Both of these books were written by the popular Harvey Karp, M.D. I read them pretty close together as I happen to have a baby and a toddler under my care right now :) The Happiest Baby on the Block came to me highly recommended by many people. I actually purchased the book when Cray K was about 7 months old, but I never read all of it because most of the material wasn't really applicable anymore. I picked it up again when I had Baby A and made it a point to read it. If you follow my blog at all, you know that Baby A has been "easy" thus far. Still, the suggestions written in this book are invaluable. The notion of the "missing fourth trimester" makes a lot of sense to me even if I don't agree with every aspect of it. If only I had read this when Cray K was a tiny babe. I think it would have helped tremendously. It addresses colic a lot, too. If you want to find out how your small baby operates, check out this book!
After breezing through the first book and finding it very helpful, I decided I really should check out how my toddler operates, too. I downloaded the ebook, The Happiest Toddler on the Block, and was pretty quickly disappointed. I felt like Karp was grasping at straws trying to write another successful book. He describes our little toddlers as mini cavemen and while perhaps that's accurate, it's also not very helpful in learning how to deal with them. I was unimpressed with his suggestions in parenting this age group. Karp said to mirror toddlers' feelings to some degree and all I could picture was me rolling around on the floor of a bookstore screaming at the top of my lungs, throwing a fit. It gave me a giggle. I just found the majority of this book pretty useless.
There you have it. My goal of reading 35 books this year is slowly becoming impossible. Here's #1 and #2, though. Happy Reading!
Linking Up Here:
4 comments:
I've never heard of a "fourth trimester" and that makes me curious. Now I want to get it. Mind you, I'm not pregnant nor do I have kids lol.
Thanks for linking up!
I was curious about the Happiest Toddler book but was clearly content to keep wondering because I limit reading to the back of my eyelids, so THANK YOU for doing the legwork for me on this one! ;) I adored the baby book though (helped so much with fussy Sammy). I actually watched the dvd first (anything to not read a book apparently), and then read and highlighted and bookmarked the entire book. Go Harvey! ;)
When I was pregnant with my first child, we watched The Happiest Baby on the Block DVD, it was amazing and I used the 5 S's all the time. Now, I've got a 2.5 month old and I am still using the advise. I also thought the toddler book wasn't so great.
I feel the same way! I skimmed through the Toddler one when I got it, read certain sections, and tried some techniques. Not so much. It just makes Penny scream louder. Now the Baby one worked like a charm for her and I plan on using it with the next baby too!
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