Know Your Child

Today's parents are faced with a wealth of exciting but often confusing new ideas about child development and parent-child relationships. In this liberating and enlightening book, Stella Chess and Alexander Thomas, whose pioneering studies have earned them a worldwide reputation, draw on their own and others' research to systematically sort out fact from fantasy about how children develop. In lively layman's language they provide authoritative and timely answers to the questions parents most often ask, such as "How crucial are my child's first three years?", "Can IQ be changed?", and "Is adolescent rebellion inevitable?". Along the way they explode many of the myths that shackle parents and professionals alike.

Both parents and grandparents, the authors are also child psychiatrists who did a 30-year study of children growing into adulthoodthe New York Longitudinal Study. Their new work is scholarly but written in a style that makes it completely accessible to those of us who are not experts in the field. Further, the authors are honest, distinguishing prejudice and opinioneven theirsfrom common sense and fact. Among their basic propositions are that babies are human from the start, that babies differ from one another, and that babies are always learning. A crucial consideration is "goodness of fit"how the temperaments of parents and children do or don't mesh. This important book really can help parents know their children. Highly recommended.John Moryl, Yeshiva Univ. Lib., New York
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.