A Good Start in Life: Understanding Your Child's Brain and Behavior

The social and cognitive development of children is a complex yet crucial process for parents to understand, and though there are numerous books on child development, A Good Start in Life stands out from the rest as an acclaimed and important work on the connections between childhood brain and behavioral development.

This new paperback edition, updated with the latest information and new material, offers parents and educators a rich and invaluable resource on how children learn to live in family and society from birth to age six. Norbert Herschkowitz, MD, and his wife Elinore Chapman Herschkowitz draw on their lifetime of experience in studying infants and children to explain how brain development shapes a child’s personality and behavior. Organizing their narrative by age, the authors examine a wide range of social development issues, from appropriate rule-setting to the development of key character elements in a child such as moral sensibility, temperament, language development, playing, aggression, impulse control, and empathy.

Some of the most popular features of the hardcover edition are retained here, including the question-and-answer section that concludes each chapter with real questions posed by parents to Dr. Herschkowitz, as well as brain maps and charts that display milestones in the development of various skills. Additional new material addresses concerns about prematurely born babies and the issue of resilience in children.

In today’s world, children grow up in an incredibly complex and highly sensory environment. A Good Start in Life offers a clear, concise, and richly detailed guide infused with warmth and encouragement that enables parents and educators to constructively stimulate and shape their children’s cognitive and social development.

“A must read . . . a gift to all parents.”—Rosemarie T. Truglio, vice-president, Education and Research, Sesame Workshop

“Do the first three years of life represent a critical period for all aspects of development? Are we the product of our genes or of our environment? Does early exposure to Mozart make for smarter babies? The answers to these and other pressing questions are skillfully and elegantly answered in this wonderful book, which I enthusiastically recommend.”
—Charles A. Nelson, Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Child Psychology, Neuroscience, and Pediatrics, University of Minnesota

“This delightfully written book . . . is not merely a how-to book, but a book about understanding how a child truly grows.”
—Guy McKhann, MD, The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

Elinore Chapman Herschkowitz teaches English at the Bern State Teachers' College.