Bringing Up Baby: Three Steps to Making Good Decisions in Your Child's First Years

Parents are faced with hundreds of questions in their child’s first years. Breast or bottle? Comfort a 6-month-old child now or let her cry? Allow some TV or none at all? But how meaningful can the answers be when they’re offered by someone who doesn’t know the parent or the child? Instead of offering answers that apply to "most" families, experienced child-care specialists Claire Lerner and Amy Dombro explain

1. How parents can understand their own parenting style and its effect on their child, 2. How parents can observe their child to understand what she is feeling and thinking, and 3. How to use those observations to make healthy and effective decisions.

With this easy, 3-step approach, parents can learn to become experts on their own child’s healthy development.

Claire Lerner, LCSW-C, is a licensed clinical social worker, child development specialist, and Director of Parent Education at ZERO TO THREE, the National Center for Infants, Toddlers, and Families. Ms. Lerner is a columnist for American Baby Magazine and she is the co-author of ZERO TO THREE’s best-selling parent book, Learning & Growing Together.

Amy Laura Dombro, MS, is the former head of the Infant and Family Center at Bank Street College of Education in New York City. She is the co-author of ZERO TO THREE’s best-selling parent book, Learning & Growing Together and the author of The Ordinary is Extraordinary: How Children Under Three Learn and Sharing the Caring: How to Find the Right Child Care and Make It Work for You and Your Child.