What Do the Experts Have to Say?
The best advice any doctor ever gave for a baby’s first year is to choose your advice and advisors. Spend a few hours in the massive child-care section of a bookstore and find an expert who agrees with you on most subjects.
Raising a child is as individual as making a marriage. No single advice will work for everyone. To that end, we’ve culled advice from four popular baby experts and the venerable Dr. Benjamin Spock to see just how the experts agreed and differed on basic child-rearing topics. Many of their books are available in other languages, and many of these authors have produced informational videos. Two other expert-authors worth noting are Fred Rogers (yes, Mr. Rogers himself) and Burton White.
T. Berry Brazelton
A researcher at Children’s researcher at Children’s Hospital in Boston and Harvard Medical School, longtime pediatrician and TV celebrity, Brazelton writes in a mesmerizing, comforting way that shows all sides of an issue...so don’t go looking for definite answers. Bestseller is “Touchpoints: Your Child’s Emotional and Behavioral Development” (Addison-Wesley, 1992).
Feeding on Demand: Baby needs to set the schedule starting out, but baby and family can work toward an acceptable schedule as the child is able to eat at less frequent intervals.
Bed: New parents considering this must realize sharing a bed may last for many years. Must be both parents’ decision and should not be because of parental loneliness or similar issues.
Sleep: A baby’s sleep patterns differ from an adult’s. Learn and respect it, but baby “is more likely to adjust to parents’ environment if they expect her to.” Sleep is discussed at every age, including how to develop warm, comforting rituals of going to bed.
Discipline: The basis for disciplinary decisions should be the child’s need to learn limits. The goal is to teach self-discipline and respect for other people’s rights.
Day Care: Expressing your own feelings about separations from child will allow them to diffuse. “Touchpoints” gives steps on how to make it easier to separate and reunite every day as well as advice on how to find and maintain child care.
William Sears
On staff at USC Medical School, a 20-year pediatrician and father of eight, Sears writes with wife and registered nurse Martha. Advocates lots of touching as an antidote to high-tech, stressful society. “The Baby Book: Everything You Need to Know About Your Baby--From Birth to Age Two” with Martha Sears, (Little, Brown & Co., 1993).
Feeding on Demand: Mother and child will negotiate a feeding pattern. Listen to your baby’s cue.
Bed: Sharing bed helps connect parents and baby as long as both parents agree to it. A good way for working parents to bond with child. Has chapter on “weaning” baby from family bed.
Sleep: “Babies need to be parented to sleep, not just put to sleep.” Letting a baby “cry it out” hurts baby and parents. A baby who is forced into becoming a self-soother loses out on necessary intimacy.
Discipline: Goals should be consistent boundaries and keeping child out of danger. Discipline really begins at birth with attachment and evolves with relationship. Chapter on “Bothersome but Normal Toddler Behaviors” addresses gamut of problems.
Day Care: The issue, again, is attachment. Chapter on working and parenting reflects the conflicting feelings of the authors and many working parents. Good tips on staying connected with your baby and finding a caretaker to whom your baby can attach.
Penelope Leach
Children first, says the English psychologist. Parent and baby have the same goal--a happy child. Her pet peeve is a society that refuses to take “the business of loving [children], of minding about them, seriously.” Her books, notably “Your Baby & Child: From Birth to Age Five” (Dorling Kindersley, 1989), are encyclopedic in both developmental and medical information.
Feeding on Demand: Dictating a schedule will only make mother and baby miserable. Feed the baby as soon as you know the baby is hungry.
Bed: No one can make this choice for you. Leach presents positives to sharing your bed with baby and not. She warns, however, that once a decision has been made, it should be maintained consistently.
Sleep: Around 6 to 9 months it is vital for baby to know how to fall asleep alone. Chapter on sleep offers tips on comfort habits and making bedtime an affectionate, happy time.
Discipline: Self-discipline is the goal, and that takes time. “Show,” don’t tell or force, a child how to behave. The first rule is “Do as you would be done by.”
Day Care: Leach took a lot of criticism early on for stating unequivocally that we should banish day care and mothers should stay home until the child is 8. Her stance has softened somewhat, but the fact that the section on “Going Out to Work” is under “Thinking About the Stressful Times” says something. Still, she maintains that children flourish when they are surrounded by people who love them and whom they love. Find a caretaker whom your child can love, and find great pleasure in, rather than guilt in, that love.
Arlene Eisenberg
Sandee E. Hathaway
Heidi E. Murkoff
The authors of “What to Expect the First Year” (Workman Publishing, 1989), part of the series that addresses pregnancy and child-rearing through the toddler years, maintain a very personal voice throughout that varies from comforting and compassionate to downright bossy. “The Baby With Problems” chapter is heartbreakingly kind and informative. This is an excellent reference book for just about anything that can happen the first year.
Feeding on Demand: Let baby establish own feeding pattern the first few months. By the third month, baby should have established a fairly regular daily schedule.
Bed: Family beds are encouraged in other societies, but in our society, “which stresses the development of independence and the importance of privacy, co-sleeping is associated with a wide range of problems”--mostly revolving around a child’s need for separation and parents’ need for regular sex.
Sleep: By the third month, some babies will be sleeping through the night. A breast-fed baby, however, may need to eat once or twice during the night until the fifth or sixth month. This book gives lots of approaches to getting baby to sleep through the night.
Discipline: Children need limits and consistency, but too much or too little discipline can leave a child feeling unloved. “Effective discipline is individualized.” Lots of information on disciplining in the “Tenth Month” chapter.
Day Care: Nonjudgmental approach in the “Third Month” chapter, which assumes that if you’re leaving baby, you’re dealing with your own feelings. Approach is simple: Here’s how to find a good caretaker or day-care situation.
Benjamin Spock
“Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care” by Benjamin Spock, M.D., and Steven K. Parker, M.D. (Simon & Schuster, 1998). Spock died earlier this year, but his books go on. The motto of the original child-care expert of baby boomers continues to be: “Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.” Because the book goes through adolescence, there is not as much in-depth writing about certain subjects as most baby books.
Feeding on Demand: Don’t let a baby cry too long or feel uncared for. Babies have a tendency to develop regular schedules, and the book shows how parents can guide that.
Bed: Move baby out of parents’ room by 2 to 3 months. But book acknowledges that in certain cultures, more than 50% of families share a bed.
Sleep: Play with baby a lot during the day, slow down activities at night. This teaches that daytime is playtime, nighttime sleep time. Still, this is the one time in a child’s life that the child decides how much sleep is enough. By 3 to 4 months, start to teach child how to fall asleep on his or her own.
Discipline: “The real issue is what spirit the parent puts into managing the child and what attitude is instilled in the child as a result.” Chapter on discipline shows goal is mutual respect between parent and child, but firmness and consistency are the means to this end.
Day Care: Babies can get depressed if they lose a parent or caregiver in the first few years, so the goal should be consistency and finding a caregiver who is as crazy about the baby as you are. Fairly complete chapter on options throughout childhood.
