Customer Reviews

Dear Parent: Caring for Infants with Respect

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"DEAR PARENT" presents a simple yet ground-breaking, natural yet thought-provoking way to raise your child. Magda Gerber's philosophy of respect for your infant -- and for yourself as a parent -- changed my life. It transformed me from a baffled, overwhelmed new mother to a confident, fulfilled one.

Magda taught me that if I fully focused on my baby during "caring times" (feeding, diapering, bathing), I didn't have to 'teach' her how to sit, crawl, walk, talk or play. When she was ready to do those things, she did so naturally. And she owned them. I learned to let my child's play time be hers, a time to follow her own curiosity and direciton without interruption. The joy I found in observing my child and her discoveries helped me to survive the loneliness and doldrums of parenting an infant/toddler. My child is still inclined to spend long periods of time without TV, videos, or suggestions from me, entertaining and educating herself with self-initiated activities, creations, and daydreams.

"DEAR PARENT" is packed with Magda Gerber's wisdom from a lifetime of observations and writings. It can change forever the way you view infants, toddlers, all other human beings. Communicating with your child, taking his or her unspoken feelings into account from Day One, establishes a relationship based on mutual respect. This book is the perfect gift for a new or expectant parent, especially one who is willing to use common sense in parenting, foregoing all the latest baby gimmicks and contraptions. "DEAR PARENT" will inspire you (as Magda says) to "do less, enjoy more".

Gerber's recommendations for caring for infants are direct and to the point, without the "come on, just try it" tone that baby experts sometimes fall into. She doesn't need to talk me into using her approach because it struck me immediately on a gut level that if I were an infant, I would want to be treated this way. Heck, as an adult I want to be treated this way.

She recommends simple, profound gestures that you can use from day one to show your infant that her feelings and preferences are important to you. They include telling your baby what you are going to do before you do it [ie. "Mommy's going to pick you up now"] and other basic ways to connect with your baby as a separate being rather than an object.

I've read Dr. Sears, Burton White, Penelope Leach, and others. There's useful nuts-and-bolts stuff with those other authors, but Magda Gerber's "Dear Parent: Caring for Infants with Respect" is a must-have addition to your parenting library.

This book takes a couple of hours to read and will make a huge improvement in my approach to parenting.

Magda Gerder's approach to caring for an infant with respect is a WONDERFUL approach to parenting. I am so glad I found this book. If you're looking for a parenting book from birth to age 3, GET THIS!!! It is worth reading!! The nuts and bolts to Gerber's approach is treating your baby like a person- with RESPECT. She explains the importance of observing, how to handle those "sticky" situations (for example when your child bits), and why it is important to talk to your baby. Gerbers idea of respecting an infant sounds "commen sense" but you realize when you read this how often parents are not necessarily "respectful". In this day of running here and there, Gerber slows us parents down and brings a true enjoyment to being parents. Her approach to parenting is not only respectful to the infant but also to the parent! In the end you have a child that respects you and you that respect the child- not so bad!! I have a truelly wonderful relationship with my daughter, thank you Magda Gerber. I highly recommend this book!

This is a good book to have if you have already read Your Self-Confident Baby, actually written by Magda Gerber, and are an enthusiast. It's a series of essays and talks given by Gerber and edited by someone else into a semi-coherent guide. It's the first book we read on the subject, and taking the theory of respect into practice has made a giant difference in our interactions with our son, but we were both annoyed by the occasionally hectoring tone. I have just finished the Self-Confident Baby, and found it to be more coherent, more comprehensive, more sympathetic, and all around more useful. I definitely recommend the RIE method to any new parent or grandparent, it's made a world of difference in the level of peace in our household with our (very) active son, but start with the other book.

This book is a great introduction to the RIE philosophy. If you think treating your baby with respect, allowing him the space to explore and learning to read his cues are worthy parenting goals, this is the book for you. It is short and to the point. The writing is not as good as Your Self-Confident Baby: How to Encourage Your Child's Natural Abilities from the Very Startwhich was written my Magda Gerber (the founder of RIE) along with journalist Allison Johnson. That said, it is a great summery of the RIE concepts.
Dr. Jenn Berman
www.DoctorJenn.com
Author of The A to Z Guide to Raising Happy, Confident Kids

Who would ever have thought that the same generation that produced super-authoritarian parents would also produce some of the most compassionate advocates of children!

Having been raised in a home that had measures of super-strictness tempered with some respect, I can say that Magda addresses all the things I wished for as a child: someone to let me know I was worth paying attention to, a lot of "permission" to do things for myself when *I* felt ready, and lots of compassion.

Ms. Gerber most definitely asks the reader to consider treating those newest among us with the same care and dignity that we treat our friends--BUT she does NOT advocate letting the little ones run roughshod over us. Instead, she reminds the adults to *be* the adult and care for their own needs as well as those of the children...and wonder of wonders she advocates a way that LOWERS the stress of all involved! Cheer, cheer!

This is a wonderful book to have in your "toolkit" of child-caring techniques, and I find that the chapters are short and easy to refresh me in my goals during a few minutes read. I would recommend it for almost everyone...but not for those who believe children are at heart evil little wretches filled with "original sin" that we must beat out of them. This book won't fit that philosophy.

One may think this is a 'radical' approach to child rearing when in fact it is truly common sensical and down-to-earth. Many books written today about methods of parenting are fairly new (for example Baby Wise) and the long term implications to the kids who are subjected to these 'experiments' and fads are not known. This author has dedicated her life to this research and has worked with others who have been caring for infants this way since our parents were babies (for some of us, even since our grandparents were babies). One reviewer says this method should be called "hands off" parenting. That is not an accurate way to portray it. Since reading this I have actually been better at tuning in to and understanding my son's needs. I've read this and Magda Gerber's "Your Self Confident Baby". Both are great but I prefer the way this one is written. I have read books about and am familiar with several other styles of parenting and I cannot see how any of them are better for the baby than this one. Parents will really be doing themselves and their kids a huge service to read and comprehend this method. It truly is an investment in their future. Observing the infant does take practice but it really is rewarding, so be sure and give it some time.

If I were to choose just one book to give a new or expectant parent, this would be it. The foundation of Magda Gerber's philosophy is respect. How do we treat even a very young infant with respect? This book shares how to have respectful interactions with babies, helping to lay the foundation for healthy, respectful relationships. I've read lots of books about infants and toddlers and this tops them all. It's straightforward and easy to read, and gave me a foundation from which to make all sorts of parenting decisions.

This book has totally outraged me. Sure, the suggestions for talking to your baby as a person and explaining what you are going to do are great...but most of us do that anyway. Gerber's ideas (and the way she relates them) are scientifically unfounded. She claims that taking your baby for a walk is a "frenetic" way of parenting, and completely misses the point of safe and healthy "babywearing". Her ideas about giving infants "space" simply don't match up with infant development, and the examples she cites in the book are almost cultish comments by parents describing how they ignore their own instincts and recount what "Magda says" and how they "trust Magda". If you want a book that gives hard evidence and cites sources try "Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent."

I found this book to be a great support. I try to follow the works of Magda on a daily basis. She is a women who I highly respect. I really encourage parents nation wide, not just in California to read and learn from this book.