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A Good Start in Life: Understanding Your Child's Brain and Behavior
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Product Description
This new paperback edition, updated with the latest information and new material, offers parents and educators a rich and invaluable resource on how children learn to live in family and society from birth to age six. Norbert Herschkowitz, MD, and his wife Elinore Chapman Herschkowitz draw on their lifetime of experience in studying infants and children to explain how brain development shapes a child’s personality and behavior. Organizing their narrative by age, the authors examine a wide range of social development issues, from appropriate rule-setting to the development of key character elements in a child such as moral sensibility, temperament, language development, playing, aggression, impulse control, and empathy.
Some of the most popular features of the hardcover edition are retained here, including the question-and-answer section that concludes each chapter with real questions posed by parents to Dr. Herschkowitz, as well as brain maps and charts that display milestones in the development of various skills. Additional new material addresses concerns about prematurely born babies and the issue of resilience in children.
In today’s world, children grow up in an incredibly complex and highly sensory environment. A Good Start in Life offers a clear, concise, and richly detailed guide infused with warmth and encouragement that enables parents and educators to constructively stimulate and shape their children’s cognitive and social development.
“A must read . . . a gift to all parents.”—Rosemarie T. Truglio, vice-president, Education and Research, Sesame Workshop
“Do the first three years of life represent a critical period for all aspects of development? Are we the product of our genes or of our environment? Does early exposure to Mozart make for smarter babies? The answers to these and other pressing questions are skillfully and elegantly answered in this wonderful book, which I enthusiastically recommend.”
—Charles A. Nelson, Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Child Psychology, Neuroscience, and Pediatrics, University of Minnesota
“This delightfully written book . . . is not merely a how-to book, but a book about understanding how a child truly grows.”
—Guy McKhann, MD, The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #398069 in Books
- Published on: 2004-09-15
- Original language: English
- Dimensions: 1.10 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 314 pages
Editorial Reviews
From Amazon.com
New parents can end up with too many choices, and it seems like a separate book exists for every stage of life--which can be overwhelming when one's reading time is limited. A Good Start in Life aims to reduce the stress, compiling basic information about child development from conception to age 6 in one concise book. Written by a neuroscientist and an educator, you'll find easy-to-digest information about the physical stages of early childhood, as well as straightforward suggestions that make parenting a little easier as your child grows.
In each chapter, you follow a small girl through her life changes. Her second birthday party is a typical madhouse, while by her sixth you can see all types of developed personalities and interpersonal skills at play. Each party is used to demonstrate specific developments, and it's both entertaining and educational to see the kids evolve from playing separately to choosing up sides for a baseball game. Pictures and charts of developmental milestones are included for quick reference, and topics like building security, setting limits, and preparing for school are addressed clearly and briefly. While no special situation is discussed in depth, parents will receive an excellent general overview of what they can expect from life with a little one. --Jill Lightner
From Library Journal
Herschkowitz, a Swiss pediatrician and neuroscientist, and Chapman Herschkowitz, his American educator wife, use a novel device to tackle an oft-discussed subject child development. Directing their text at the educated parents of newborns to six year olds, the authors devise fictitious children of differing temperaments, which allows readers to connect with the text. As these children relate to their parents and one another, their activities at developmental milestones are described. A question-and-answer section closes each chapter. Concerns about what the parent should do in various situations are briefly answered by referring to a scientific explanation, though in several sections the discussion of a topic seems to end abruptly. Although slightly dated, Lise Eliot's What's Going on in There?, Kyle Pruett's Me, Myself, and I: How Children Build Their Sense of Self, and Craig T. and Sharon L. Ramey's Right from Birth are more complete. Still, with a glossary of technical terms and a fairly current bibliography, this remains a solid entry in a crowded field. Purchase for large public library collections. Margaret Cardwell, Christian Brothers Univ. Lib., Memphis
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
The Herschkowitzes, pediatrician-neuroscientist and science-writer spouses, center on the child's postpartum needs. Their book's value arises from their ability to explain the various steps in child development with scientific information while showing the external effects of internal occurrences. Even though their explanations are rather technical, the science in them is remarkably accessible for lay readers. Primarily, they address the child's physiological and psychological development and its assimilation into society. Besides informing, the Herschkowitzes draw on their own experience as parents and years of clinical research to give advice in chapter-ending sections, uniformly entitled "To Think About," containing tips for parents as their children go through each developmental step. Mary Frances Wilkens
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