SuperBaby ~ A Review

SuperBaby

12 Ways to Give Your Child a Head Start in the First 3 Years
By Dr. Jenn Berman
Foreword by Alan Greene, MD, author of Raising Baby Green

Recently I was given the opportunity to receive an advance copy of a new parenting book which was published by Sterling Publishing on September 7th. I may be a first time mom, but I have certainly read my fair share of parenting books. (Maybe that is actually because I am a first time mom...) So I was pretty excited to read this book.

When it arrived I had to give it my "Is this book worth me buying?" test. With so many parenting books out on the market one of the things I like to do before I spend money on a new book is open it 4 different times, to 4 different sections, and decide by reading those sections if it would be a book that I would learn something from, or enjoying reading more of.

1. The first page I turned to I found myself reading about The Emotional Benefits of Phyiscal Touch. Berman went on to list 5 main emotional benefits that physical touch provides for your child. (pg 79)

• Physical touch creates self esteem.
• Physical touch helps children bond with caretakers.
• Physical touch teaches self-soothing.
• Physical touch makes for better mothering.
• Physical touch helps your baby learn to trust.

As a mother who has seen the benefits of baby-wearing first hand, I was immediately intriqued to read more. Encouraged I eagerly turned to the 2 random page.

2. On the second random page I found myself reading about the benefits sign-language can provide to a child. (pg 121)

• Signing advances reading and vocabulary skills.

I quickly read through this page, loving what I read. I have been signing ASL signs with my Squishy since he was 3 months old. To date he can sign: more, all done, eat, drink, water, milk, shoe, sock, train, book, thank you, please, and has done a few others once or twice. (He is 15 months old.) I have been asked several times by friends and family members if I was worried about signing holding my son back from becoming verbal. I knew that studies had shown the opposite, but found myself struggling to articulate the results to naysayers. After reading this page alone I felt more informed on how to respond to such questions. I was ready to head to random page 3.

3. The third randomly selected page greeted me with this: (pg 308)

• On a given day nearly one-third of children are eating fast food.
• 69 percent of nineteen to twenty-four month-old kids eat candy or dessert.
• 44 percent of toddlers drink sweetened beverages.
• 46 percent of seven- to eight-month -old babies consume some type of sweetened drink, dessert, or sweets daily.
• 27 percent eat hot dogs, bacon, or sausage on a typical day.
• Children typically get less than 2 percent of their diet from fruits and vegetables.
• On average, kids get 90 percent of their caloric intake from dairy products, white flour, sugar, and oil.

Ever since Squishy was born, teaching him healthy eating habits has been something I worry about and think about on a daily basis. Some people scoffed at me when I said I wasn't going to start Squish on solid foods until he showed me he was ready. (Which didn't happen until he was 7 months of age. But at his 6 month appointment was 18lbs 14ozs so it wasn't like he was lacking in the growth and development area.)
Seeing the above statistics plain as day in front of my face I really wanted to read more. So far the random page turning was getting better and better with each page.

4. My fourth and final random page brought me to pg 12. This page started off with ways to avoid power struggles. As the mother to an almost 16 month old toddler who is learning to test his boundries, I was more than ready to read on. In fact if I was in a store, I would have been walking up to the register and pulling out my wallet at this point.

SuperBaby is filled with mostly common sense approaches to parenting. While the title says that this book is about giving your child a head start in the first three years of life, what I have determined in my readings is that this book is also about giving parents the knowledge, tools, and language they need to effectively communicate, lead, and teach their children. Often times as parents we can get caught up in the second guessing world of mixed advice and confused opinions. Especially when you are sleep-deprived as most parents to young children are.
Dr. Jenn Berman writes in an easy and clear manner, explaining the theory behind the tools you need to help not only your child get a head start, but also the parent.

This is a book I will definitely pull out when the moments of parent insecurity strike, or when I find myself presented with a situation I am not sure how best to handle.

On the Squishy Rating Scale, SuperBaby receives a Very Squishable!!

Dr Jenn Berman can be found both on Twitter and Facebook.

If you are interested you can find SuperBaby available for purchase both on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.