The Wonder Weeks: How to Turn Your Baby's 8 Great Fussy Phases into Magical Leaps Forward - Softcover

Vanderijt, Hetty; Plooij, Frans X.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1579546455 ISBN 13: 9781579546458

Publisher: Rodale Books, 2003

Synopsis

Your Baby's Developing Mind: What a Wonder-ful World!

In The Wonder Weeks, you'll discover the specific dates during their first 14 months when all babies take eight major developmental leaps. And you'll learn how to help your baby through the eight great "fussy phases" that mark these leaps within a week or two.

Wonder week by wonder week, you'll see how your baby's mind is developing. Now you will know which games and toys are best for your baby during each key week and how to encourage each leap forward. Calendars, charts, and checklists help you track your baby's progress-- and finally make sense of his fussy behavior.

This is a baby book like no other. It will be your indispensable guide to the crucial "wonder weeks" of your baby's first year.

About this title

From the Author:

Have you ever wondered what's going on in your baby's head? Why is a normally well-tempered baby suddenly difficult and demanding? And then, suddenly, he is doing things he could not do the day before.

Research has shown that babies make 10 major, predictable, age-linked changes - or leaps - during their first 20 months of their lives. During this time, he will learn more than in any other year. With each leap comes a drastic change in your baby's mental development, which affects not only his mood, but also his health, intelligence, sleeping patterns and the "three C's" (crying, clinging and crankiness).

The Wonder Weeks Explained
Following each leap comes the "wonder weeks," in which the baby has new and expanded brain capacity and is able to learn to do new things. Each leap sets the stage for subsequent development of skills, which depend on the baby's preferences, experimentation and physical development. For example, perceiving special relationships (about 26 weeks) is necessary for taking a first step, which normally varies from five-to-eleven months.

As amazing as this is, it is also scary for the baby. Suddenly, he can think, feel, notice and understand what is happening around him in a new way. The perception of sensations does not change with increasing age, but becomes subservient to the new, higher levels of perception that are emerging one after the other in the hierarchy and that are superposed onto the already existing, lower levels of perception. These changes in thinking can show up in changes in what he can do and how he behaves. That is why, before he is able to explore his new abilities, he often cries more, is more clingy and crankier. These changes can also manifest as poor sleep, lack of appetite and general fussiness - and exhausted parents.

From the Back Cover:

"This is a very practical and entertaining window into the baby's first year and a half. Vanderijt and Plooij have observed and found the vulnerable times in an infant's development that I independently came to in my book Touchpoints (Perseus). The authors' observations and practical suggestions are wonderful."
--T. Berry Brazelton, M.D., professor emeritus, Harvard Medical School

"Anyone who deals with infants and young children will want to read The Wonder Weeks. This book will open parents' eyes to aspects of their children's growth, development, changing behavior, and emotional responsiveness that they might otherwise not notice or find puzzling and distressing."
--Catherine Snow, Ph.D., Shattuck Professor of Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Your Baby's Developing Mind: What a Wonder-ful World!

In The Wonder Weeks, you'll discover the specific dates during their first 14 months when all babies take eight major developmental leaps. And you'll learn how to help your baby through the eight great "fussy phases" that mark these leaps within a week or two.

Wonder week by wonder week, you'll see how your baby's mind is developing. Now you will know which games and toys are best for your baby during each key week and how to encourage each leap forward. Calendars, charts, and checklists help you track your baby's progress-- and finally make sense of his fussy behavior.

This is a baby book like no other. It will be your indispensable guide to the crucial "wonder weeks" of your baby's first year.

Hetty Vanderijt, Ph.D., and Frans Plooij, Ph.D., a husband and wife team, have researched parent-baby interaction for 25 years. Their child-development books have sold more than 450,000 copies throughout the world.

About this edition

• Publisher: Rodale Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1579546455
• ISBN 13: 9781579546458
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336