Synopsis
Advice for parents of children who need touch and motion, who don't sleep well, who nurse often, and who are draining and demanding. The Searses, parents of eight children and authors of "The Birth Book," have a high-need daughter of their own, and offer both personal experience and observations of patients. Includes tips, a burnout survival list, and advice on lessening both parental and child anxiety.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1996-09-01 |
| Size | | Height: | 9.3 in | | Width: | 7.8 in | | Thickness: | 0.8 in | | Weight: | 14.4 oz |
Publisher's Note
Does your baby fuss, cry, and want to be held all the time? Do you have an older child who's stubborn, opinionated, demanding - a real handful? Take heart. America's favorite childcare experts - the authors of The Baby Book and The Discipline Bookhave written a book just for you. In Parenting the Fussy Baby and High-Need Child, William and Martha Sears acknowledge the difficulties you face but show you how responsive parenting can turn these challenges into advantages for both you and your child. They demonstrate that despite tough beginnings, these children develop wonderful sensitivity, confidence, trust, and other desirable qualities. In fact, the Searses prove that difficult children can provide the most rewarding parenting experiences of all.
Industry Reviews
William and Martha Sears, a pediatrician and a nurse, respectively, have written this book to provide guidance and support for parents of children who have high needs for comfort, feeding, and the like from birth. The authors cite both their own family experience and the stories of their patients and others. The guidance they provide flies in the face of parenting advice of the last several decades, but the positive results of high-touch, intensive, attachment parenting a concept the authors first introduced in Baby Book (LJ 2/1/93) are evident. This well-organized book will most likely appeal to educated baby-boomer, baby-buster parents. Recommended for consumer health collections. Mary J. Jarvis, Methodist Hosp. Medical Lib., Lubbock, Tex.
Breitman
"High-need" babies crave touch and motion, can't self-soothe, have difficulty sleeping, nurse often and well into their toddler years and are intense, draining and demanding, say pediatrician Sears and his RN wife, parents of eight children and authors of The Birth Book and 12 other parenting titles. Informed by their experience with a high-need daughter and by observations of patients, the Searses outline how to handle such fussy babies, rehashing their theory of "attachment parenting" carrying the baby in a sling, nursing on demand, sharing the family bed and responding rather than letting the baby "cry it out," etc. Parents are encouraged to focus on the positive: a high-need baby, the authors say, "cries impressively" and "values being with you"; he or she isn't a "difficult sleeper" or "clingy." Desperate parents will be grateful for the many tips and the mommy-burnout survival list. But veteran moms and pops may have trouble swallowing some suggestions (bounce gently on a trampoline with baby). Readers may also yearn for substantiation of claims that fussers grow up to be confident, expressive, responsible teens and adults. Still, the authors' warm-fuzzy "You're okay, baby's okay" outlook may be just the right medicine for many anxious parents of demanding children. (Sept.)
Lopate
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