My big boy turned two last week.  We threw the kind of party I said I’d never throw for a two-year-old–yes, complete with bounce house and elaborately decorated cupcakes.  The kid is into ladybugs, which was the catalyst for the above work of art.  So there you have it.  This is the parent I’ve become.

While this is by no means a comprehensive list of parenting books, I thought it might be interesting to do a rational review of the publications that I have consulted thus far in order to rear a child to the age of two.  When Zack was a first born, I spent many of his naps, reading furiously, beads of sweat forming on my brow, thinking, “What the heck am I doing here?”  While I don’t consult books about babies so ravenously now, I still usually have one on the nightstand that I might peruse here and there, looking for handy hints.

I essentially cherry picked books for whatever information fit my own instinctual sense of parenting, so I’m not sure if reading books ultimately helped that much.  But if you take parenting seriously, kind of like it’s one of your jobs (or maybe your only job), then maybe, like me, you try to do a little research here and there.

Here are the books that I read.  What follows is pure opinion, although I’ve attempted to filter it through the prism of rationality.

If anyone would like to chime in, I’d be very interested in hearing about your opinions on these or other books.

The Baby Book by William Sears, M.D., and Martha Sears, R.N.

A friend gave me this book, along with a pile of others, and since it’s textbook size, I assumed it would be a comprehensive guide to taking care of a baby.  There is a lot of useful information in it, but it comes with an agenda.  Sears espouses attachment parenting, a style of parenting that involves practices like bed sharing and baby wearing.  Dr. Sears engenders a lot of admiration among many moms, and others seem to find themselves enraged by him.  Click here for an amusing rant on attachment parenting by Mommy In Chief.  This is one of several I found online; Sears can get moms bent out of shape.  Many feel attachment parenting is just too intense and full of too high expectations and scare tactics.  And then there are die hard APers who just adore him.

Sears advice didn’t make me feel like an underachiever, but I do have questions about the evidence for some of the ideas put forth in this book.  For example, he advocates baby wearing, which is fine.  We did the sling occasionally, and we carry our son a lot now.  But some of the claims Sears makes about baby wearing don’t really hold up under examination, like this one:

Besides being happier, carried babies develop better, possibly because the energy they would have wasted on crying is diverted into growth.  Also, a baby learns much in the arms of a busy parent. (8)

There are no studies cited in this book, so these claims about slings are never fully explained.  (But these are such ubiquitous beliefs about baby carrying now that after labor, I received a hospital handout advising me to wear my baby to make him smarter.)  The thinking is that babies in slings cry less, so they’re more often in the “quiet and alert” state, so they are more receptive to learning.  There are quite a few leaps of logic based on the premise that babies cry less in the sling.  Assuming that much is true, crying less does not necessarily indicate babies are in the “quiet and alert” state.  Maybe they’re asleep.  And even if they are quiet and alert, how can one subjectively identify just when and what they are learning and compare it to what they might learn by playing quietly on a blanket on the floor?  If there’s a way to do this, I’m all ears, but Sears doesn’t provide any evidence of it.  But he doesn’t hesitate to tell parents that their babies will develop better if carried in a sling, so there’s a guilt factor there.  If you don’t do this, a famous doctor is telling you that you’re not doing right by your baby.

So while I’m sure baby wearing is convenient and a great way to hang out with your baby, to make the claim that it’s more beneficial for child development might be going a bit far.  (And if anyone can enlighten me here, fantastic.)

Sears also cautions parents to beware of baby trainers and trust their own instincts.  But then he uses a straw man argument by saying that “…baby training requires insensitivity.”  And then:  ”The basis of baby training is to help babies become more ‘convenient’” (9).  This is pretty emotional rhetoric, and when I read it as a new parent, I was horrified to think that these baby trainers existed and convinced I would never let one near my baby.  Of course, I was thinking they were training babies to do flips or ride unicycles.  What I did not understand (and would come to understand all too well) was that Sears is of course talking about sleep training.  If you paint sleep training as an insensitive act that parents only do to make their babies less trouble, rather than a way to help your baby learn to get himself to sleep, then yeah, sleep training looks bad.  But that’s only because Sears totally misrepresents it.

So in short, this book might be useful, but for me, it didn’t hold up to a skeptical examination, so it was ultimately hard to trust its advice.  I did, however, do some bed sharing and baby carrying, and I admire that Sears crusades for these practices.  I agree they are legitimate choices for parents that may have been suppressed in the past. I get that.  He just goes a bit too far and claims without proof that his parenting choices are the best ones.

The Complete and Authoritative Guide:  Caring for Your Baby and Young Child, Birth to Age 5 by the American Academy of Pediatrics

I have to admit that only just now as I typed the title into this post did I realize that the first part of it is, “The Complete and Authoritative Guide.”  Pretty confident aren’t they, the ol’ AAP?

This book was a great reference.  I am making my way through the chapter on how two-year-olds develop.  Common illnesses are listed in the back of the book.  Sample menus for different ages help you figure out what your child is “supposed” to be eating.  All information is presented very factually, and there are cute illustrations.  If there is one book I would recommend to new parents, it’s this one, mostly for the basic medical and safety information, as well as the descriptions of developmental milestones and growth.

Of course, the AAP can claim to be authoritative, but that doesn’t mean we have to bow down to its authority.  Any time there is a policy stance stated in the book, it is separated into a little box and stated as a policy of the AAP.  We’ve written quite a bit on this blog about the AAP recommendation to breast feed exclusively for four to six months and then to continue until “at least the baby’s first birthday” (80).  However, the AAP doesn’t lay it on quite as thick as Sears, assuring mothers, “But it’s important not to feel guilty if you decide to bottle-feed your baby….infant formula is an acceptable and nutritious alternative to human milk.”

Similar to Sears’ book, this one has no references or bibliography.  And similar to Sears’ book, this one will hurt your toe if it falls on your bare foot.  It’s big.

Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child, by Marc Weissbluth, M.D.

This is a great overview of childhood sleep and how it develops.  References to studies are provided in the back of the book.  Various approaches to sleep are covered, including sleep training and bed sharing.  The book explains sleep training in some detail.  My only complaint about this book is that either Weissbluth or his ghost writer are absolutely dullsville.  The prose leaves a lot to be desired.  Maybe the tedious tone is meant to provide parents with a little sedative so we can get a good nap in.  If you can muddle through, there’s a lot of information that will help with the sleep thing–which is the main thing for new parents.

Super Baby Food by Ruth Yaron

A friend saw this on a bookshelf recently and hissed at it.  This is another book that brings on the guilt for many parents who attempt to make and freeze all baby food.  I was fully prepared to take this on, but as it turned out, my son hated purees and went almost directly from breast milk to broccoli and brown rice by the fistful at around eight months old.  So I never really played with Yaron’s recipes.  I hear that the super baby porridge and a lot of the other concoctions are great.  So I’m sure this is a book that would come in very handy if you decided you were going to make all your baby food.  I didn’t, and the book sat on the shelf.

Ruth Yaron also natters on quite a bit about topics that are very beside the point of making baby food.  At one point, she advises readers to stand far away from their blenders, since the electromagnetic radiation can be dangerous.  I think it was at that point in the book that I stopped trusting her nutrition expertise.  In her introduction, she says that she learned everything by going to many, many sources, including lots of health food stores.  It seems like she probably got tons of great information and mixed it in some crazy information.  So that’s a real negative of this book for me, but if I had actually needed make baby food, maybe I would have been able to see the little blurb about my blender as charming.

Dear Parent:  Caring for Infants With Respect and Your Self Confident Baby by Magda Gerber

I probably ended up leaning more Gerber than Sears in the end.  Magda Gerber’s main message is to let babies explore on their own from a very early age so they can develop self confidence.  There are references in her books, but she mostly draws on her experience with young children.  She founded Resources for Infant Educarers (RIE), a group that still conducts classes here in LA (and probably many other cities).  Her philosophy of letting babies and toddlers be independent and explore, and have their own space, resonated a lot for me.  She’s very anti sling, swing, and anything else that restricts a baby’s movement.  I couldn’t really agree or disagree with her on those points, but I liked the underlying message of independence and minimal parental interference and being confident that your baby will learn as he needs to learn.

I picked up many of the language cues I use with Zack from reading Gerber’s ideas about setting limits and telling children what is going to happen next.  But honestly, most of what I liked the best about these books just seemed like common sense to me.  It was nice to read the advice and think, “Yep, that’s what I do!”  Some of the ideas are difficult to put into practice.  She recommends refraining from praising play, since it could turn your child into a performer, always seeking praise.  This makes sense to me, but it’s tough to remember in the moment.

There were some aspects of Gerber’s thinking that seemed way off, for instance her opposition to rocking, which she describes in Your Self-Confident Baby:

I don’t feel we have to use rocking chairs to soothe babies or put them to sleep.  Both rocking chairs and cradles bring about an altered state of consciousness, which is, in effect, an escape from reality. (41)

Dude, if Magda could get into an altered state of consciousness from a rocking chair, I just so wish I’d gone to college with her.  Imagine the hangovers you could save yourself if the rocking chair could actually help you escape from reality.  Great stuff.

The Sleepeasy Solution by Jennifer Waldburger and Jill Spivack

This is a step by step guide to sleep training, and it’s very user friendly.  We read it carefully when the time came for us to let our son cry it out.  It’s a very supportive book for parents and explains the ideas behind sleep learning thoroughly.  The Redhead has still never quite slept as much as this book insists he must, and I finally looked up in the AAP book and found a much broader recommendation for the amount of sleep that’s considered acceptable.  So I believe this book might be sort of rounding those numbers up, which has been slightly guilt inducing for me, since we can’t get close to the amount of sleep they’ve listed as optimal.

What to Expect..When You’re Expecting, The First Year, and oh yes, Eating Well when you’re you know what.

Of this series, I enjoyed the First Year book the most.  It was factual, concise, organized, and very helpful.  We would look up the milestones each month.  I really loved having this book around.

What to Expect was also helpful.  What to Eat is great but can make you a little nuts if you let it.  Just eat the cheeseburger with fries.  You’ll be fine.

The No-Cry Discipline Solution by Elizabeth Pantley.

Full disclosure:  Elizabeth often sends emails to Rational Moms, letting us know that we will be entered into a free drawing to win one of her books if we just mention one of her books on our blog.

So as of this moment, I might be getting compensated with a free book by Elizabeth Pantley.

With that conflict of interest out of the way, this is the book that I currently have on my nightstand.  It is not really a no-cry discipline solution.  It’s a collection of hints and tricks Pantley has learned from being a parent to four kinds.  As with the Magda Gerber books, I just pick what  I like and leave the rest.  Overall, Pantley’s philosophy of discipline agrees with my already pre conceived notions, so I like her book.  She focuses on respecting small children’s perspective by doing things like making transitions easier, for example.  It’s tough to leave the park.  So you would not just yank a kid out of the park when it’s time to go but instead give adequate warnings, starting around five minutes.  Warn that the transition is coming, and then when it’s time to go, leave.  If you stay longer, you give the message that what you say doesn’t mean much.  I think my husband and I could have figured this one out for ourselves, but the reenforcement in black and white is helpful.

I cannot believe it, but I’m done reviewing my giant pile o’ books.  I would love to hear more  recommendations of books to try to get around to reading, or of books to go ahead and avoid.

The first little bits to leave lasting marks,
as physical forms of those energy sparks,
are still around now, and they call themselves Quarks.
Bottom and Top and Charm and Strange,
into Up and Down they mostly will change.
These six different flavors are able to mix.
And these six, when they mix, can do all sorts of tricks!

That’s a short excerpt from James Lu Dunbar’s charming new comic book BANG! The Universe Verse, Book 1. It’s a thirty-page painless introduction to the Big Bang for kids and adults.

I bought a copy of this book (even though you can read the whole thing online) because as soon as I saw it, I knew my kids would love it. And I was right.

My kids love science, and in particular, they’d learned a bit about subatomic particles and the Big Bang from watching science videos on YouTube (their idea not mine). Still — like a lot of kids of this generation — they’re not all that interested in books because books aren’t as exciting as the Internet. This book has been a step in the right direction for us. We’ve read it together as a family several times, and the clever rhymes and pictures drew the kids in.

I asked my kids what they liked from the book, and both kids remembered the verse “assuming, of course, that you are prepared for E to equal M C squared.” They both liked the visual presentation with the words “to equal” in the equals sign.

If you know the basic story of the Big Bang (the various forces and how the different types of matter formed), it’s fun to anticipate some of the rhymes, for example: “As it cooled down further there came the first splatter of what was to come just a split second latter — a new form of energy: the first-ever MATTER.” And even if you know very little physics, it’s accessible enough that you won’t get lost or bored. And it may well whet your appetite to learn more!

This is an interesting article on the state of some children’s books from the New Yorker Magazine:

http://tinyurl.com/ylxmr7q

In addition to these resources, Dale has personally been criss-crossing the country to host Parenting Beyond Belief seminars. Handsome Skeptic Husband and I were lucky enough to attend one of these seminars a couple of weeks ago at CFI in Indianapolis, and it was a real treat. Dale is funny and very personable, and obviously very passionate about teaching parents the best practices for nonreligious parenting. His seminar includes topics such as encouraging moral development, promoting ravenous curiosity (I love that phrase!) and encouraging religious literacy. We learned a great deal from Dale that day, and we are grateful to have a plan for how to deal with religious friends and family and how to talk to our kids about religion. We gained a new found understanding of how important it is to make death natural and familiar to our kids. It really was helpful to us, since there really aren’t many places to go to find information and support for parents who want to raise moral, caring children without religion. His plans are now to train seminar leaders across the county in order to offer many more of these seminars.

Can’t wait? Good news! Now Dale has started a YouTube channel for Parenting Beyond Belief. He plans to offer many short, informative videos on nonreligious parenting. The first one is up already, and there’s a schedule for the next seven.  Check out the first video, a short description of what Parenting Beyond Belief is, and how he got started:

Her statistics about how much crime has decreased are very reassuring.  It’s amazing, though, how much my stomach tightens when she talks about letting her son ride the subway alone!  Definitely true that it seems strange these days to let kids roam around on their own, even though I remember riding my bike all over town by myself.

In my first ever post on here, I wrote about learning to worry less, or at least worry about the right things.  Sounds like this book is a must read.

Why, it’s simple! Go to Charlie’s Playhouse! They have an online toy store that sells games and toys inspired by Darwin. They have compiled a very helpful pdf  list of children’s books about evolution and Darwin, most of which are available on Amazon. And they have started a blog, aimed at giving us parents info on interesting evolution-themed topics, that we can pass on to our families. Your one-stop evolution shop!

Founder Kate Miller, Ph.D., is a mother and a scientist who started Charlie’s Playhouse to provide evolution-themed toys because, the website states, “there aren’t any. Our children deserve to know about the dazzling history of life on this planet.”

They currently offer three toys (teaching aids) in their product line-up. Their flagship product is the the 18-foot-long Giant Timeline that allows kids to skip and jump through the 600-million-year history of life. Alternatively, they offer the smaller Giant Timeline Poster, which has a similar graphic of 67 animals in the fossil record, but is sized to hang on a wall. Finally, they offer the Ancient Creature flash cards, each with an illustration and fun facts about a fossil from the Giant Timeline. Besides toys, they also offer some cool cafe press junk, including kids’ shirts that say “Product of Natural Selection”.

I haven’t ordered anything from the site yet, but I think a Giant Timeline is definitely in our future. And I plan to show it to Little Skeptic Girl’s second-grade teacher to see if she’d like to borrow it to use in her class. (I won’t bother offering it to Little Skeptic Boy’s preschool teacher, though.) I also will use the book list to help me find some evolution-themed books for my kids, since we don’t have any in our house. (Which is shocking and distressing, since we have a huge collection of children’s books.)

I’m really enjoying the blog, and have added it to my feed-reader. I’ve learned about all sorts of fossil animals, including a turtle with no top shell, and a cat-sized frog called “Beelzebufo”. Fun stuff!

But don’t take my word for it. Check out Charlie’s Playhouse yourself.

Naturally this should invite a little skepticism: it’s not clear how relevant the parenting techniques of other species are for humans. Even closely-related species can have very different life strategies. Still, it’s fun to compare and see what we can learn.

Humans stand out from the primate pack in a lot of familiar ways: extensive tool use and language, less inclined to live in trees, and adaptability and success to the point of covering practically the entire land surface of the Earth. Smith points out another big difference that I hadn’t noticed as a difference before: human fathers typically provide resources (food, clothing, shelter) for their offspring. Other primate fathers — if they are involved in the lives of their young at all — tend to provide protection (from rival males who would kill the unweaned babies to send the mother back into estrus), and often assist the mother in carrying and socializing the young, but leave the babies and their mothers to feed themselves.

Like other primate babies, human babies need a lot of care from their parents. The usual technique is just to grab mommy’s fur and hang on. This doesn’t work quite as well with humans, but hunter-gatherer mothers often come close to the same technique, strapping their babies on more-or-less full-time in folds of cloth. It’s a bit harder for humans in the city, but back when my babies were small, I used to strap them on when foraging for food at the grocery store.

A lot of the points made in this book are fairly obvious (human children are better off with two parents and/or an extended family support system, primate adolescents learn parenting skills through babysitting, parental stress can lead to child abuse). Some of the points are a little tricky to apply, such as the fact that children learn potty training more easily living outdoors uncovered instead of wearing diapers that hide what’s happening. Yet it’s fun to read about parenting theory illustrated by tales of gibbons and cotton-top tamarins alongside corresponding stories of human families. And this approach encourages parents to think about the “why?” and “why not?” behind parenting strategies rather than giving a list of one-size-fits-all tips and recipes .