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Calm and Attached
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16753 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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9 / 1989 |
4,834 Words |
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William Sears, M.D.
William Sears, a father of seven, is a pediatrician in
practice in San Clemente, California. He is an assistant
professor of pediatrics at the University of Southern
California, a monthly columnist for Baby Talk Magazine, and
the author of ten books on parenting, including Creative
Parenting, Nighttime Parenting, The Fussy Baby, Growing
Together, Christian Parenting and Child Care, and Baby
Wearing. |
For centuries, creative parents have used a variety of slings, swings, and other things to calm fussy babies. Mastering the fine art of baby calming is a skill valued in every culture and necessary to every species. Now, promises Dr. William Sammons in his book The Self-Calmed Baby, the heat is off parents. Babies can be taught to calm themselves.
This book is bound to produce controversy. Parent-centered groups will welcome it as liberating them from the "incessant demands" of a fussy baby, and they will believe its promises that a self-reliant and independent child will result. Infant-centered groups and those mothers who have the choice and luxury of being full-time parents will regard The Self-Calmed Baby as yet another book that promotes untimely mother-baby separation. Actually, both groups will find suitable information in Sammons' book.
In an age when producing superbabies is much in vogue, The Self-Calmed Baby takes some of the pressure off achieving the impossible dream of being the perfect parent who produces the perfect infant. This book puts infant stimulation--the infant-care buzzword for the eighties--into perspective, advising parents to strive for a proper balance between stimulation and bombardment by knowing when to intervene and when to give the infant time and space to self-calm. I have always enjoyed books that emphasize parents' roles as playful companions and sensitive nurturers rather than super educators. In the early months of infancy, parents are often confused and uncertain about what to do--asking themselves, for example, whether to "pick him up or let him cry." The Self-Calmed Baby attempts to promote a balance between inappropriate overresponse and insensitive
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