Your Self-Confident Baby: How to Encourage Your Child's Natural Abilities from the Very Start [Paperback]

Allison Johnson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 1997

"At long last -- Magda Gerber's wisdom and spice captured in a book --what a treasure! Now parents and caregivers everywhere can benefit from learning what it means to truly respect babies."
--Janet Gonzalez-Mena, Author of Infants, Toddlers, and Caregivers and Dragon Mom

"Magda Gerber's approach will deepen your understanding of your baby and help you truly appreciate the complexity, competence, and amazing capacities of the small human being for whom you are caring."
--Jeree H. Pawl, Ph.D. Director, Infant-Parent Program University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine

As the founder of Resources for Infant Educarers (RIE), Magda Gerber has spent decades helping new mothers and fathers give their children the best possible start in life. Her successful parenting approach harnesses the power of this basic fact: Your baby is unique and will grow in confidence if allowed to develop at his or her own pace. The key to successful parenting is learning to observe your child and to trust him or her to be an initiator, an explorer, a self-learner with an individual style of problem solving and mastery.

Now you can discover the acclaimed RIE approach. This practical and enlightening guide will help you:

• Develop your own observational skills
• Learn when to intervene with your baby and when not to
• Find ways to connect with your baby through daily caregiving routines such as feeding, diapering, and bathing
• Effectively handle common problems such as crying, discipline, sleep issues, toilet training, and much more.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Excellent ideas for fostering closeness and healthy independence... easy to browse format of anecdotes and information arranged in chronological order. -- Children's Literature, 1998, by Deborah Zink Roffino

Readers will find plenty of wisdom and common sense on these pages. -- Publisher's Weekly, January 1998

This book gave me a practical guide to giving my children enough room... has been an amazing resource for me. -- O, Oprah's Magazine, May 2005, by Felicity Huffman

From the Publisher

Here is the "RIE" method, the increasingly popular, common-sense approach to child-raising, created by a renowned infant specialist and founder of Resources for Infant Educarers. Explains how to use observation as the main tool for growth and learning, when to intervene and when to encourage independence, how to connect with a baby through daily tasks, and how to build trust, endurance and optimism in a child.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 236 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (December 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471178837
• ISBN-13: 978-0471178835
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #113,399 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great philiosophy in easy-to-read book, April 15, 2003

By 

J. Hayles (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Your Self-Confident Baby: How to Encourage Your Child's Natural Abilities from the Very Start (Paperback)

This book explores the "proper" method to raise a child who is self-confident and respectful. I know there is no "right" way to raise a child but I feel the more informed I am the better my decisions will be. This book employs a philisophy the author terms RIE (pronounce WRY)-Resources for Infant Educarers. RIE adheres to the following principles:

* Basic trust in the child to be an initiator, an explorer, and a self-learner

* Time for uninterrupted play

* An environmnet for the child that is physically safe, cognitively challenging, and emotionally nurturing

* Involvement of the child in all caregiving activities to allow it to become an active participant rather than a passive recipient

* Sensitive observation of the child in order to understand her needs

* Consistency and clearly defined limits and expectations to develop discipline

A couple of examples given in the book covers getting your child to sleep and communication. RIE recommends that you always put your child to bed awake. Why? Babies are aware of their surroundings. If a baby is lying in the living room and wakes up in a bed, it is confusing for the child. Another example is talking to your child. When you are going to change a diaper, it's recommended that you communicate this to your child and ask for her cooperation. This allows the child the opportunity to process this information and prepare for the activity as well as enable them to become a participant rather than a recipient.

I finished this book and found it extremely illuminating. For me, the things that stood out (i.e., things I didn't think about while around babies) are:

* Talk to the Baby, not about it

* Treat the Baby as a person not as an object. They have feelings and those feelings should be respected. If you want to do something to the baby, ask first. By asking, you are able to establish a routine (an area where children thrive) and they know exactly what to expect.

* Crying is Okay! Babies can't talk so they must cry to communicate. Instead of "hushing" or "quieting" a crying baby, let the baby cry and try to observe what is wrong with it. By immediately picking up the child, you are telling the child that what is really wrong (e.g., you are grumpy) is not important and being quiet is.

I am sure that some will disagree with this book and some will agree. I found this book right on in its approach and have decided to employ this philosophy with our first child. Gerber writes in a converstaional tone with easy-to-understand wording and structure. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in parenting!

31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Your Self-Confident Baby, May 31, 2000

By 

Mikaelah Morocco - See all my reviews

This review is from: Your Self-Confident Baby: How to Encourage Your Child's Natural Abilities from the Very Start (Paperback)

I read this book when my son was 14 months old and began implementing Magda Gerber's philosphy of respect for infants and toddler's. It is amazing to my husband and myself how easy it was to gain the cooperation of our little boy just by explaining what we would be doing and giving him time to participate in his own care.

Primary times for interacting with your child are diapering, feeding and bathing. These times are no longer tasks to be hurried through, but moments of communication and interaction that set the stage for a lifetime of relating.

The book also addresses the needs of parents. It is the first book I have read that truly deals with the family as a unit. Realizing that parents also have needs and are better at parenting when these needs for rest and time apart from the infant are met was very helpful.

Also helpful were the ideas around creating safe areas for Noah to play in ... both indoors and out as a way for him to have space and time alone.

Allowing Noah to have his feelings when something comes up that doesn't suit him was another area that the book deals with. It is ok to be mad or upset or uncomfortable...and as a parent not to distract my son from being upset, which seems to be a knee-jerk response at times. It never occurred to me that just acknowleging Noah's feelings was enough. I didn't have to give in to all the demands to keep peace in the house. In fact, our home is very peaceful since implementing Gerber's ideas.

This is more than just a parenting book. It has helped me be more present with my son.

I only wish I would have discovered this book before we had our son so that I could have done some of the things she suggests earlier in Noah's life.

It is a book that I enthusiastically recommend.

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The perfect "new parent" gift!, May 10, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Your Self-Confident Baby: How to Encourage Your Child's Natural Abilities from the Very Start (Paperback)

Nearly everyday my husband thanks me for having discovered this book (and the RIE approach). It has taught us to be more patient, trusting, and "present" parents. In my desire to be the perfect mother, I could easily see myself doing everything for my son, but this book helped me see how that was exactly NOT what my son wants from me. Learning to offer choices and explaining consequences has given us a positive model for teaching and discipling. And unlike anything else I've read, this approach has taught me that it's perfectly ok if my son and I don't agree on everything -- I can still do what I need/want to do and he can have his own feelings about it without me needing to distract him out what he is expressing (geez, what a complicated way of saying that if he wants to cry while I take a shower, that's ok for both of us!) By modeling respect (most of the time), we are teaching our child how important and capable he is. And so far the "terrible twos" are anything but!! Thank you Magda for devoting your life to infants -- and thank you Allison for sharing her theories with us! I have given or lent this book to every new parent I know with the full confidence that they will pick up at least one thing that will forever affect the way they raise their precious new baby!!