The playful baby Book

A magnificent book!!! I finished "The Magic Years" several months ago for the second time. It was a required “text” in a course that I took at Manhattan College, many years ago. It’s message is just as fresh and enlightening now as I remember it being then!

To a small child, the world is an exciting but sometimes frightening and unstable place. The point of this book, Selma Fraiberg says, is that “A method of child-rearing is not – or should not be – a whim, a fashion or a shibboleth. It should derive from an understanding of the developing child, of his physical and mental equipment at any given stage and, therefore, his readiness at any given stage to adapt, to learn, to regulate his behavior according to parental expectations.”

The primary subject matter of the book is divided into three parts – the first eighteen months, eighteen months to three years, and three years to six. The author takes the reader into the mind of the child, showing how he/she confronts this world and learns to cope with it. She discusses the problems at each stage of development and reveals the qualities – above all, the quality of understanding – that can provide the right answers at critical moments. In describing, how children mature from birth to six years old, she discusses theories and facts about feeding, talking, sex education, fantasy, self-control, fear, and other subjects in practical terms of daily living. One of the most interesting parts of the book was the section, in Chapter 5, on the building of a conscience.

Her style is literate and graceful. I think that The Magic Years should be required reading (a classic, still in print after more than 50 years since it was first published) for all social scientists and parents-to-be. I’ve given it as a Christmas gift to several such couples this past year.