What Every Parent Needs to Know: The incredible effects of love, nurture and play on your child's development Paperback – 7 Jun. 2007

This book is a handy manual that takes you from essential advice during babyhood right up to school age children. The great majority of the book is geared towards toddlerhood, but parents with babies will also find they can read a few chapters and find some useful advice for the future, such as child-care which usually needs to be planned well in advance.All the advice in the book is taken from the latest scientific evidence on the subject. In fact, similar to a real scientific paper, the book backs up most of its claims on right and wrong, with specific papers, which you can look up in the references section at the back of the book.The book is easy and fast to read. You can pick and choose the chapters, and even the pages, which are relevant to you, as each point in the book is pretty much self-sufficient.In summary of most of the chapters, the book can be split into two main sections. One talks about how to best deal with crying/tantrums, and the other, how to love/play with your child. The other miscellaneous topics talk about sleep and looking after yourself.The overall philosophy of the book can be easily summarised in the following way: Always respond with love and kindness to your child, as it is crucial for their brain development. Parenting which is unresponsive or doesn't take the child's feelings seriously, can result in problems in later life, such as an inability to deal with stress or drug and alcohol abuse.

Another book that should be given out to all parents by the NHS or studied in schools. This book helps parents understand how their child is developing emotionally and does it all from a strong research base. The book gives researched explanations to each side of various parenting dilemmas giving the long term and short term effects, enabling parents to make informed decisions about their children also giving powerful examples of how techniques, which are promoted in other books, involving leaving a baby to cry can have a detrimental effect of babies brain development and affect them emotionally into adulthood. Sunderland also takes the same approach to play and rough and tumble, not just telling parents what to do in a prescriptive way but explaining why these things will be good for their child and their relationship.The book also explains why children do things we find confusing explaining what underlies tantrums and why children can struggle with extreme happiness. it also gives clear explanations as to why young children can't share and don't have empathy and gives suggestions to deal with this that don't involve shaming the child and focus on supporting the child with difficult emotions and to help them understand them. the only part of this book I disagreed with was the suggestion of using sticker charts to get children to stay in their own beds. This would be a book that I would recommend to other parents due to the strong research base and understandable explanations of complex topics.

Great if you’re a keen parent who’s interested in supporting your child’s needs and making them grow into a happy child who loves themselves.All science based and easy to understand

Very useful book. It is an easy book to read or to use for reference. Explains the importance of building self esteem, trust and confdence well and how this will facilitate learning for the child. As with any information read it critically non the less. Child care and parenting issues are currently benefitting from a lot of research and books always need updating.

Great book!!! Easy to read & understand, and really explains why your baby behaves in different ways, and gives such logical advice - really helps remove the guilt from following my instincts when it comes to my baby. Turns out most of my instincts are spot on when it comes to how to treat my baby's crying, sleeping & feeding - but as these instincts don't comply with convention, the dozens of sleep training so called "experts" people love to constantly recommend to me or the approval of my mother in law and other people, this book has been a breath of fresh air and has given me the confidence to do what it turns out is psychologically and physiologically best for baby, and the strength / confidence not to give in/cave when I come under (gentle and extremely well meaning) pressure to conform ("oh baba, you're being spoiled / ruined aren't you!" or the other restrained disapproval & eye rolling).I'll be recommending this book left, right and centre!! Love it.

This is the book we would keep referring back to if we hadn't passed it on to my cousin. We probably ought to buy another copy. It describes how the infant brain develops and how important it is to create the right neural pathways between the frontal lobe and the core brain so that your child can grow up to be emotionally mature and everyone can have an easier time all round.I spent hours reading it while my son was cluster feeding but it's also the kind of book that you can dip in and out of quite easily if you have a particular problem to solve.It is definitely not a baby book as it covers children right the way through their development, but it is one of those books that the sooner you read it the sooner you can start benefitting from it.This is the book that we describe as "The book" as if it were a manual on child rearing.