What to Expect the Toddler Years [antikvár]

xvi FOREWORD A Pediatricians Prescription This wonderfully informative book is destined to win blue ribbons for authoritativeness, readability, and usefiilness. One of the things that impressed me most as I read it was how thoroughly it prepares parents to understand the needs, behavior, and development of their toddlers, while offering hundreds of valuable suggestions on their care, guidance, and management. (Perhaps that last word should be in quotes. With toddlers, it's never really clear who manages whom.) But What to Expect the Toddler Years is more than a user-friendly technical handbook. The authors present the developmental essentials of the difficult but delightful toddler years in such an accessible and empathic manner that appreciative parents will undoubtedly recommend this book to their friends as a genuine household necessity. It has become increasingly clear that a child's first three years of life largely determine his or her future developmental trajectory. To a large extent, these early years set the stage for later outcomes in personal health, emotional development, educational attainment, social competence, self-confidence, self-reliance, and positive human relationships. Parental investment in the coin of nurturance, care, love, and understanding during this formative age period brings both short- and long-term dividends. This latest addition to the "What to Expect" series helps parents to achieve these dividends in several ways. It helps parents know what to expect from their toddlers at various ages and stages, and reassuringly maps the wide range of normality. It guides parents in the always challenging, often daunting task oflielp-ing the toddler deal successfully with such key developmental issues as good nutrition, timely immunization, safe play, sound sleep, weaning, speech, separation, self-discipline, good health and hygiene habits, as well as various child care situations. Considerable attention is given to practical suggestions for the prevention of behavioral and developmental problems. But the authors not only help parents to avoid the negative, they strongly accentuate positive values with innumerable sidebars devoted to the care and nurturing of the toddler's understanding of right, wrong, and the gray areas in between. Temper tantrums? Breath-holding spells? Sleep disorders? Biting? Short attention span? Speech delay? Toileting worries? Autonomy? Negativity? Resistance to limits? Along with why such behavioral and developmental problems happen, detailed guidance is offered on ways to get them to stop—or at least to minimize them. These recommendations are developmentally based, in keeping with the child's chronological age, needs, and abilities. Parents themselves are not neglected. A principal goal of the book is to provide frequently overwhelmed and sometimes despairing parents with the kind of information that promotes confidence, self-esteem, resiliency, and feelings of effectiveness. Common parental questions (including those of parents working outside the home) are posed and comprehensively and reassuringly answered. Parent-toddler interaction and communication are strongly promoted as ways to give a young child and his or her parents a good start. Throughout the book, the toddler is viewed in the context of his or her family, with an emphasis on identifying and augmenting the strengths of both.