Ever since I was little, I have been fascinated by frogs and bugs and understanding how everything in our world….made sense! How all of Nature danced and spun, pulled and pushed and yet, in extraordinary and unexpected ways, always found its way back to a perfect harmony. In my working with families for almost 30 years, I have come to understand that toddlers also always “make sense”! They dance and spin, pull and push, but they can quickly be led back to harmony if you know the odd and often unexpected path.

I travel that path every day with the toddlers who visit me for their health care. And now, like an adventurer who has just returned from an unexplored land, I am very excited to share the secrets I have discovered about toddlers with parents, grandparents, health professionals, educators, and all lovers of young children. In my first book, THE HAPPIEST BABY ON THE BLOCK, I explain how calming even the fussiest infants is easy once you can see the world from their point of view. Inside the womb newborns are continually fed, shushed, jiggled and cuddled (the sound our fetuses hear is louder than a vacuum cleaner…24/7). But once they’re born we leave them alone, in almost total stillness, for hours a day! No wonder so many babies have trouble adjusting during those first three months.

That essential insight led me to the discovery of the “calming reflex” (the off-switch for crying that all babies are born with) which parents can learn to turn on by recreating the coziness, the sounds, and the rhythmic motions of the womb.

Armed with this new perspective, parents became 100 times more successful at baby calming. Similarly, toddler calming is also 100 times more successful when you start from the right perspective.

The insight that makes dealing with toddlers so much easier is that they are, in many fundamental ways, little Neanderthals. I mean no offense by that. Really! But prehistoric humans had only very primitive language and were strong-willed, opinionated, negative, tenacious, distractible and impatient…is this starting to sound familiar?

Let me reassure you that I love toddlers! They’re my favorite of all age groups. They are curious, charming and cute. However, the more I researched anthropology and the latest findings on brain function in children the more correct the Neanderthal comparison seemed to me. Combined with what I knew about fetal and child development and my daily experiences in the office, I became convinced that “evolution” was the key to understanding and communicating with toddlers.

As I put these ideas into action, I began loving 18-month check ups! Once I learned how to speak the ancient language of toddlers I was able to soothe most skeptical, frightened, screaming little children in minutes…or less.

Part One of THE HAPPIEST TODDLER ON THE BLOCK explains the fascinating links between modern toddlers and prehistoric man. Of course, even the wildest toddler isn’t really a Stone Ager, but this general idea is like a window through which you’ll be able to view your child in a profound new way. Once you learn how your toddler is similar to a caveman, your true job will become clear—you must think of yourself as an ambassador from the 21st century to the Neanderthal people!

To do that job well, you need to know not only how your little Neanderthal thinks but also how to speak her lingo. Part Two teaches you this ancient “language.” You will learn what to say and—more importantly—how to say it. It’s not hard, just different. Once you understand the concepts the “Fast-Food Rule” and “Toddler-ese” you will be able to connect with your tantruming toddler and quickly guide her to peace and cooperation. Eight times out of 10, this approach, called “prehistoric parenting”, will work even when your child doesn’t get what she is begging you for. That’s because you’ll be giving her a gift that is even more precious to her than cookies and toys - love, respect, and understanding—in her language!

In addition, Part Two will teach you the tricks of successful praise, limit setting, and discipline. You will learn how to give nurturing messages through the “side door” of your child’s mind, the importance of helping her feel strong and powerful, and the art of successful toddler negotiations.

Finally, Part Three will show you how to apply “prehistoric parenting” to specific problems you may encounter with your toddler including sleep issues, toilet training, separation worries and biting. This section is loaded with practical tips that I’ve accumulated during my quarter-century in pediatric practice.

HOW I REDISCOVERED THE ANCIENT SECRETS FOR CALMING CRYING BABIES

I certainly had no idea how easy it was to soothe fussy babies when I began my pediatric studies in the early 1970s. During my years at at Albert Einstein College
of Medicine, my professors taught me babies scream because of gas pains, and they believed there were only 2 valid approaches for soothing these unhappy infants.
First, try the old grandmother's advice of holding, rocking and pacifiers. If that failed, the second way was to use medicine. The 3 recommended types of drugs were: sedatives (such as phenobarbital or tincture of opium), anti-spasm medicines (to treat stomach cramps) and anti-gas drops (to help get out burps).

By the late 1970s, however, these 3 therapies were either abandoned or seriously
called into question. Sedating babies was rejected as inappropriate. The use of
anti-spasm medicines was abruptly ceased after several babies receiving them lapsed into coma and died. And, anti- gas drops lost their appeal when they were proved to be no more effective than water.

In 1980, as a fellow in Child Development at the UCLA School of Medicine, my frustration turned into shock and alarm. There, as a member of the Child Abuse Team, I consulted on several severely injured babies whose screams drove their stressed-out parents to commit horrible acts of abuse.

I was outraged that our sophisticated, medical system didn't have one good solution
for babies with this terribly disturbing, yet common problem. I read everything I could find about colic. I was determined to unearth whatever clues I could that might explain why so many children were plagued by this mysterious condition.

to top

I soon uncovered 2 facts that began to put everything into focus for me and turn
my alarm into hope:

First, I learned about the profound differences between the brain of a 3-month-old baby and that of a newborn. During the first few months of life, babies make massive developmental leaps. This accounts for the huge gap between how parents in our society expect new babies to look, and act, and their true behavior and nature.

My second pivotal discovery came when I began to read about child rearing in other societies. As I explored the musty shelves of old books and journals at the UCLA Library, I was shocked to learn that the colicky screaming that haunted so many of my patients and their parents was totally absent in the babies of several cultures around the world!

The more I investigated this issue the more it dawned on me that although our culture was advanced in many ways, it was very backwards when it came to understanding the needs of babies! Somehow, somewhere we had taken a wrong turn. I began to realize our ideas about babies' crying had been built upon centuries of myth and misconception.

to top

In many ways, the peoples living in primitive cultures are ignorant and backward. However, in some areas their wisdom is great…and we are actually the "primitive" ones. This is particularly true when it comes to understanding infant crying.

I teased out shreds of information from the past and wove them with cutting edge
modern research and my own unique observations made during my years of caring
for more than 5000 young babies. From all this, I distilled 4 ancient principles that
are crucially important for anyone who wants to understand babies and be skillful at comforting them and improving their sleep.

These 4 treasures, which have been passed from generation to generation since the
earliest days of mankind, are:

• The Missing "4th Trimester"
• The "Calming" Reflex
• The 5 "S's"
• The Cuddle Cure

ABOUT DR. KARP

Dr. Harvey Karp is a nationally renowned pediatrician and child development specialist. He is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the UCLA School of Medicine. Over the past 30 years, he has taught thousands of parents, from working moms to superstars like Madonna, Michelle Pfeiffer and Pierce Brosnan his secrets for making children happy.

Dr. Karp has appeared numerous times on Good Morning America, The Dr. Phil Show, ABC World News Tonight, CNN, Lifetime Channel, numerous national radio programs and his work has been featured by the Associated Press and Time, Newsweek, and People Magazine. He is also an authority on children's environmental health and on breastfeeding.

Dr. Karp has committed his full-time efforts to writing, lecturing and education.  He now travels extensively across America and around the world lecturing the medical community and the public about how to use his innovative discoveries to help parents successfully meet the needs of their young children.

to top