In their first three years of life, babies face the most complex learning endeavor they will ever undertake as human beings: They learn to talk. Now, as researchers make new forays into the mystery of the development of the human brain, Golinkoff and Hirsh-Pasek, both developmental psychologists and language experts, offer parents a powerfully insightful guidebook to how infants—even while in the womb—begin to learn language. Along the way, the authors provide parents with the latest scientific findings, developmental milestones, and important advice on how to create the most effective learning environments for their children. This book takes readers on a fascinating, vitally important exploration of the dance between nature and nurture, and explains how parents can help their children learn more successfully.

Psychiatrist and clinical research Dr. Paul Holinger decodes for parents the nine easily identifiable expressions hardwired into every human being.

You Can Stop Fighting With Your Chidren! Here is the bestselling book that will give you the know–how you need to be more effective with your children and more supportive of yourself. Enthusiastically praised by parents and professionals around the world, the down–to–earth, respectful approach of Faber and Mazlish makes relationships with children of all ages less stressful and more rewarding. Their methods of communication, illustrated with delightful cartoons showing the skills in action, offer innovative ways to solve common problems.

Myriam Szejer talks to newborns. For over a decade she has worked in the maternity ward of a hospital outside Paris. Called in by hospital staff when a baby or its parents are suffering, Szejer uses the psychoanalytic techniques of careful listening and talking to reach failure-to-thrive and other suffering newborns and reverse their conditions. Talking to Babies is the story of her important work. Having psychologists or psychiatrists available to new mothers on maternity wards is not unusual. But having a psychoanalyst available who also talks to newborns is completely revolutionary. Szejer has pioneered her unique approach to treating struggling infants through years of study and apprenticeship. And in Talking to Babies she describes in thoughtful and convincing detail the theory of her practice and how her interventions work, illustrating with the moving stories of the numerous infants she has helped. In the very first days of a baby's life, the newborn, still struggling between birth and its entry into our world, already needs words. By "needing words," Szejer means that infants need to be talked to about the specific situations into which they are born. They need to hear about their mothers, fathers, siblings, and caretakers, but they also need to hear about problematic aspects of their histories, such as the death of a twin sibling or the death of a baby before them. These words must be spoken to the baby in the presence of his or her mother and father if at all possible. Such speech helps everyone-newborn and parents-to find their places in the altered world created by the birth. When such words are not present, physical symptoms and illness may emerge. Talking to Babies is the first book to show how the "talking cure" can help infants and their parents. Post-partum depression in mothers, failure-to-thrive in babies-these problems might be approached quite differently if maternity wards incorporated some of Szejer's practices. High-tech interventions are all too common in American maternity wards; Talking to Babies offers a more humane route for restoring health. Preface: "Sometimes, as I am leaving the hospital late at night, I stop to look in on a patient who has recently given birth. And often, as I open the door, I catch a special moment: the new mother leaning over the crib, or more often face to face with the newborn on her lap, looking intently at him and murmuring motherly words . . . In a maternity ward, however, everything is not always so rosy. Birth is sometimes accompanied by suffering, a suffering too rarely perceived in our Western societies . . . When I met Myriam Szejer, an unknown field opened to me: the reality of the newborn's preverbal behavior. Szejer dares psychoanalyze newborns, dares talk to them, dares intervene before the symptom has taken root, particularly in dangerous situations . . . Her approach ought to become known to all who make perinatal medicine their career. Her approach is innovative. What woman has not been shaken to her very being by becoming a mother; what man has not trembled at becoming a father? Babies feel that profound apprehensiveness. They need to be listened to, which is a form of respect." --from the Preface by René Frydman, M.D.

The hidden brain is the voice in our ear when we make the most important decisions in our lives—but we’re never aware of it. The hidden brain decides whom we fall in love with and whom we hate. It tells us to vote for the white candidate and convict the dark-skinned defendant, to hire the thin woman but pay her less than the man doing the same job. It can direct us to safety when disaster strikes and move us to extraordinary acts of altruism. But it can also be manipulated to turn an ordinary person into a suicide terrorist or a group of bystanders into a mob. In a series of compulsively readable narratives, Shankar Vedantam journeys through the latest discoveries in neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science to uncover the darkest corner of our minds and its decisive impact on the choices we make as individuals and as a society. Filled with fascinating characters, dramatic storytelling, and cutting-edge science, this is an engrossing exploration of the secrets our brains keep from us—and how they are revealed.

Give your child the gift of conversation with Small Talk! You are your child's most valuable resource when it comes to learning to talk. In Small Talk, speech and language therapist Nicola Lathey and parenting journalist Tracey Blake demystify the six stages of language learning, from "Pre-Babble" to "Complete Sentences," so you can tune in to what your child is saying—or trying to say! You'll also learn: • Why the babbling stage is so important • How to encourage your baby's first words • Communication techniques to calm your toddler’s tantrums • The truth about pacifiers, baby signing,and the impact of TV on language development • Causes for concern and where to turn for help. Written by experts who are also parents of young children, Small Talk helps you to give your child the best head start by encouraging language and vocabulary development early on. Simply set aside as few as 10 minutes for Small Talk Time every day. With 50 games and activities to choose from, it’s time to start Small Talking!