Your Baby & Child

The classic—beloved, trusted, best-selling—guide to baby and child care completely redesigned and revised for a new generation of parents • From Penelope Leach, "a luminary in the world of child development" (The Boston Globe)

Penelope Leach has helped millions of parents raise their children for more than forty years with her thoroughly researched, practical, baby-led advice, her wise, empathic, and sensible perspective, and her comforting voice.
 
This new edition has been completely redesigned for today’s parents. Leach has revised the text to reflect the latest research on child development and learning as well as societal changes and the realities of our current world.
 
Your Baby & Child is essential—a bible—for every new parent. In easy to follow stages from birth through age five (newborn, settled baby, older baby, toddler, young child), Your Baby & Child addresses parents’ every concern over the physical, emotional, and psychological well-being of their baby. Areas covered: feeding; physical growth and everyday care; sleeping; excreting and toilet mastery; crying and comforting; muscle power; seeing and understanding; hearing and learning to speak; playing and learning and thinking; learning how to behave.“The Dr. Spock of our age.” —The Guardian
 
“The child-rearer’s bible.”  —The Independent               

“A luminary in the world of child development” —The Boston Globe
 
“The core of wisdom [in Your Baby & Child] is astounding—Leach’s deep scientific knowledge of child development is paired with an uncommon amount of heart and sympathy for the state of being a child. She also makes you examine your own ways with a clearer eye.” —The New York Times (one of eight books recommended for Harry & Meghan to read on the birth of their first child in 2019)
 
"Your Baby & Child is pre-eminently the thinking parent's guide, encouraging not just sensible reflexes but subtle reflection." —The New York Times Book Review

"A wonderful book. Well researched, well written, and sensitive to both parents' and children's needs in the task of growing up together." —T. Berry Brazelton, M.D.PENELOPE LEACH is a research psychologist and one of the world’s leading experts in child development and upbringing. She has two children and six grandchildren and is a lifelong advocate for parents and children. Her books include Your Baby & Child; Babyhood; Children First; Childcare Today, When Parents Part and Transforming Infant Wellbeing. She is a fellow of the British Psychological Society, a founding member and trustee of AiMH UK—the UK branch of the World Association for Infant Mental Health (WAIMH)—and has held honorary positions in professional organizations and charities working for families on both sides of the Atlantic.The Importance of Reading to Children
A web-exclusive guide for parents written by Penelope Leach, Ph.D.


When parents read aloud to their children, everyone wins. It's fun for the adult and great for the kids. Easy for you and good for them. You don't even have to ration it because, unlike TV or ice cream, there's no such thing as too much.

There's no such thing as too early, either. If you wait until pre-school to start reading to your children, you'll have missed out on years. If you even wait until they can talk, you'll have missed out on months. Start showing your baby pictures and telling her about them as soon as she focuses her eyes on the pattern on your sweater or the change-mat.

"Reading" to tiny babies is a way of talking to them; and talking not only speeds brain development, but cements relationships as well. Make sure that anyone who ever cares for your baby takes reading to her for granted."Reading" to older babies is a way of expanding their experience. You can't always find a real cat or truck or fried egg to tell him about, but you can always find their pictures in books. And linking the sight of things with the sounds of their names boosts language learning.

Reading to toddlers is education and loving and talking and fun. It's about language itself and discovering the joys of jokes and rhymes and huge long words that roll round the tongue and trip it up. It's about learning to "read" pictures to find the meanings of words or the answers to questions hiding behind those thrilling pull-tabs: where's the kitten gone? There he is...And eventually it's about the sheer, entrancing magic of stories unfolding between the pictures and the voice; playing to a dawning imagination, a fledgling ability to put herself in someone else's place.

And reading to pre-schoolers is all that, plus a welcome to our culture where everything--even on the information highway--revolves around the written word. Pictures on the page are his introduction to print; being read to helps him toward written language, now, just as it helped him toward spoken language two years ago.

Once your kids are hooked on being read to, they will never be bored if somebody will read, and since there are bound to be times when nobody will read and they are bored, they'll have the best possible reason to learn to read themselves.

Reading to themselves isn't a signal to stop reading to them, though. Whether your child is five or seven or nine years old when he starts to read stories to himself for pleasure, the mechanics of the words will still get between him and their enthralling sounds and meanings. Read just one more chapter; one more poem. You have nothing to lose and your kids have everything to gain.