Hetty van de Rijt (1944–2003)

I give this book a reluctant 4 stars. The substance is excellent but the presentation is painful.

Many baby books focus on specific issues (e.g., feeding, sleep, discipline) or on general physical development. This is the only book I've seen that focuses on the various stages of mental development for babies and young toddlers.

Each chapter is based around a mental leap which causes a large change in how the child can perceive the world. The structure of each leap is similar, although the show more timelines vary by leap: a fussy period, where the baby wants to cling to their parent and may often seem to be reverting relative to where they were, is followed by a calm period where the baby is exploring new skills. The book gives ranges of weeks when you can expect each leap to begin. They were surprisingly accurate.

Following these leaps made it easier to understand what skills and perceptive abilities were developing in my child. Each leap came with suggested activities which I have found useful.

Now the bad. First, this book was very mommy-centric, to the point of not just excluding fathers but often portraying them as not really competent when it comes to the care of their child. Second, the book was verbose. Each chapter described a number of symptoms, both of the fussy period and of the calm period. Each of those was accompanied by quotes from real families. The quotes were great, but there were too many of them. One to two per section would have been plenty; sometimes there were a dozen. Additionally, it wasn't until the last chapter when the authors decided to forgo a detailed description of the fussy period -- which was pretty much identical in the earlier chapters.

So read it for the content, but don't feel bad about skimming. show less

I think this book had some merits, but mostly it came up short of my expectations. It goes through some assumed 'wonder weeks' in a baby's first year of life. These weeks are supposed to be crucial for development & they're described in detail (with lots of interesting material, I might add). So- and this is where the book disappointed me- in every single one of these 'wonder weeks' the baby is expected to be 'more cranky, more difficult, to sleep less etc'. I think though that in a way this show more book is trying to give explanations for crankiness & sleeplessness that in some cases may have nothing to do with the 'wonder weeks' and all to do with overtiredness or lack of a good routine. As I said, the book had some good points- eg games suggested to play at each phase of a young baby's life- but it comes very much from an attachment parenting perspective, and seems to have a very particular framework in mind to expect almost everything. show less

The book aims to explain how and why babies go through periods of emotional upheaval during which they lose their sunny smiles and exchange their gentle gurgling for tetchiness, clingy behaviour, and bouts of crying. The basic message is: don't worry, it's not something you said or did, they're just coping with their own emotional, sensory, and cognitive development. The explanations and the month-by-month tracing of developmental stages are very helpful and reassuring to the inexperienced show more parent. Now that the little Bookworms are older, we have gladly passed our copy on to a more recent parent.

MB 14--05-2013 show less

This was a really interesting overview of the different major developmental milestones that babies go through. I bought their iPhone app so that I can see when my son is about to go into a "wonder week." I agree with other reviewers that it got a bit repetitious. Mostly it was interesting to note how closely my son's behaviors matched with other babies going through these stages.