age categories, with the youngest being 18-40 months. It isn't intended for 12-18 month old toddlers, and even of the 18-40 month activities, I find only a handful are appropriate for my 18 month old.

A gripping read - like an educational 'whodunnit'.
Glen Doman (et al) introduce their work at The Institutes and describe the children they've helped over the years - children who incidentally are some of their favorite people in the whole world - giving a rather long introductory background of around 100 pages before reaching the crux of the information - 100 pages which you'll read with pleasure and not once realise that you're yet to learn how to give your child encyclopedic knowledge - Rest assured, you will - the background paves the way to understanding exactly why, how and THAT the methods discussed in the second half of the book actually work ! Well worth the money and time - Read it ... or don't... see if I care.
=========================================================================

Kieran Bogan is a qualified and professional educator, teaching English Language to adults and children from non English speaking backgrounds at Advantage English School, Sydney; www.advantage-english.com.au

The review written Y. Liu "My Baby Can Read" is TOTAL GARBAGE.
The book is very good and you should get it but his review is only to try to get you to purchase some software off of Ebay. I unfortunately did this and it is GARBAGE! A total waste of money barely installed and after it did and I got it running I wish I had not. I have seen better programming from Junior High kids on there TI-83 Calculators. Nothing in his Ebay description accurately describes the software and he refuses to let you try it because he know if you did you wouldn't buy it. So BUYER BEWARE...
...
On a lighter note I own all of the Glenn Doman Books and they all are very good. the how smart is my baby is a mix of them all but I would recommend just getting all the others they have better detail for specific areas.

My family used Glenn Doman's program many years ago - my husband and I both attended the week long seminar in Pa. and our children were members of their off-campus program. I have to say it was one of the most enjoyable, exciting and fun things we ever did with them! The "bits of intelligence" you are taught to make with this book definitely do work and my children, who are now in their 20's and 30's, look back on them with fondness. In fact, my older daughter is now pregnant and is going to use the "bits" I used with her as a toddler with her own baby! You won't regret doing this program with your children, and neither will they.

First, since I know the Doman program must have defenders with strong feelings, let me say that this is a review of the book, not of the program the book describes. I do have a few thoughts about that, at the end.

It has been a long time since I took the trouble to finish reading a book that was so far below my expectations. (I hadn't read that much about Doman and the Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential before reading the book.) One main problem with it is that it is amateurishly produced and written. The print is large and the margins wide. Each chapter is preceded by a title page with the name of the author(s), followed on the next page by the title *repeated*--a pretentious a waste of space. There is also quite a bit of repetition of its rather threadbare and simpleminded themes. Apparently it's a collection of lectures, and nobody bothered to edit the thing into a coherent whole. Doman's writing tends to use very dramatic (and frequently tiresome, silly, or cringeworthy) short sentences; so there is lots of white space. The long and short of it is that you aren't really getting your money's worth here. You can read the whole 280 pg. book in an evening (if you skim, as I did, the sillier parts--as I'll explain).

As to the style and content, it ranges from the pedestrian and banal ("Leonardo? Shakespeare? ... [overlong list of great men] Not one of them ever took an intelligence test"--as if that proves anything), to gross oversimplification for rhetorical effect ("Babies would rather learn than eat"--except when they're hungry, eh?), to the silly and preposterous ("You can teach a baby absolutely anything that you can present to him in an honest and factual way"--either trivially true or obviously false), to the puzzlingly and simplistically dogmatic ("High motivation is a product of success. Low motivation is a product of failure"--um, I think there's a little more to it than that).

It is also remarkably navel-gazing, constantly referring to "The Institutes" (never enumerating the Institutes individually--do they need more than one?) as if it were some authoritative academic or research institution. Which it ain't. If it were, let's just say I'd expect to see in this book, well, some footnotes and a bibliography of research that The Institutes published. No, of that in this book, there is zero, zip, zilch. There is only a list of other books, aimed at the general public, which you can also purchase from the Institutes. The book also helpfully explains how people come to their various seminars from all over the world, and gratefully buy their products.

Along the same lines, it is self-congratulatory. Doman fills up a third of the book with glowing self-praise and in-group boosting, rather vague stories of wunderkinder, and inspirational pablum that can appeal only to the converted. The whole production has the faint whiff of snake oil and cultishness. In fairness, his co-authors, Janet Doman and Susan Aisen, aren't quite so ridiculous.

The latter two authors elaborate how to make the Bits of Intelligence--i.e., 11" by 11" laminated flashcards (but *don't* call these family heirlooms flashcards!)--which will give babies encyclopedic knowledge. They go into tedious detail--in fairness, it's no doubt useful for people who actually want to follow their precise instructions--about how to physically construct these "bits." They also introduce various pieces of "in" jargon. Bits, you see, are filed under "categories" and categories are filed under exactly ten recommended "divisions." They've got it all figured out, you see. Three levels of hierarchy are all that is needed to give your baby encyclopedic knowledge. A "bit" is, and I am not making this up, a picture and the name of the kind of thing that the picture is of. Imposed on top of the name-plus-picture is a "program" for each bit, which consists of exactly ten important facts, in ascending levels of complexity. Each level is called a "magnitude." Exactly what *sorts* of fact are recommended to teach for which division are helpfully recommended. That is, there are 18 pages of topics/questions that correspond to the "magnitudes" for various popular and important categories of bits. For example, for "programs" about individual U.S. presidents (that'd be a "category"), the first "magnitude" fact is the state where the president was born.

Oh, and then, in order to give your baby encyclopedic knowledge, you just have to flash a set of ten bits in front of the baby (while uttering the word or, later, the facts at greater "magnitudes"), one per second, three times per day. All told, you could go through the program in less than five minutes a day, it seems, and thereby give your baby encyclopedic knowledge. Among the daftest things Doman inflicts on the reader is the notion that, when a baby learns ten "bits" and has thereby learned ten discrete facts (never mind the ridiculous conceptual confusions in *that*), you have thereby given him 3.6 million "connections," because there is that number of mathematical permutations of that number of facts. He takes a whole chapter to be impressed by this pedestrian insight, and never really answers the obvious question: so what?

Now, I'm trying not to be too mean, but it's hard. For me, one of the biggest disappointments about this book is that it utterly fails to support its central assertion that undertaking the program described in the book will "give your baby encyclopedic knowledge," or that the wunderkinder were made so by being flashed a lot of bits. I also am utterly baffled why one ought to use flashcards as opposed to good old books. That was never explained that I saw. Now, for all I know, the program works brilliantly and the world just hasn't woken up to it. I am open-minded enough to think that it might, and that Doman and his colleagues simply have not done their own methods justice in this book. Indeed, like any parent who wants the best for his children, I was rooting for the authors. After all, I already knew that very small children can be taught to read (search YouTube for "baby reading" for some remarkable videos).

But I was very disappointed. I was prepared to do without research data (albeit very reluctantly). I was prepared to try to analyze individual cases and theories--but there really aren't any here, not of any weight. You just get some nice generalizations about smart children--nothing at all like a case study--and then an explanation of how to make and use "bits of intelligence," without any explanation whatsoever of how using bits on babies will turn them into the wunderkinder.

Suppose the program is as wonderful and brilliant as Doman promises. Suppose Doman's motivations are as admirable as he tiresomely portrays them (he says children have the right to be made intelligent, and says several times how certain wunderkinder are his favorite people, and how he tears up when their feats of brilliance show how his program works, to the astonishment of the unbelievers). And he's been at this for many decades; he's pushing 90. Suppose he firmly and sincerely believes his hype. Then why on Earth would he not go out of his way to test his claims scientifically? Or to let or encourage someone else test them? I must assume that there are no supportive studies, because they aren't reported on in this book. But that then makes the book utterly useless from a scientific point of view. Doesn't Doman and the staff at his Institutes know that if science proves him right, many more people will follow the methods? Wouldn't that further their inherently philanthropic mission?

I mean no insult to any of the well-meaning mothers and others using Doman's methods--indeed I mean no *insult* to anyone at all. For all I know, you're doing the right thing for your children and you have given them a lot of useful knowledge. Bravo for that. Indeed I might try my own little unscientific experimentation with my own little boy and some online powerpoint "bits." This review is not about you or Doman's methods, it is about Doman's very disappointing book.

Two stars, for passing along a few interesting ideas about how to entertain kids, who definitely are like little sponges and who desperately want to learn.

I thought this book had great ideas and it really inspired me to try them with my child. However when it came to actually making the cards required (bit of intelligence cards) I am finding difficulty aquiring the appropriate pictures to use and as such I cannot get started. I realise this is not the fault of the authors and would still reccomend purchase of this book, just be prepared to use a little ingenuity in seeking out the required materials. I believe the princilpes in this book to be sound and that they would definelty help any child to aquire more general knowledge.

Somewhat entertaining, quick read, NOT informative. It was more about people sharing briefly their experiences than it was about actual useful tips. It's comforting to read about other parents going through similar challenges but you can read about that for free at one of those online newsletters [...] AND get some real, useful advice from other parents and experts in childcare. Not worth the money to get the book.

I won't be keeping this on my shelf for much longer.

I think I got the wrong impression when I bought this book, I thought it would be a little more informative then it was. Most of the comments from other parents are "inspirational," not educational. I was looking for the book to actually give tips on infant care, but there was only a few of them that delivered on that thought. I think it is a good read only as entertainment.

What a pleasant surprise. I was given this book and figured it would be like all the other baby books...i.e. they make you crazy. In the other books some expert tells you how exactly your child will develop and how you should respond. That's not real life.

Every child is different (as is every parent) and that is the strength of this book. The editors have interviewed hundreds of parents who have been through the same new born child experience. They share great and different advice. It is quite frankly a relief to know that there isn't just one way and that other parents share the doubts and experiences that the rest of us do. I highly recommend adding How to Survive Your Baby's First Year to your library.

It got this book for my pregnant sister, and she loved it! Said the stories were hilarious and touching, and the advice from everyday folks was fun and useful.

I don't have time to read a book cover-to-cover, so I appreciated 'How to Survive Your Baby's First Year'. I keep it on the night-table by my bed and read a few tips/stories every night. This book isn't meant to be an expert driven in-depth exploration of how to care for your baby. It's meant to share some good advice from real moms and dads on how to get through the first year with your new baby - and it does that well.