Caring for Your Baby and Young Child, 5th Edition: Birth to Age 5 (Shelov, Caring for your Baby and Young Child, Birth to Age 5)
By American Academy Of Pediatrics
THE MOST UP-TO-DATE, EXPERT ADVICE
About the Author Steven P. Shelov, MD, MS, FAAP, is a Professor of Pediatrics at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Chairman of Pediatrics at Maimonides Medical Center and Lutheran Medical Center, and Vice President of the Infants' and Childrens' Hospital of Brooklyn. In 2002 Dr. Shelov was presented with the Lifetime Achievement in Education Award by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Tanya Remer Altmann, MD, FAAP, editor-in-chief of The Wonder Years, is a board-certified pediatrician in private practice and clinical instructor at Mattel Children's Hospital at the University of California, Los Angeles. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Introduction: The Gifts of ParenthoodYOUR CHILD IS THE GREATEST GIFT you will ever receive. From the moment you first hold this miracle of life in your arms, your world will be broader and richer. You will experience a flood of feelings, some of wonder and joy and others of confusion and of being overwhelmed and wondering whether you can ever measure up to the needs of your new baby. These are feelings you could barely imagine before—feelings that no one can truly experience without having a child. Even describing them can be difficult because the bond between parent and child is so intensely personal. Why do tears come to your eyes the first time your baby smiles or reaches for you? Why are you so proud of her first words? Why does your heart suddenly start to pound the first time you watch her stumble and fall? The answer lies in the unique two- way giving relationship between you and your child.Your Child’s Gifts to You Although simple, your child’s gifts to you are powerful enough to change your life positively. UNQUALIFIED LOVE. From birth, you are the center of your child’s universe. He gives you his love without question and without demand. As he gets older, he will show this love in countless ways, from showering you with his first smiles to giving you his handmade Valentines. His love is filled with admiration, affection, loyalty, and an intense desire to please you. ABSOLUTE TRUST. Your child believes in you. In her eyes, you are strong, capable, powerful, and wise. Over time, she will demonstrate this trust by relaxing when you are near, coming to you with problems, and proudly pointing you out to others. Sometimes she also will lean on you for protection from things that frighten her, including her own sensitivities. For example, in your presence she may try out new skills that she would never dare to try alone or with a stranger. She trusts you to keep her safe. THE THRILL OF DISCOVERY. Having a child gives you a unique chance to rediscover the pleasure and excitement of childhood. Although you cannot relive your life through your child, you can share in his delight as he explores the world. In the process, you probably will discover abilities and talents you never dreamed you possessed. Feelings of empathy mixed with growing selfawareness will help shape your ability to play and interact with your growing child. Discovering things together, whether they are new skills or words or ways to overcome obstacles, will add to your experience and confidence as a parent and will better prepare you for new challenges that you never even envisioned. Your Child’s Gifts to You THE HEIGHTS OF EMOTION. Through your child, you will experience new heights of joy, love, pride, and excitement. You probably also will experience anxiety, anger, and frustration. For all those delicious moments when you hold your baby close and feel her loving arms around your neck, there are bound to be times when you feel you cannot communicate. The extremes sometimes become sharper as your child gets older and seeks to establish her independence. The same child who at three dances across the room with you may at four have a rebellious and active period that surprises you. The extremes are not contradictions, but simply a reality of growing up. For you as a parent, the challenge is to accept and appreciate all the feelings with which your child expresses himself and arouses in you, and to use them in giving him steady guidance. The Gifts You Give Your Child As his parent, you have many vital gifts to offer your child in return. Some are subtle, but all are very powerful. Giving them will make you a good parent. Receiving them will help your child become a healthy, happy, capable individual. UNCONDITIONAL LOVE. Love lies at the core of your relationship with your child. It needs to flow freely in both directions. Just as she loves you without question, you must give her your love and acceptance absolutely. Your love shouldn’t depend on the way she looks or behaves. It shouldn’t be used as a reward or withheld as a threat. Your love for your child is constant and indisputable, and it’s up to you to convey that, especially when she misbehaves and needs to have limits set or behavior corrected. Love must be held separate and above any fleeting feelings of anger or frustration over her conduct. Never confuse the actions with the child. The more secure she feels in your love, the more self- assurance she will have as she grows up. SELF- ESTEEM. One of your most important gifts as a parent is to help your child develop self- esteem. It’s not an easy or quick process. Self- respect, confidence, and belief in oneself, which are the building blocks of self- esteem, take years to become firmly established. Your child needs your steady support and encouragement to discover his strengths. He needs you to believe in him as he learns to believe in himself. Loving him, spending time with him, listening to him, and praising his accomplishments are all part of this process. On other occasions, helping him modify his troubling behaviors in ways that aren’t punitive or hurtful, but constructive, is just as important to building a firm self- esteem. If he is confident of your love, admiration, and respect, it will be easier for him to develop the solid self- esteem he needs to grow up happy and emotionally healthy. VALUES AND TRADITIONS. Regardless of whether you actively try to pass on your values and beliefs to your child, she is bound to absorb some of them just by living with you. She’ll notice how disciplined you are in your work, how deeply you hold your beliefs, and whether you practice what you preach. She’ll participate in family rituals and traditions and think about their significance. You can’t expect or demand that your child subscribe to all your opinions, but you can present your beliefs honestly, clearly, and thoughtfully, in keeping with the child’s age and maturity level. Give her guidance and encouragement, not only commands. Encourage questions and discussions, when age and language permit, instead of trying to force your values on your child. If your beliefs are well reasoned and if you are true to them, she probably will adopt many of them. If there are inconsistencies in your actions—something we all live with— often your child will make that clear to you, either subtly by his behavior or, when he is older, more directly by disagreeing with you. The road to developing values is not straight and unerring. It demands flexibility built on firm foundations. Self- awareness, a willingness to listen to your child and change when appropriate, and, above all, a demonstration of your commitment to traditions will best serve your relationship with your child. While the choice of values and principles ultimately will be hers to make, she depends on you to give her the foundation through your thoughts, shared ideas, and, most of all, your actions and deeds. JOY IN LIFE. Your baby doesn’t need to be taught to be joyful, but he does need your encouragement and support to let his natural enthusiasm fly free. The more joyful you are, particularly when you are with him, the more delightful life will seem to him and the more eagerly he will embrace it. When he hears music, he’ll dance. When the sun shines, he’ll turn his face skyward. When he feels happy, he’ll laugh. This exuberance often is expressed through his being attentive and curious, willing to explore new places and things, and eager to take in the world around him and incorporate the new images, objects, and people into his own growing experience. Remember, different babies have different temperaments—some are more apparently exuberant than others, some are more noisily rambunctious, some are more playful, some are more reserved and quiet. Still others are more even- keeled, mixtures of the two extremes. But all babies demonstrate their joy in life in their own ways, and you as the parent will discover what those ways are and will nurture your child’s joy. GOOD HEALTH. Your child’s health depends significantly on the care and guidance you offer her during these early years. You begin during pregnancy by taking good care of yourself and by arranging for obstetric and pediatric care. By taking your child to the doctor regularly for checkups and consultations, keeping her safe from injuries, providing a nutritious diet, and encouraging exercise throughout childhood, you help protect and strengthen her body. You’ll also need to maintain good health habits yourself, while avoiding unhealthy ones, such as smoking, excessive drinking, drug use, and lack of adequate physical activity. In this way, you’ll give your child a healthy example to follow as she grows up. SECURE SURROUNDINGS. You naturally want to give your child a safe, comfortable home. This means more than a warm place to sleep and a collection of toys. As important as it is to provide shelter that is physically safe and secure, it is even more important to create a home that is emotionally secure with a minimum of stress and a maximum of consistency and love. Your child can sense problems between other family members and may be very troubled by them, so it’s important that all family problems, even minor conflicts, be dealt ...
Authoritative, Wide-Ranging, Relatively Easy to Read and Use, and Improved From Fourth (2004) Edition - But Not Perfect With so much information on children's health to be found on the Internet, and many other books giving advice on child-rearing, is this reference book worth buying? The answer is yes! Consider the following four upsides of this "Complete and Authoritative Guide... New and Revised Fifth Edition" (per the front cover): 1. IT'S TRUSTWORTHY. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which according to its Web site represents 60,000 pediatricians, publishes it. Over 100 pediatricians (and 4 dentists) contributed to the book. The information is sound and up-to-date as of 2009. The opinions expressed are "mainstream" (not "fringe"), which is reassuring since child-rearing is stressful. 2. IT'S WIDE-RANGING (and some may go farther in describing it as "complete" or "comprehensive"). Although no book can be all things to all people, it contains important information on many common health and behavior problems, and it gives advice on when problems might be so serious that you should bring the child to a doctor. 3. IT'S RELATIVELY EASY TO READ AND USE. The authors write clearly and concisely. Although some jargon is present (e.g., "flat angiomata"), that is held to a minimum. The organization into Part 1 (pages 1-506, covering normal development and needs chronologically from birth to age 5*) and Part 2 (pages 507-848, covering specific health issues from "Abdominal/Gastrointestinal Tract" to "Emergencies" to "Your Child's Sleep") is logical. You'll find the index quite useful for locating info (but see "B" below). Numerous drawings and text boxes complement the body of the text. 4. IT'S IMPROVED FROM THE FOURTH (2004) EDITION, with 145 more pages. Some of the less useful parts of the old edition have been scrapped**, and this edition has a lot of revised or new material***. The text is more pleasant to read than before because there is more space between the lines, and the illustrations are better coordinated with the text. OK, now for five (minor) downsides, which I'll phrase in the form of a wish list. A. I WISH THAT THE BOOK HAD ITS OWN WEB SITE for updates, corrections, etc., along the lines of the sites for Baby Bargains, 8th Edition: Secrets to Saving 20% to 50% on Baby Furniture, Gear, Clothes, Toys, Maternity Wear and Much, Much More! or AAP's own Red Book: 2009 Report of the Committee on Infectious Diseases (Red Book Report of the Committee on Infectious Diseases). B. I WISH THAT IT COULD BE SEARCHED ELECTRONICALLY (even though the index is generally very useful). Example 1: Let's say I was interested in complementary and alternative medicine, folk remedies, and the like. There's no index entry relevant to these - you have to manually find the box on "natural" therapies on page 619. Example 2: If you want info on mercury in fish, the index doesn't have "mercury" or "fish" as main entries; you have to go to "food," then "fish warning." An electronic index would prevent problems like these. [NOTE ADDED AFTER WRITING THIS REVIEW: Maybe I missed it the first time around, but Amazon's "Click to Look Inside" allows you to search individual words in the book. Thanks, Amazon!] C. I WISH THAT THE AAP HAD KEPT ITS PUBLIC POLICY OPINIONS OUT OF THE BOOK. We learn that the AAP supports "legislation that would prohibit smoking in public places" (page 9), "gun-control legislation" (page 470), "legislative efforts to improve the quality of children's [television] programming" (page 579), etc. The AAP's Web site, not a book on parenting, is the right place for political statements such as those. D. I WISH THAT SOME OF THE STATEMENTS HAD BEEN LESS BLACK-OR-WHITE. Example: Page 786 claims that heart murmurs "become a concern" when "they occur very early at birth" because they "are not functional or innocent" (with "not" italicized). But studies such as "Prevalence And Clinical Significance Of Cardiac Murmurs In Neonates" and "Can Cardiologists Distinguish Innocent From Pathologic Murmurs In Neonates?" find that perhaps only half of heart murmurs in newborns are actually problematic. So a better wording would have been "...MAY NOT BE functional or innocent." E. I WISH THAT IT HAD PHOTOGRAPHS. For example, photos would be worth a thousand words for the skin rashes, birthmarks, and such mentioned on pages 127-128 and 813-836. Purchase this very nice book from Amazon.com! * In Part 1, the topics within each chapter from "5. Your Baby's First Days" to "13. Your Four- to Five-Year-Old" may include "Growth and Development" (e.g., movement, language, cognitive, social, emotional); "Basic Care" like feeding and sleeping; "Behavior"; "Health Watch" or "Visit to the Pediatrician"; "Immunization Update"; and "Safety Check." ** Among the material deleted from the old edition are some drawings (e.g., how to use a cloth diaper, hormones in the milk let-down process, crib gym and mobile), some data graphics (e.g., table of sugar content of juices, pie chart of causes of developmental disabilities), and some text (e.g., on vegetables with nitrates, "smaller extended families," "working mothers," and "stay-at-home fathers"). *** Some selected specific improvements: (i) Information on weaning from breast to bottle has been moved from the chapter on 4-7 months to the chapter on 8-12 months. (ii) "The Second Year" chapter in the old edition has been retitled to the less confusing "Your One-Year Old." (iii) The "Age Three to Five Years" chapter has been split into separate chapters for 3-year-olds and for 4- to 5-year-olds. (iv) Part 2 has been reorganized more-or-less alphabetically with new chapters 17 on allergies and 34 on sleep. (v) There is new or substantially revised text on psychological resilience (pages xxxiii-xxxvi), Tdap and other vaccines (7 & 793-800), toxoplasmosis (8), tests during pregnancy (10-13), delivery (13-6 and 36-8), probiotics (118 & 523), vitamin D (169), autism spectrum disorders (336-7 & 622-7), school transportation safety (450-1), E. coli (524-5), sickle cell (635-7), BPA (702), well water (703), and MRSA (825). (vi) The new Appendices on pages 850-866 collect together schedules, growth charts, and so forth that were scattered throughout the old edition. Caring for Your Baby and Young Child,5th Edition This is my standard baby shower gift. I have purchased the previous editions for 2 of my daughters in law and several young mothers that I work with. I have been a pediatric nurse for many years, I looked at many baby and child care books before I chose this particular book. The advice is well researched, practical and is presented in an easy to use format. Many young moms don't have the benefit of living near extended family. This book will help them get through some of the rough spots of child rearing. It provides excellent information on developmental milestones and immunizations. A book I trusted This's the book recommended by my pediatrician and I use it as a handbook for any questions on nursing.
