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Touchpoints is the only childcare reference by a pediatrician who has both medical and psychoanalytic training, and who offers parents a complete understanding of child development from a physical, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral point of view. No other childcare guide offers supportive, empathetic insights into the parents' own emotions, and no other guide includes both chronological chapters and alphabetical topics on all issues faced by families from conception through age six."Touchpoints" are the universal spurts of development and the trying periods of regression that accompany them throughout childhood. Dr. Brazelton uses them as windows to help parents understand their child's behavior and prevent future problems. Selected Reading Questionnaire.

In this completely revised edition Dr. Brazelton introduces new information on physical, emotional, and behavioral development. He also addresses the new stresses on families and fears of children, with a fresh focus on the role of fathers and other caregivers. This updated volume also offers new insights on prematurity, sleep patterns, early communication, toilet training, co-sleeping, play and learning, SIDS, cognitive development and signs of developmental delay, childcare, asthma, a child's immune system, and safety. Selected Reading Questionnaire.

A helpful resource for each developmental stage.

Touchpoints by T. Berry Brazelton, MD. Epiphany library section 8 I: Life Skills, Learning K-12. This book by kindly pediatrician Dr. Brazelton defines a “touchpoint” as a predictable time that occurs just before a surge in rapid growth in any line of development – motor, cognitive, or emotional– where, for a short time, the child’s behavior falls apart. Parents can no longer rely on baby’s past accomplishments. The child often regresses in several areas and becomes difficult to understand. Parents become unglued. Over the years, Dr. Brazelton has found that these periods of regression become a window through which parents can view the great energy that fuels the child for learning. It’s almost as if the child puts into the background new things he has recently learned in order to marshal his forces to accomplish something brand new – learning to walk, become toilet-trained, and so on. A child’s particular strengths, vulnerabilities, temperament and coping style are highly visible at these times. This enables parents to understand their child more fundamentally as an individual.
Part 1 of this book is organized around these touchpoints from pregnancy to three years old. Part 2 takes up specific issues of child-rearing from birth to age six that can challenge normal development, such as sibling rivalry, crying, tantrums, fears, emotional manipulations, and so on. Part 3 examines ways in which children’s development is affected by those around them. Each close relationship – with mothers, fathers, grandparents, friends, teachers – all contribute to the child’s emotional and behavioral growth.
Dr. Brazelton says that no child’s development is a steady rise upward. There are peaks, valleys and plateaus. Each new task a baby learns is demanding, and requires all of baby’s energy as well as those of the caregivers. For example, when a baby is learning to walk, everyone pays a price – it is costly to everyone’s peace of mind. The next phase of development will be spent consolidating and enriching this last achievement. The child gains a new skill, and the pressure is off, at least for a little while until the next spurt begins.
Who knew? This book goes a long way into explaining why those peaks, valleys and plateaus occur and why one month a baby is a placid little love and the next month is a shrieking imp. Lucky is the child whose parents read books like this so that they can learn about child development and predict what will happen next in their child’s development. This makes child-rearing easier for parents.
If there were three child development experts I most depended upon they were this author, Mister Rogers, and Dr. Spock. Though this book is now 20 years old all of his comments still apply. The only thing I found outdated was the fact that he did not recommend laying a baby on its back to sleep. Emerging data on SIDS has, since the writing of this book, recommended that babies no longer be placed on their stomachs to sleep. I made a note of that where necessary in the margins. (I don’t generally write in our library books, but in this case I make an exception because it’s important.) ( )