Toddlers

The Happiest Toddler on the Block: The New Way to Stop the Daily Battle of Wills and Raise a Secure and Well-Behaved One- to Four-Year-Old

Toddlers can drive you bonkers…so adorable and fun one minute…so stubborn and demanding the next! Yet, as unbelievable as it sounds, there is a way to turn the daily stream of “nos” and “don’ts” into “yeses” and hugs…if you know how to speak your toddler’s language. In one of the most useful advances in parenting techniques of the past twenty-five years, Dr. Karp reveals that toddlers, with their immature brains and stormy outbursts, should be thought of not as pint-size people but as pintsize…cavemen.

Having noticed that the usual techniques often failed to calm crying toddlers, Dr. Karp discovered that the key to effective communication was to speak to them in their own primitive language. When he did, suddenly he was able to soothe their outbursts almost every time! This amazing success led him to the realization that children between the ages of one and four go through four stages of “evolutionary” growth, each linked to the development of the brain, and each echoing a step in prehistoric humankind’s journey to civilization:

• The “Charming Chimp-Child” (12 to 18 months): Wobbles around on two legs, grabs everything in reach, plays a nonstop game of “monkey see monkey do.”
• The “Knee-High Neanderthal” (18 to 24 months): Strong-willed, fun-loving, messy, with a vocabulary of about thirty words, the favorites being “no” and “mine.”
• The “Clever Caveman” (24 to 36 months):
Just beginning to learn how to share, make friends, take turns, and use the potty.
• The “Versatile Villager” (36 to 48 months): Loves to tell stories, sing songs and dance, while trying hard to behave.

To speak to these children, Dr. Karp has developed two extraordinarily effective techniques:
1) The “fast food” rule—restating what your child has said to make sure you got it right;
2) The four-step rule—using gesture, repetition, simplicity, and tone to help your
irate Stone-Ager be happy again.

Once you’ve mastered “toddler-ese,” you will be ready to apply behavioral techniques specific to each stage of your child’s development, such as teaching patience and calm, doing time-outs (and time-ins), praise through “gossiping,” and many other strategies. Then all the major challenges of the toddler years—including separation anxiety, sibling rivalry, toilet training, night fears, sleep problems, picky eating, biting and hitting, medicine taking — can be handled in a way that will make your toddler feel understood. The result: fewer tantrums, less yelling, and, best of all, more happy, loving time for you and your child.


From the Hardcover edition.

What to Expect the Toddler Years

They guided you through pregnancy, they guided you through baby's first year, and now they'll guide you through the toddler years. In a direct continuation of What to Expect When You're Expecting (over 9.6 million copies in print) and What to Expect the First Year (over 5.6 million copies in print), America's bestselling pregnancy and childcare authors turn their uniquely comprehensive, lively, and reassuring coverage to years two and three.

Organized month by month for the second year (months 12-24) and quarterly through the third year (months 24-36), What to Expect the Toddler Years covers each growth and development phase parents are likely to encounter-when they're likely to encounter it. Hundreds of questions and answers treat everything from eating and sleeping problems to day care, tantrums, bottle mouth, shyness, self-esteem, and more. An entire third section of the book is devoted to toilet training, safety, and health, and a fourth covers special concerns-the exceptional child, siblings, and balancing work and parenting.

Remarkably thorough, caring and intelligent, What to Expect the Toddler Years is as valuable for the seasoned parent as it is for the new parent. 2.4 million copies in print.

Toddler 411: Clear Answers & Smart Advice for your Toddler

With over 100,000 copies in print, Baby 411 is the country's fast-growing parenting series with legions of fans nationwide. Now, here comes the sequel: Toddler 411! From picky eaters to temper tantrums, Toddler 411 provides practical answers and advice from an award-winning pediatrician and mom who've been there, done that!

The No-Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers: Gentle Ways to Stop Bedtime Battles and Improve Your Childs Sleep (Pantley)

Guaranteed to help parents reclaim sweet dreams for their entire family

New from the bestselling author of the classic baby sleep guide!

Getting babies to sleep through the night is one thing; getting willful toddlers and energetic preschoolers to sleep is another problem altogether. Written to help sleep-deprived parents of children ages one to five, The No-Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers offers loving solutions to help this active age-group get the rest they--and their parents--so desperately need.

A follow-up to Elizabeth Pantley's megahit The No-Cry Sleep Solution, this breakthrough guide is written in Pantley's trademark gentle, child-centered style. Parents will discover a wellspring of positive approaches to help their children get to bed, stay in bed, and sleep all night, without having to resort to punishments or other negative and ineffective measures. The No-Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers tackles many common nighttime obstacles, including:

• Refusals to go to bed
• Night waking and early rising
• Reluctance to move out of the crib and into a big-kid bed
• Nighttime visits to the parents' bed
• Naptime problems
• Nightmares, "night terrors," and fears
• Special sleep issues of twins, special needs children, and adopted children
• Sleepwalking, sleep talking, snoring, and tooth grinding

The Toddlers Busy Book

365 fun, creative activities to stimulate your toddler every day of the year.

This book contains 365 activities (one for each day of the year) for one-and-a-half to three-year-olds using things found around the home. It shows parents and day-care providers how to:

• Prevent boredom during the longest stretches of indoor weather with ideas for indoor play, kitchen activities, and arts and crafts projects.

• Stimulate a child's natural curiosity with entertaining math, language, and motor-skills activities.

• Encourage a child's physical, mental, and emotional growth with ideas for fun music, food, water, and outdoor activities.

• Keep toddlers occupied during long car trips or cross-town errands.

The Toddler's Busy Book is written with warmth and sprinkled with humor and insight. It should be required reading for anyone raising or teaching toddlers.

Toddler Adoption: The Weaver's Craft

Your Three-Year-Old: Friend or Enemy

The Girlfriends' Guide to Toddlers

Beyond child development theory and experts, beyond the "shoulds" and the "don'ts" that guilt-ridden parents constantly hear echoing in their ears, there's Vicki Iovine, America's favorite "girlfriend" and mother-in-the-trenches. In The Girlfriends' Guide to Toddlers, Iovine's third addition to her parenting panoply (The Girlfriends' Guide to Pregnancy and The Girlfriends' Guide to Surviving the First Year of Motherhood) Iovine focuses, for the first time, more on the child than on the mother. (Toddlers always get all the attention, don't they?) Iovine is wise, and not just because she's read all the current parenting literature (she has) or heard it from her famous mythical "girlfriends." Iovine knows what she's talking about because she has four young children and she's been through it all. In her ongoing vision of parenting, humor and a network of friends play an important role, bribery has its place, discipline is sensible and loving, and advice is grounded in the practical rather than the theoretical. From "Eating (or Not)" to "Discipline" to "The Comfort Zone" (Binkies, Bankies, Loveys and Thumbs) to Potty Training ("What's the Big Rush?") to "Sleepy Time" to "Fashion" (yes, it's an issue for toddlers), Iovine continues her mission to inform the contemporary parent, to tell the truth, to boldly go where many child development experts have gone before, and to keep her readers laughing while she does it. --Ericka Lutz

With a combined total of over 300,000 Girlfriends' Guides in print, Vicki Iovine offers the kind of tongue-in-cheek humor and straight-from-the-hip advice that has made her one of today's most popular authorities on child rearing. Now she takes the next step in the Girlfriends series by helping mothers deal with that mysterious, baffling, often adorable and frequently alarming being their baby has become--a toddler.

Naptime Is the New Happy Hour: And Other Ways Toddlers Turn Your Life Upside Down

Once the zigzagging hormones and endless, bleary-eyed exhaustion of the first year have worn off, you're left with the startling realization that your tiny, immobile bundle has become a rampaging toddler, complete with his or her very own, very forceful personality.

Just as Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay helped debunk decades of parenting myths to offer honest advice for the first year, Naptime Is the New Happy Hour is a voice of reason for every woman facing questions such as: Will refined sugar make my toddler's head explode? Is it wrong to have a cocktail at two in the afternoon? And what exactly is a Backyardigan?

With biting wit and boatloads of common sense, Stefanie Wilder-Taylor addresses all these concerns and more. Whether it's planning easy outings that are fun for both of you (fact: your child will find the local Target just as scintillating as the Guggenheim), dishing the dirt on preschool TV (those mothers who swear their kids don't watch television? Liars or psychos, every one), or perfecting the art of the play date, readers will find advice, anecdotes, and a reassuring sense of camaraderie to help them survive -- and even thrive -- during each hilarious, frustrating, and amazing moment.

Your Four-Year-Old: Wild and Wonderful

What is it about four-year-olds that makes them  so lovable? What problems do four-year-olds have?  What can they do now that they couldn't do at  three? Drs. Ames and Ilg, recognized authorities on  child behavior and development, discuss these and  scores of other questions unique to four-year-old  girls and boys, and they offer parents practical  advice and enlightening psychological insights.