Understanding Your Baby: A Week-By-Week Development & Activity Guide For Playing With Your Baby From Birth to 12 Months

Book Synopsis: If you've ever wished for a step-by-step guide to supporting your baby's development... Distilled, research-based developmental information paired with simple activities to play with your baby on a week-by-week basis, guiding you and your baby through the first year of life. There's no such thing as a "how-to-parent" guide - but this book comes close... a rare gem that helps parents feel informed. Learn how to "think outside the box" when it comes to play - the information and activities in "Understanding Your Baby" break down developmental concepts and offer simple, quick play activities to help parents and caregivers feel that they're "winning" at parenthood! In this age of parenting, we feel enormous pressure (both societal and self-imposed) to “get it right” when it comes to raising young children, and each of us has felt, at one point or another, that we’re “doing it wrong.” Pediatric speech-language pathologist, parent educator, and mother of two young children, Ayelet Marinovich, is the creator of the early parenting resources at Strength In Words. She believes that parenthood is easier when we have resources we trust. "Put yourself in Marinovich's hands and you can relax, knowing that you are building a natural, meaningful way of being with your baby."--Tracy Cutchlow, author of "Zero to Five: 70 Essential Parenting Tips Based on Science" We all want to do everything we can to support our babies, and, ultimately, to raise good human beings. There’s a way to find joy in the mayhem, and it’s a mixture of science of art. When we feel empowered with knowledge about how our babies develop (and how we can support that development), we feel more confident as parents and caregivers, and we’re able to connect in more ways with our babies. Understanding Your Baby offers an infant enrichment curriculum for parents and caregivers of infants, with 52 bite-sized "modules" of palatable, research-based developmental information and simple, enriching activities to support your baby's development in the areas of cognitive, communicative, motor, and social/emotional development. Week by week, learn along with your growing, changing baby! YOU'LL LEARN: + All about what your baby is likely to be working on in the areas of cognitive, communicative, motor/sensory, and social/emotional development + Simple, practical ways to support those areas of development - using nothing more than repurposed common household objects to create play materials and musical, early literacy and sensory experiences + How to maximize your time with your infant - whether you work out of the house full-time or home is your work + The developmental basis for simple activities you may already be doing - helping to reaffirm what you already know and do innately, and helping to boost your likelihood to keep doing them! PRAISE FOR "UNDERSTANDING YOUR BABY:" "Some of my favorite activities were the little ways of making our 'all-the-time activities' more stimulating - it encouraged what was coming naturally for me, and helped me make a more conscientious effort. There were certain things that maybe I was doing already, but then I became more deliberate about doing them because I realized there was a benefit to it!" - Dr. Anna Loeb, M.D., mother "Even though this is my second time moving through the baby months, I am learning all the time from this curriculum and as a result, finding infancy less daunting and more enjoyable this time around – if only we had access to it when Marco was little! This book answer my early development questions before I have asked them and is a great source of reassurance. Ayelet distills the complex science behind how our babies develop in a wonderfully accessible way, and offers practical ideas and games to play to help families along their developmental journey.” - Alexandra Nicoletti, mother