As well as feeding, clothing and generally caring for your baby, it's important to be aware of his needs in terms of baby development. However, you don't have to turn your home into a classroom for tiny tots; it's in how you play and talk to your child that you can encourage him through the major milestones of his physical and mental development.
Miriam Stoppard's Baby Skills series
Although Stoppard has written many useful guide books for parents and parents-to-be, this particular Baby Skills series is not comprised of heavy text books for you to study. Instead, these are board books with colourful pictures, raised textures for little fingers to explore, and a few bits of text for you to either read to your child or to use as a prompt for your own narrative.
Each book has a brief, easy to follow guide for parents so you can better understand how to share them with your child. All of them are chunky and sturdy so they can withstand your child pulling them, dribbling on them or treating them like toys!
The four titles in the series are 'Baby Talking', 'Baby Senses', Baby Games' and 'Happy Baby', tapping into early communication experiences, emotions, physical experiences and sensory development.
For example, 'Baby Senses' has an opening page with a baby (probably around 10 months old) sitting with a host of teddies. Big ted's tummy is furry and strokeable and the phrases are simple: 'Touch my fluffy tummy,' 'Aah… soft monkey!' and so on. The next page is dark with shiny stars for bedtime nursery singing and the next page has crinkly-sounding building blocks to touch and feel.
The 'Baby Talking' book comes with a free sing-a-long CD.
Great first books for babies
Many people wonder how old a child needs to be before you can start to share books with him. For some ideas about what to read, check out the ThinkBaby Buyer's Guide to Books for Babies. You'll also find some useful tips in our article Reading to Your Baby or Toddler.
This series by Dr Stoppard would be a great addition to that library and help you and your child ease from the time when you are sharing a book as stimulation to play, into the time when your older toddler will want to sit with you and follow what's on the pages.
Indeed, long after your child has stopped being a 'baby', there will be times when he will want to sit down with you and share some quiet time retreating to these gentle, playful books!
The Baby Skills series are hardback and cost £5.99 each. For more about these and other books by Dr Miriam Stoppard, go to www.dk.com.
