Me, Myself and I: How Children Build Their Sense of Self : 18 to 36 Months

by Kyle D. Pruett

Offers advice to parents on how to enhance a child's emotional development by encouraging playtime and stressing the importance of nurturing to stimulate cognitive growth

Genres: Parenting

228 pages, Hardcover

First published May 25, 1999

About the author

Dr. Pruett has been a distinguished educator at the graduate, undergraduate and distance-learning level for three decades and has served the Child Study Center as Director of Medical and Undergraduate Studies and member of School of Medicine’s Curriculum Committee. He is an international expert and forensic consultant on child, parental and family development, paternal involvement, children’s mental health, creativity and the effects of trauma, media and divorce on young and very young children. Founder of the Yale Conference on Fatherhood, and the Harris Professional Development Network for Training in Early Intervention and Research, and was co-chair of the Child Custody Conflict Placement Committee of the Child Study Center and the Yale Law School.

Reviews

[Teddee · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Goddard Parenting Guides are meant for parents but they're a distillation of current academic research and written by psych professors who specialize in child psychology.

The thesis of these books is essentially that parenting in the 0-3 years age range should be based on developing a close connected and active relationship with the child, which is critical to the
development of the brain pathways that the child will have for the rest of their life during this period of superactive brain pathway formation. Rather than discipline, the emphasis is on relationship
development, empathy, understanding and connection with the child.

Chapter 8 Limits and Affection is a must read for parents going into the "terrible twos". This chapter will make it easier for parents to handle the terrible twos, but more importantly, this chapter explains the psychological significance of what is going on in the toddler's brain, and how parental guidance and consistently setting limits during this period will have a lasting impact on the child's ability to self-regulate in the future.

[jacky]

I got this as a gift from the Maine Healthy Families program.