Your Baby and Child:
—from birth to age five
One of the best loved parenting books, and one which has stood the test of time, is Penelope Leach’s Your Baby And Child.
In Your Baby And Child Leach describes what to expect from the time your baby arrives until the day he or she begins school full-time. The book divides into five sections: the newborn, the first six months, from six months to a year, from one year to two-and-a-half, and from two-and-a-half to five.
Many topics, like feeding, carry over from one section to the next, while other topics are dropped and new ones added as your baby grows. The author includes all the topics you might expect, such as a newborn’s wakefulness, a toddler’s tantrums, the young child’s shyness or aggression, and the problem of nightmares.
She doesn’t overlook other matters which may not have occurred to you yet: problems like telling children about a new baby or explaining divorce to them. Penelope Leach always explains things from the child’s point of view, so that parents can understand what is actually going on.
A good baby and child book aims to give confidence, guidance, and encouragement to new parents, and that is what Your Baby And Child does. The choice of the right baby book may be subjective, but this is one book which millions of parents swear by.
From Your Baby And Child:
— “Try to feel honored, rather than burdened, by your baby needing you so much and needing so much of you. She is probably the only person in the world who will ever love you 100 percent without criticism or reservation.”
— “There is an irony about small children’s behavior: the more worried you are about it and the harder you try to change it, the worse it’s likely to get.”
— “This book does not lay down rules because there are none. It does not tell you what to do because I cannot know what you should do. But it offers you a complex and, to me, entrancing folklore of child care which, once upon a time, you might have received through your own extended family, combined with some even more complex and, to me, entrancing results of child development research.”
