Ask YC: Hacker moms & dads, what do you read? | Hacker News Reader

Ask YC: Hacker moms & dads, what do you read?

27 pointsrodrigo75 comments

Ive just had a baby girl, what do you, hacker moms and dads read about children? is there a place online to read interesting stuff? any deadtree books you recommend?

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I just spent four weeks on a pediatric neurology clerkship in medical school, and my wife is a pediatric occupational therapist. Throw away your TV.

Just do it.

After Katrina, when we evacuated to my parents' house, they'd just moved in themselves, the day before. We agreed to not hook up cable. My kids calmed down noticeably. No, remarkably. We watch, maybe, a movie or two a week. The DVD player broke, so they only watch those movies on a computer anyway. The TV hasn't been turned on in weeks. I now own a $5000 Ethan Allen box to hide a $500 TV box that I don't use. Just throw the boob tube away. What do you do with a livingroom that has no TV? Feng shui.

My wife has started advising parents of kids with ADHD to get rid of their TVs. They're scared at first, but they do it. And in a few days or weeks they love her for it.

The pediatric neurologists I was with last month think ADHD probably isn't even a legit diagnosis (psychiatric diagnoses are voted on). They very frankly told me they think it's mainly a combination of TV and bad parenting, which is on the rise thanks to TV and entirely too many double-income homes. And if you're questioning their politics, these folks are insanely smart and educated, and probably more liberal than Noam Chomsky, and I know at least one that raised four kids herself.

In case you missed it: throw away the TV. All of them.

For specific readings, go to PubMed's Entrez site and look up the author "Christakis DA". He's prolific, but his biggest newsmakers are some rather large studies showing dose-dependent correlations between TV and obesity, attention deficit, violence at school, and I think there was something else.

The arguments against TVs are very similar to the older arguments made against letting children have books.

I'm not one to tell anyone how to raise their children (see arguements below about spanking, yikes). This is just my experience... take it or leave it YMMV. My son is only two, and we find that if we let him watch too much TV his behavior takes a dive... more tantrums, less respect/listening to me and mom. As an experiment, we unplugged the TV for several days and the results were immediate and dramatic. Since then, we try to limit his TV time even more so than before. The danger is that he enjoys it, and us parents enjoy the opportunity to take care of other projects around the house without interruption. So if we find the family slipping into TV reliance, we pull the plug for a couple days. Sometimes he's upset at first when he realizes it doesn't work, but he's over it in SECONDS and moves on to something else. I'm not going to bother guessing why this is the case, but our experience is very clear to us.

My personal philosophy is all things in moderation. So if it makes him happy to watch the Wiggles or some old-school Fraggle Rock on DVD, he gets to. But it's the responsiblity of me and mom to keep it reasonable and keep the house a happy place for everyone.

My philosophy is more like "all things thoughtfully". We should care about why TV seems to cause various effects, and what effects unplugging it may have.

For example, suppose a child wants to read a good book, you take it away, and he "gets over it in seconds". Does that mean all is right with the world? No. Whether or not he remains upset about the book, he's still missing out on a wonderful book that could have benefitted him.

One also ought to think about how to correct errors. For example, pulling the plug on the TV avoids any input from someone who might know something you don't (like, your child might know more about how important it is to him to see a particular show). Wouldn't it be better to reach an agreement? The more right you are, the easier that will be, won't it? But if you have made a mistake one time, then getting others to agree will be harder, so you get an opportunity to avoid that error.

I think I agree with you on most counts. Although I'm a little confused by your proposal about the importance of reaching a consensus with the child. Are you refering to older children? As I'm sure you're aware, a child under 2-3 (depending on the child) doesn't have the vocabulary to reach a complex agreement with anyone.

The less a child knows, the easier it is to reach a (simple) agreement. Objecting requires having ideas, not ignorance. I don't think there's usually any reason for a very young child to disagree with his parent frequently since he generally won't have any better ideas than they do. But there are sometimes cases of serious disagreement and it's important not to gloss those over.

The first sentence is an unsubstantiated assumption and, as a parent, I can tell you it's wrong. The less a child knows, the less context they have, so the less room you have to negotiate an agreement. Plus, their knowledge level is intimately tied to their memory span, their language, their capacity to understand their own emotions, and all the things you and I still grapple with, but at least we have more context and language. And even then, if you subscribe to the ideas of George Lakoff, our life experience may be sufficiently divergent that we still can't arrive at an agreement. I think that divergence is what led you to make the original statement, that the less you know the easier it is to reach a simple agreement. It's tempting to follow that one variable, divergence of life experience, back to a singularity, but that neglects the many other variables at play in real life.

Wow, I should read my threads more often. Keep it up! Care to share any updates? More or less TV now? As for us, now, I don't think anyone bothers to open the giant wood box in the living room now unless company's over. I'm thinking about putting a planter in there.

The video equivalent of a book is any imaging screen. Cathode ray tube, LCD, whatever. That's not inherently bad. The social construct of mass one-way transmission coming in through an imaging screen and paid for with advertising, which is ultimately designed to modify your child's thinking, is not healthy in the context of the standard biopsychosocial model of disease. We didn't evolve to handle professional psychological manipulation by the age of two. If we had, then it would be healthy. But we didn't. So it's unhealthy.

As a hacker and father of four (2 grown now) I've read this thread with interest. What books to read as a new dad?

I wouldn't read any books. Or if you must read them, do so with a pinch of salt. Use your instinct. People in books will tell you all sorts of sounds-good things that rarely have any traction in the real world. It's like business tapes and self-help books: they know a bunch of people are out there looking for advice and they're going to pump your head full of something for your twenty bucks whether it works or not.

I am going to try to make a simple observation that I hope is not too controversial. For all of those "I did X,Y, Z and it is so much better" folks, last I checked humans have been making little replacements for millions of years. These replacements have done all sorts of things like introduce philosophy, conquer sickness, sail the oceans, learn to fly, etc. And I guarantee that none of these hundreds of thousands of exceptional cases ever had a parent that read some special book. Perhaps there is a pattern to how they were raised. If so, that empirical data is long lost to history.

So how about this? Try being a human with your kids. Seems to have worked for the rest of history except the last few decades. Might be worth giving it a shot, right? There are plenty of people out there who will read the books for you. Take a look around on this thread. And they will be more than willing to provide you their special "insight" on your situation -- complete with guilt trips, moral bromides, and sing-a-long philosophies. You should get used to these folks anyway, because whatever you do they'll still be there providing you with their counsel. Whether you want it or not.

I hear you, as youre a father, you came to see things differently, im surprised how many people dont act like humans around their kids! that say about common sense being the most uncommon of senses its true.

As anecdotal evidence, some of the worst parents (in my opinion) are those who are committed to being something other than themselves. They try so hard! Whatever the book they're reading, they imitate it almost exactly. They preach it to other parents and they look down their noses at the poor uneducated who haven't found their superior knowledge.

Until the day comes when they've had a bad week, the kid is grouchy, life is bad, etc. Then wham! You got some parent wailing on their child (either emotionally or with corporeal punishment) What does that teach children? Mommy's so inept she needs a book to tell her how to act, and in reality she can't hold it together?

I'd much rather just be myself. If you get angry -- get angry. Kids have to learn to live with angry people from time to time. If you feel grumpy, be grumpy. Geesh. We act like we're raising kids to live in some kind of world that doesn't exist. It just seems way too easy to lose track of common sense, that's all.

"And I guarantee that none of these hundreds of thousands of exceptional cases ever had a parent that read some special book. Perhaps there is a pattern to how they were raised. If so, that empirical data is long lost to history."

While I agree that you should read "with a pinch of salt", that's true for anything you read. But the sentiment that you oughtn't read anything is a bit overstated, it seems. Why?

One would (theoretically) avoid engaging a massive project without understanding the fundamentals of project design / development. Nor ought we, say, start a home renovation project without understanding the basics of construction. While one could certainly _end up_ successfully completing one's objectives, there's a hefty 'dumb tax' to be paid without learning from the mistakes of others.

Child rearing is no different. We don't magically know how to raise children. Some of us are lucky in having had good models in our parents. But even in that instance, a broader basis of knowledge is helpful because your children aren't your parent's children.

Certainly one can go overboard. And certainly some parents latch on to cargo cult science as if it were holy writ. But one can also go too far in the other direction and not read anything.

I was being somewhat rhetorical. But only somewhat. Your statement that "We don't magically know how to raise children" I find to be very interesting. How then, do we learn how to raise children? Certainly parenting is indeed built into the species, as it is in every other species.

I would not go so far as to ban any learning at all, only to understand that there is a financial motive in people giving you advice from self-help books. New parents are nervous, worried about doing the right thing. This is exactly as it should be. In response to this worry the free market provides us with lots of "security blankets" in the form of books and advice to make us feel like we have nothing to worry about. The odd side-effect to this is that people reading different books feel the _other_ people are all full of tripe. Let the baby cry. Don't let the baby cry. Spank the kid. Don't ever spank the kid! Nurture children. Teach children self-reliance. Discipline. Self-exploration.

These are somewhat contradictory to say the least. Here's an idea: when presented with lots of self-contradictory information, look at nature. Nature is neither good nor bad, nor is it necessarily optimized for modern life. But it certainly has worked for eons. Must be something of value going on in there. In fact, I lean towards trusting genetic learning over self-promotion any day.

My opinion only. YMMV. Do not operate heavy machinery while raising your child.

Man, just go with your gut. I've got two kids, 6 and 1.5 (both boys) and they're night and day different. The best advice is to listen to you instincts. You know your kids better than any one else. If it doesn't feel right, it ain't right.

One caveat: ignore any advice that says you shouldn't get your kids vaccinated. The science doesn't hold up and, even if it did, it ignores the concept of relative risk (i.e. you're statistically more likely to be maimed by an uncontrolled case of measles than to get Autism from the MMR vaccine).

http://health.msn.com/kids-health/articlepage.aspx?cp-docume...

That article says that 90% of American parents spank their toddlers. Whatever the real figure is, a lot of people's gut tells them that hitting their children is right.

I agree with the sentiment that you shouldn't try to force some one-size-fits-all formula on your kids when it feels wrong. But we do need reason, frequently.

Fair enough. However, I'm probably going to state what will be an unpopular opinion but one which is, I think, nevertheless true: spanking a child teaches a valuable lesson. I hardly ever do it, and I never do it as a punishment to be meted out later (as in, wait 'till your daddy gets home, then you're going to get it!). In the case where you've got a child who's prone to hit, I think it's reasonable to hit them back. Not with the same force, but it's a valuable lesson to learn that if you hit someone, you're going to get hit back. I don't want my kids to learn that they can physically intimate someone without consequence. Lacking that negative reinforcement, I _think_ you've got a bully in the making.

The reason hitting people is bad is not that you will get hit back. That is one reason, but it's not the most important one, otherwise it'd be ok to hit defenseless people (like one's children).

Hitting people is an ineffective way of life -- it is bad for yourself. When you cooperate, you both win. When you fight, at most one of you wins, and usually you both lose (even if you don't get hurt, peaceful people will now keep their distance).

Fighting is also an irrational approach to conflict resolution. It makes no attempt to have the best idea implemented. Instead, it implements the idea of the physically strongest person. That is not a way to find the truth or to achieve good outcomes.

Spoken like someone who has never reasoned with a two year old.

Only people who try reasoning with two year olds can understand what sort of processes are truth seeking and capable of solving problems and being educational, or not?

Or only people who try reasoning with two year olds get so frustrated that they feel hitting children is best?

Further confirmation that you have not tried to reason with 2 year olds.

Hitting children for discipline is a touchy subject because without a proper motivation behind it, it becomes very inhuman. However, sometimes a child doesn't have a large enough sense of the world to be rational.

For instance, "don't stray very far from me" is a very reasonable command to give to a child because of safety concerns. However, what does a child know about kidnappers, careless drivers, or even the feeling of being lost? The child has to have some experience of these things (not direct, could be through stories, etc) in order to be able to reason why parents give that command. Because you don't have 3 years to explain to the child about the world, you have to have a more direct way of making them obey, and it is hard to think of a better way. Most of the ones you can think of involve some form of pain for the child because humans respond the most to pain first (and reasoning as an afterthought). The non-pain alternatives include letting your child do whatever they want to and take the consequences themselves, spending a lot of time enlarging their sense of the world, or making sure they understand that you mean to do good for them. Granted, nothing is perfect in parenting, and you really have to work with what you're given - that said, if your child won't listen to something that affects their wellbeing, you need to give them a reason to listen.

Discipline is also only a part of parenting. You need to give them love, praise, and someone to look up to. Children dislike their parents when discipline is the only thing they remember when growing up. I want my kids to remember me when growing up, not as a family figurehead, but as a role model for them to grow into or beyond.

so suppose a child doesn't understand what "don't stray very far from me" means (like how far is OK). then imagine a spanking from his perspective. first he's confused, then hurt.

or suppose he doesn't understand why to not stray very far and this makes a mistake about it's importance. then it's first ignorance, second pain.

or suppose he doesn't understand what situations "don't stray very far from me" applies in and which it doesn't. then again, not knowing what his parent wants is followed by pain.

there is no lesson or learning there. what's going on is a lack of communication followed by pain. there isn't even punishing disobedience, because disobedience didn't take place. that's one sort of way spanking can be completely senseless.

now, suppose there was disobedience. is "disobey and i'll hurt you" really the best way to handle that? that's leadership by fear, not leadership by inspiration. you call this "a reason to listen" but it isn't, it's a reason to look for ways to avoid being hurt, whether they are what the parent wants, or not.

Please inspire your 2 year old child to obey your rules.

Seriously, though, at least you can understand where it comes from. And discipline is not just smack smack smack and you're done. Discipline involves telling the child what they did wrong and why.

Your approach is to assume the parent is right, and that his rules must be obeyed. This is not a way to find good ways to proceed on any issue.

A better approach is to recognize that everyone makes mistakes, and the important thing is to institute policies that correct errors. That means rather than spending all your time making your rules be obeyed by any means necessary, there needs to be mechanism so that if you make a mistake you will be corrected (at least if anyone, including your child, is aware of it). This could be called "philosophically enlightened parenting" and it's better because it takes into account what we know about how knowledge is created (including knowledge of what to do in particular situations or how to solve problems in one's life including undesired behavior by one's child). That it doesn't hurt is nice too.

Spanking is not telling what is wrong. If the 2 year old child can not yet understand the rules, how can it be fair to punish them? If it can't understand words, why should it magically understand being hit?

Just go out on the street and look at people walking their dogs. Do you think it makes a lot of sense if those people get angry with their dogs, you know the kind who go "bad doggy" all the time and have full conversations with their dogs? I don't think it does, because dogs can not even understand what these people are saying. They are fooling themselves, and so apparently are you with your communication with kids (I mean it seems to be a human error). (I know the dog can probably understand it did something wrong, even if not WHAT it did wrong, but I hope you know what kind of people I am talking about - a lot of time the human-dog communication just doesn't make sense, but humans somehow fool themselves).

2 year olds have not reached the age of reason. Reasoning with them only gets you a restatement of their desires without any logical context whatsoever:

Daddy, I want to play over there! Son, there's a constant stream of cars going by at 40mph, you will die instantly or be hurt worse than you can possibly imagine. But I WAAANNNT TOOOO...

Spanking (when administered carefully and without angry reaction) seems to be a valid form of behavior modification for a creature that does not have any reasoning ability because it allows aversion to be stored directly in the same part of the brain that is motivating desire. Its probably better to reason with a 9 year old than spank but as the parent states, anyone who thinks that a 2 year old can reason, doesn't have one.

so, if i tell you (and provide evidence) that I am a parent of a 2 year old, will you concede the point? or if i produce other such parents of toddlers who agree with me, will you concede?

Agreed, spanking is viable as long as the child is still young. Also, it should only be done on the flat of the palm or on the buttocks, and not too hard. The goal isn't to inflict pain, but to send the child a message that what he did was wrong.

The kid will most likely cry even though your hitting his/her hand will not really hurt. Its the fact that you're hitting them that they don't like, cause its a negative connotation.

Aside from it, lots of love and affection! Kids need attention while they're young or they'll claim you're a bad parent. They need affirmation.

What criterion did you use for determining which are the best places to hit children?

Oh my god this thread is really shocking! So because you can not reason logically with a two year old, you somehow think that if you spank them, they will make the logical connection? That doesn't add up - either they are capable of understanding, then it shouldn't matter if you say "no" or hit them (in a logical sense, emotionally of course there is a difference). Or they are not capable of making the connection. In which case what you are trying to do is conditioning them, rooting "being hit by daddy" into their nervous system - maiming their soul! I can't believe this thread, really.

It's just another embarrassing thing about America... trying to take away spanking would be worse than trying to take away guns. I think the European countries that have outlawed spanking are much more civilized.

Curi: Do you think states should outlaw spanking, or do anything to discourage it? Or do parents have a fundamental right to hit their children without causing injury, misguided as it may be?

I wonder if "hackers" are more likely to spank their kids because they consider them to be just another hackable system, and whatever works to "modify it's behaviour" is ok? I am completely stunned that this kind of thing has reared it's ugly head on hacker news...

I am confident that the vast majority of people here don't spank their kids; it's just that people who do feel strongly in favor of it and are more likely to speak out.

How are you confident of that? I'd like to be. But I have self-selected friends that don't give me any valid way to extrapolate what proportion of smart hackers advocate spanking. Similarly I don't know how to make a valid estimate of how many people here are atheists.

I have noticed reasonably frequent atheist references, so I think a fair amount of people here are atheists. But parenting comes up rarely, and people often have views on parenting that are poorly integrated with the rest of their personality.

I don't think parents have a fundamental right to hit their children. What about children's rights? And I don't like to analyze things in terms of rights, anyway.

But I don't think spanking should be banned today in the USA. I don't want to make 90% of families (or whatever the number is) into criminals overnight, and make the debate go underground. A ban wouldn't stop spanking; we need to persuade more people first. I do expect that some time in the future we will rightly ban spanking.

I wouldn't object to the State taking steps to discourage spanking, but I don't think the State is really any good at persuasion. Their anti-drug and anti-smoking campaigns and stuff like that don't work.

What we need is for people to start believing that rationality isn't just for doing science, and maybe your job, it's for everything including parenting and relationships. And to learn something about which ways of arguing and thinking are capable of finding better conclusions than you started with, and which aren't.

So "behaviour modification" is what you want to do to your child? Effectively you are mutilating them. Go read some psychology books, please!!!

I have a two year old. He can reason.

"But I WAAANNNT TOOOO..."

'Firstly - that's whining. And you know that you are less likely to get what you want when you whine, don't you?'

'Secondly, the reason you can't go over there is because that road is too dangerous for you to be near at your age. When you're bigger, we'll teach you how to do that more safely and you will be able to.'

[and if over-repeated...]

'Now, if you carry on complaining about that then we'll have to go home/you'll have to go inside/you'll have to go and stand over there as a punishment]. You're making this no fun for me and no fun for you. You can X Y Z which is a decent alternative'

[and never give a threat you're not willing and able to follow through on.]

[Child runs to road...."STOP!" + rugby tackle if need be.]

I don't dispute your right to raise your child as you wish, but I do dispute the reasoning you've demonstrated as your justification for doing so.

I guess my point was not to argue the reasoning power of a 2 year old directly. I think we definitely disagree on this. My point was that spanking creates a visceral aversion to a behavior that is immediate and very different from a reasoned response. There is no "last time I did this I got spanked and so I don't think I'll do it again" thought process, only an automatic nervous response that associates built in pain avoidance with an action.

I'm not here to say when or how much spanking is appropriate. This is for each parent to decide for themselves. I'm just saying that it can and does work where reason fails, and if used appropriately and with discretion, its not the soul-draining horror some alarmists make it out to be.

Are you saying that it can be OK to spank kids who are two years old???? I am completely horrified.

i don't have any children of my own but i lived with my family while my younger brothers were growing up. none of us ever had to hit them. to me hitting a child is a dangerous shortcut to explaining things. if they recognize you care about them, why shouldn't they listen? that's what i saw in my brothers. they listened because they respected, in a true sense, their elders. violence will destroy their respect for you and alienate them

they don't have to understand every word you say because they can hear compassion. i think if violence has to be used in a relationship, it's a broken relationship. but perhaps most parents don't see it as a relationship where respect has to go both ways. if your child is having tantrums against you, and not listening to you, something went wrong long ago, and using that as evidence that children can't be reasoned with is fallacious

I was at Seaworld recently and they talked about they only used primary rewards (ie, food) with their animals rarely. The orcas responded better to all kinds of other feedback: backrubs, ice cubes, warm water, toys.

I've never used spanking on my child.

But I have used a variety of other techniques to express displeasure, ranging from freaked out yelling (in dangerous situations), to removing them from the situation, to denying dessert.

I think that, like primary rewards in animal training or online ads in web startups, spanking represents an unimaginative approach to the problem. The lowest common denominator. The solution you use when you can't come up with anything better.

I expect more than that out of myself and my son.

I was spanked something like 4 or 5 times by my father, and I agree with your action->consequence statements. I made sure to pass on lessons learned to my little brother and sister as well.

My dad and I have been laughing about it for a long time now. I think my sister was only spanked 2 or 3 times. The last time any us of were spanked happened when my she wet her pants in Dad's lap. We laugh a lot about it, actually.

I second this advice.

I have two daughters. The oldest is 4 going on 5, the youngest is closing in on 2. I guess I read the same books as my wife when she was pregnant with our oldest daughter ("What to Expect When You're Expecting", and some encyclopedic books regarding kids development and diseases). But neither of us has really resorted to any kind of manuals since then.

The most surprising thing (to me, at least) about having kids was the realization that they aren't alien creatures or high maintenance robots, but little people with their own very different personalities, even as newborns. And like other people you need to engage them on their level. And the relationship evolves from there.

So I guess my advice here is listen to them first. Read some clinical books to get the facts about sickness and heath, and when to call a doctor, but your let own observations be the main guide. Congratulations!

I try to follow my gut (and my wifes gut), that seems to be the best way; But im sure there are a lot of things our gut wouldnt be good enough just from not having enough information, thats why im trying to reach the collective intelligence on the subject.

actually regarding the MMR vacine, is it possible to get them separately?? i am completely pro-vacination but it is hard to ignore the fear of MMR related autism... what say?

Most of the "evidence" for autism caused by vaccines is statistical manipulation, anecdotes, and scare-mongering. There is perhaps a very remote chance of a correlation but its almost certainly a case of "When I changed the windshield wipers on my car the AC quit. You wiper-villains owe me a new AC!" When bad stuff happens, people desperately grasp for a simple cause they can understand.

Get vaccines. Not only is it the responsible thing to do for your own children, it is the socially responsible thing to do for everyone else's children as well.

As a father the best thing you can do after attending to your daughters immediate needs, is learn more about how to become the kind of father that your daughter needs. After reading the following book I feel better prepared and informed to be a better father.

Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters (http://www.amazon.com/Strong-Fathers-Daughters-Secrets-Fathe...)

I was looked at like a freak when I mentioned this in my pre/post-natal class, but I got a lot out The Language Instinct, by Steven Pinker.

Evolutionary neurobiology is a great way to think about skill acquisition in young children.

Haha, unless something monstrous is going on, it would be a couple years, maybe more, before little kids can understand that book!

By the way, what is this pre/post-natal class?

I was part of a very Cambridge nutty-crunch-granola class called "Hypnobirthing" run by the midwifery clinic we used.

The pre- part was a lot of learning about the techniques and how to use them.

The post- was a get together with lots of very young kids with parents talking about what worked and what didn't.

That actually seems like a fantastic class. Outside of the classroom, where would one get the same amount/quality of information?

And, do you follow related research? Does it fit?

We have a 10 month old, a six, and eight y-o. Here are some books that have helped us:

The Happiest Baby on the Block: The New Way to Calm Crying and Help Your Newborn Baby Sleep Longer (Paperback) by Harvey Karp

Parenting Beyond Belief: On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids Without Religion by Dale McGowan

Just try to spend as much time with her as you can! The best is to take a deep breath and take full responsibility of your baby for a few hours, just two of you. This helps the create a very special relation between all three of you, while helping poor mum to recover a bit. We did it with our younger kid from the second month as my wife studied on each Saturday for 8 hours or more. From our experience this is a real booster. Be brave!

When my children were small, I found the Berkeley Parents Network[1] to be a good source of information.

[1] http://parents.berkeley.edu

I liked "Super Parents Super Children" (http://www.amazon.com/Super-Parents-Children-Frances-Kendall...)

From their book description: Provides the libertarian answer to solving all your child-raising problems, based on self-discipline and freedom of choice.

I definitely lean to towards free market solutions, but the more I see libertarianism defined as an ideology that applies in everything from market pricing to child raring the less I like it. Whoever called it the Marxism of the right was spot on when it comes to things like this.

With an ideological framework you can define certain things to be true without reference to reality, and suddenly you're arguing that reality is failing to live up to your theory and not the other way round. Anything that claims to provide insight into a topic but uses an ideological lens to get there is fundamentally flawed.

libertarians frequently take positions like "I own the TV, so it's my decision if/when it will be used." How does this book handle that sort of issue?

(Note: I am generally libertarian-oriented and this kind of position is often taken by people I otherwise respect.)

Here are some quotes from the book which may provide more insight:

"Children are rational and logical, and want to be happy, just as we do."

"The only important difference between adults and children is experience."

"The three main qualities you need to foster in your child's personality are independence, self-esteem and individuality."

"In order to prevent your children from harming your belongings, you need to establish exactly what property belongs to whom in your home.... A working example would be to decide that your child's room, toys and clothes are his property."

Baby Wise. I'd swear by 95% of it.

I'd be curious which 5% you don't swear by.

mostly CYA, because I can't remember all of it anymore. I do remember thinking "we'll do it a little differently than it says". There wasn't anything in the book that I can recall that I thought was completely wrong, though.

I have a 15 mo girl.

My wife read lots of books. I read a few. With a few exceptions, the books have been a waste of time and money. So many of the books in this genre have the feel of the Learn Blub in 21 Days line of programming books. Accept from the get-go that parenting is hard, there are no silver bullets, and you are going to spend a lot of time and energy if you want to do a good job, and filter anything you read from that perspective.

Nevertheless, we did find some helpful books. The most useful books we have are a reference book given to us by our pediatrician and a book about baby sign language (The following link is to the revised edition, which is not the one we have, but it's cheaper on amazon http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Signs-Revised-Linda-Acredolo/dp/B...).

We went through a lot of "the book says" conversations early on, especially related to getting her to sleep. The thing to realize here is that it is up to you how to do it. There's a book out there that will support your position, and many of the books are contradictory. So, in the end, you'll end up having to decide what you think is right. The book many parents find useful is merely the one that reinforces their opinion, and they will use that book to appeal to authority in the passive-aggressive conversations that all new parents seem wont to have.

I had trouble finding what I felt like were unbiased opinions on sleep in particular. This book: http://www.amazon.com/Healthy-Sleep-Habits-Happy-Child/dp/03... was helpful, mostly because it more or less laid out three approaches and passed few, if any, value judgements on going to the baby vs. letting her cry herself to sleep.

In the end, I decided I couldn't stand to let her cry, so we settled on developing a very predictable routine at bedtime, and it has worked well. We have had our bumpy patches, particularly during illnesses, teething, and major milestones, but in general my child looks forward to bedtime and naps.

The sign language seems somewhat controversial among our peers, but we are in the less progressive southeastern US. The common fear is that it will retard speech. I just wanted to be able to communicate with my child, and it has made for a pleasant experience so far. She seems to be developing vocbulary at an above normal rate. I don't necessarily attribute that to signs, but it is at least one counterexample to the fear of significant speech retardation.

+1 for healthy sleep habits, happy child. Also recommend Happiest Baby on the Block (http://www.amazon.com/o/asin/0553381466/pchristensen-20)

Not a book recommendation, but I suggest playing classical music often :)

We do that a lot! since pregnancy, in the afternoons, and while bathing her.

Congratulations!

Read the Ferber sleep book. The details matter.

Seconded.

I seem to remember Emotional Intelligence being strongly against ferberization. Not positive though. In any event I'd recommend taking a quick look through the relevant journal articles to make sure you aren't going to be stunting your children's emotional development.

The Ferber method involves leaving your child, alone, even if he's crying. And you do it for progressively longer periods of time no matter how unpleasant he finds it.

To all those who commented negatively on the book (and especially the person who voted me down):

Have you actually read it? And have you tried the methods? I have read the book, and can vouch for its methods. Yes, the baby cries, and you have to let it cry. It's not easy. But after a while, the baby stops and goes to sleep. And after a few nights (it took mine ~3 nights, with less crying each night), they learn to fall asleep by themselves.

Believe me, when you have a baby who needs its parents by its side for hours before going to sleep, you might view the book differently.

"don't object to making children cry until you've tried it"

read "the no cry sleep solution" by Pantley, Sears

it works, and you don't need to make your baby cry alone every night.

I'll admit I didn't read the book. But I used a variant that worked spectacularly well.

It took a(very, very long) three nights to get my kid to sleep on his own. Each time he awoke and cried for me, I waited about 2 minutes, then I went to his room, comforted him and put him back to bed. And then left.

Lather, rinse, repeat every 10 minutes all night.

By the third night, he'd figured out that whenever he called, I'd show up. And then didn't feel like he needed to!

I read http://www.takingchildrenseriously.com/ and its email list. (Note: website not updated recently.)

I also write about parenting. Try

http://www.curi.us/archives/list_category/50

http://www.curi.us/archives/list_category/6

It's not especially organized and other topics are mixed in. I also write to the email list above.

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