Understanding Your Baby: A Week-By-Week Development & Activity Guide For Playing With Your Baby From Birth to 12 Months Paperback – March 21, 2018

If only I could go back in time, this is the kind of book of wisdom I was always looking for as a formative parent. Although I have acquired a large collection of parenting books, I never found what I was really looking for: a book about Understanding Your Baby, a book that respects the newly hatched child as an individual, worthy of respect, who should always be consulted first as an “expert” in their own individual developmental process.Ms. Marinovich has accomplished what others seem to have neglected: the practical foundations of learning for infants and the very young. As parents and caretakers, even if we have prior experience, we can all use guidance, reassurance, and review of this most important of activities.This book can help us to better understand our children, to decipher their earliest communications, and to recognize how to then integrate their significant earliest perspectives as we strive to be the best parents we can be.Although I am now in my later sixties, I have immediately benefited from this book. As a family therapist for 34 years and a longtime group leader for the innovative Program for Early Parent Support in Seattle, I remain active in my own efforts to help those who are new to parenting as well as non-parents who wish to enhance their knowledge and abilities in this area.I have already bought 3 copies of this book to add to my own client lending library. I anticipate that Understanding Your Baby will rapidly become a bestseller and ultimately a classic, the sort of text that will be assigned reading for parent preparation programs as well as academic training courses in psychology, early childhood education, physical and occupational therapy, nursing and medicine, and certainly speech and language pathology.Thank you, Ms. Marinovich, for composing such a useful resource and for connecting it to the growing strengthinwords online community!

After learning that I was expecting my first child, I felt overwhelmed by the amount of literature available about parenting and early childhood development. Reading “Understanding Your Baby was a reassuring revelation.Ayelet Marinovich is a pediatric speech-language pathologist who has successfully incorporated her love of music, child development research, and social interaction into an online community/educational resource center (Strength in Words). Now her curriculum is packed into this handy, highly enjoyable book!Here’s what I appreciated most:- It’s authoritative yet approachable: Ayelet combines her professional knowledge with her personal experiences as a mom. You can hear her straightforward, warm voice as you read. Refreshingly, she doesn’t advocate one “right” way to parent, nor does she claim that her book is an all-encompassing guide.- It’s equal parts art and science: There are plenty of research studies cited so the material is evidence-based, and the book pairs the development milestones with creative activity ideas. For example, once your baby is ready, at 12 weeks, to “classify” things, the book offers a bunch of fun ways to explore “themes” together.- It’s quality over quantity: The book isn’t gimmicky, nor does it push the “latest” learning toys. It’s all about how to have simple, high-quality interactions. You don’t need to be crafty or rich to play any of the games, phew.- It’s formatted to be a week-by-week guide: Follow along one week at a time and there are helpful bonus materials, too.

Helpful for 1st baby

Love this book for a great week-by-week guide that has helped me come up with ideas for how to support my baby in his development through play and simple activities. I love the layout and how easy it is to pop back into this book whenever I need a little inspiration for play without the overwhelm of having to read dense chapters. All of the suggestions are easily actionable so I can go back to focusing on spending my time with my little one! Love it!

Simple ideas to expand on your child’s development. Easy and manageable to read. I added it to my calendar to read each week to follow along with my twins. It gave me one area to focus on when playing with them.

As a life coach for moms, I'm always looking for resources to share with my clients to help them manage and enjoy motherhood. This book is definitely going on my list! Understanding Your Baby is well-organized, researched, and written so parents can easily get great information based on their children's ages. It's filled with fun activities and ideas on how parents can engage, play, and encourage their children's development.

I’m not sure how I feel about this book. It provides good information but I find the poor formatting distracting. A lot of the advice is redundant and given the grammatical errors, I’m left wondering if I should bother finishing it...

This book is amazing to provide ideas to stimulate your baby's learning. It is concise and to the poitn. And if you are in a rush, the most important concepts are bolded. Highly recommend!

This book is great because it takes a very non-judgemental, low pressure approach to explaining what types of play might benefit your baby through the stages of their first year. Unlike many guides I’ve come across on various parenting topics, this one won’t stress you out and instead provides research based insights and ideas of ways to play using basic household items or the world around you. Definitely saved me some money on daft on-trend toy purchases.Also written in a week by week format for the whole year, so very easy to just pick up and read a bite sized amount of interest. I was reading it once a week for the first few months after my daughter was born and we tried a lot of things from the book, and it helped me become more imaginative on my own in time. I plan to buy the next book for the toddler stage now we’re close to my daughter being one, as we have continued to refer to this book all the way through and it’s provided both reassurance, insight and good value for money. I highly recommend, especially to those feeling the pressure of what is the “right” thing to be doing to help your baby develop

Wonderful resource for parents! Our 5 month old baby is awake and alert for long stretches now, and we can tell he's ready to learn and play, but often run out of ideas. This book is fantastic for giving us ideas on how to engage with and play with our baby. The activities are clearly explained, and backed by research. It's great to have fun with our baby, and feel confident that we're helping his development. Highly recommended!!

I really like the week by week approach to guide you through baby care as your baby develops. The advice seems to be sensible and evidence based where possible

I like that this book is short and sweet and to the point. I am reading it one section at a time to follow my baby’s development week by week. Well researched and evidence-based. 4 stars because it is a great companion to other baby development books like The Wonder Weeks - it‘s not my go-to reference book. But there are lots of good ideas within of activities and ways to interact with your baby.