On Becoming Babywise: Book II

You’re at least four months into your tour of parenting, and the complexities of child training are starting to multiply. While your baby is growing physically, his mind is adapting with ever-increasing awareness to new sights, sounds, sensations and relationships. He can now interact with his material universe with greater attentiveness. Watch out: big changes are coming to his world and yours!


Preserving the order and structure that brought security to your baby’s day, peaceful sleep in your baby’s nights and stability in your home is still the priority, but now it must be viewed through a new developmental lens. For example, feeding time is more than a biological response initiated by a baby’s sucking reflex. For the five-month-old, meal times become a complex and conscious interaction between him and his parents, food and drink, preference and need, likes and dislikes, must dos and won’t dos!


This is also when waketime behaviors and responses start to fall into the categories of safe or unsafe and right or wrong, and will either be encouraged or discouraged by Mom and Dad's reactions. Training to encourage right behavior and discourage wrong behavior will become the focus of Mom and Dad’s attention over the next seven months. All those feeding, waking and sleeping times provide numerous built-in opportunities for displaying parental wisdom, guidance and patience. Babywise II is here to help you in this crucial time.