The Second Twelve Months of Life: Your Baby's Growth Month by Month

This book, along with the authors' book The First Twelve Months of Life, are my two favorite books on infant development. It explains how babies perceive the world and how they progress in their development, month by month. These books helped me when my own kids were babies and they're the books that I give as gifts to new parents.

Too many modern parenting books are little more than troubleshooting guides, quick-fix encyclopedias in which you look up the current problem you're having and what to to do about it to make it go away. This book s is a much more practical and calm guide to what may or may not happen and when, how to work your way through the occasionally frustrating developmental periods of the second year and how to effectively play and interact with your child so that parenting is less a task to be tackled than a way of life to be experienced and enjoyed. It highlights many ways that you can encourage your child's learning and development without actually sitting down and consciously teaching them things. It also approaches your child's upbringing as being part of the environment around him instead of (again, a flaw of many modern books) merely trying to make him fit in with your adult world. The suggested developmental timeline is very fluid and less rigid and demanding than many I've come across. As another reviewer mentions, it was written many years ago and there are a few references which we would probably take issue with today - such as the suggestion that an 18 month old may enjoy activities such as blowing out matches - but most of these are minor issues which can be easily subsituted with newer concepts (listening to CDs rather than records for instance). The one thing some parents may have a problem with is that this book assumes your world revolves around your child and you will make all your free (eg non-work) time available for him. For a traditional, more old-fashioned Mom like myself this may be fairly easy to adapt to but for the career parent (especially women), the idea that one's life is entirely no longer one's own may not be so easily appreciated.

I purchased this book soon after my son's first birthday. It is organized with month by month descriptions of toddler development in language, physical skills and personality. I enjoyed reading the monthly sections throughout the year. It gave me some idea of what to expect, although the authors do point out that individual development is unpredictable. The book was written over 20 years ago and has a few dated references. (I don't think too many parents have their toddlers listening to phonograph records these days!)