I am a young single mom. My baby is 2 ½ and so far has been wonderful. I go to college and leave him at day care when I am attending classes. My family lives a long way away though we frequently talk on the phone and by email.

I take my son to the health clinic for his shots and physical exams. I have been realizing recently that I do not know enough about normal child development and behavior. I want to be the best mother that I can be and wonder if you, as a developmental and behavioral pediatrician can recommend a good book that I, as a parent, can use as a reference for normal child development and behavior.

Dr. Spock’s book was recommended to me but the information seems to be outdated, at least in the copy that I have.

I would very much appreciate any resource that you could give me.

Young mom

Answer:

Hi young mom,

You have a very interesting question. My children are now in their 30s. When they were children, there was no Internet and Dr. Spock’s book was relatively recent and considered reliable. By the time my children were born, I was trained as a pediatrician and so, after seeing many children in my office, I had become experienced in child development and illnesses. Even so, being a pediatrician giving advice and raising your own children is a completely different matter.

When I was younger, most of the accepted information came from books like those written by Dr. Spock. Interestingly, these parent guides, like medical textbooks, were automatically outdated when they came on the market because of the time it took to write, organize, edit and publish a book. Physicians relied on medical journals that published the most up to date research in medicine. Those specializing in child development had to rely on journals focusing on the most up-to-date research on developmental research. There was considerable reliance on experienced “experts” who spent years in their field of choice developing expertise.

There was a great deal of incorrect information, particularly in unresearched medical fields where tradition had led to certain treatments such as tonsillectomies for recurrent sore throats, or rigid night splints for babies when their feet curled inward. While much of that has been corrected by more up-to-date good quality research, the Internet has even more overwhelming information with little expert quality control. Anyone can publish their thoughts on the Internet and quote research with little thought given to the quality of the experiments being reviewed.

This is the reason that I carefully considered your question and did some Iinternet research of my own. As you might expect you can put such things as “parent guides to child development and behavior” in to a search engine and it will identify all sorts of web pages, some reliable.

I believe that one must get information and answers to questions about children in the digital age by going to Internet sites that are known to be reliable and dedicated to the well-being of children and their families and also reliable in terms of looking for consensus of opinion among the experts and valid research verification. The web site that I use most for information on recent research in child development and advice for parents is that for the Academy of Pediatrics. You will see two links below, one to some books on parenting and information written with the support of the Academy and another with reliable links to other associated topics.

There is also a link to the American Academy of Family Practitioners, dedicated to providing reliable information about child development and parenting to their members.

While researching, I also found a web page that discussed the reliability to answers to different questions about children and supplied expert opinions about these topics. I am sure that this is not the only web page out there created by knowledgeable universities that discuss answers to questions about child development and all of the possible related topics.

I hope that this answer is not too complex and is understandable. In summary, I would not use any one book about child development, behavior and parenting. I would use specific web sites known for their reliability in research and expert opinion as well as up-to-date information.

I hope that this is useful for you and for your child(ren).

Kay S. Browne MD
Behavioral Pediatrician

http://www.aap.org/parents.html

http://www.aap.org/bst/showdetl.cfm?&DID=15&Product_ID=4262

http://familydoctor.org/

http://www.cfw.tufts.edu/