Recommended Parental Reading

Before there was minti, what did we parents have? Well, we had books. I thought I'd take the time to recommend a book that came in very handy for me when my daughter was a baby and that is The Baby Book by Dr Sears and his wife, Martha. He

is a doctor of medicine, of course, and she is a nurse. They have eight children, one adopted and one with Down's Syndrome, so they can offer advice on a broad spectrum of topics related to parenting.

For me the appeal of Dr Sears is what I would describe as a common sense approach to parenting. He terms it "attachment parenting" and I'd say he named it well. In his books (there are several of them, including one that is The Breastfeeding Book as well as several other issue specific books. I have The Discipline Book as well, which I've found helpful as my kids have gotten a bit older.) he essentially proposes a type of parenting that is based on the idea that you spend time with your child, get to know your child and base your care for your child on what that individual child needs. I found this book to be a great help because in it, Dr Sears encourages parents to follow their instincts.. For example, in my case, I have a daughter who has always had difficulty sleeping on her own. Rather than leave her to "cry it out" when she was a baby, I followed Dr Sears suggestions and let her sleep in the same room–but not in the bed–with her father and me. The idea is that rather than ignoring a baby when s/he is communicating with you in the only way s/he knows how, you give the baby what s/he wants.

In the case of my daughter, I ended up bringing her crib into our bedroom at the age of 18 months, because I was tired of getting up several times a night to go into her room and calm her. After I did that, she started sleeping through the night without a problem. Is she clingy and insecure now? No! When she started kindergarten last year, she had no qualms about getting on the bus and riding off into the wild blue yonder without me. She trusted that I would not put her on that bus if it were unsafe, and she trusted that she'd see me again later in the day. This is because I showed her she could trust me when she was a baby.

The parenting style they advocate may seem extreme to some–I didn't actually bring my kids in to sleep in our bed all the time as they suggest–but I would still recommend The Baby Book as a good resource. Essentially, if you are a parent who wonders if you are being too lenient with your children, or you maybe get told by other parents or relatives that you are being too lenient, and you want some validation on following your instincts, Dr Sears is a great source of confirmation of your beliefs. He doesn't say to never say no, that's not what I mean by too lenient, but he and his wife let us parents know that it's okay to give our children attention when they are asking for it, and in a positive way.