Child development book

[Alemo]

Hi all,

Any recommendations on a book about child development? I’m asking as a soon to be new parent and am looking for something that would compliment knowledge we’ve learned in psychiatry training (though I’m not child trained).

Side question: My mother in law once said that my spouse and I couldn’t both be psychiatrists “because then we’d have weird kids.” It seems to me like psychiatrists would make great parents, but wonder what the Brain Trust’s opinions are.

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[wolfvgang22]

I'm a barely good enough parent.

 

[clozareal]

My favorite book on normal child development is:
Encounters with Children: Pediatric Behavior and Development

I disagree with your mother in law only in so much that the psychiatrist is able to practice at home what they practice in the clinic.

However, most physicians who work with children are so trained to look for abnormalities that they rarely embrace that most children most of the time are developing broadly within the expected range. I do think it's important to learn about child development, especially as a child psychiatrist, because you are at risk of two extremes: either becoming too glib and blasé in one’s approach to a situation or seeing every little variation as a disorder.

 

[Merovinge]

I think you'd be really hard pressed to find that being a psychiatrist makes you a worse parent. There might be something to be said about the average neuroticism of a psychiatrist and the comment might be better rephrased as "you can't have two neurotic people have children because then they would have weird kids". There is compelling evidence that parental anxiety does generate anxiety in their children, in so far that is a concern of yours, I do recommend addressing that as best you can (e.g. meditation, exercise, cbt etc).

At the end of the day, you are looking at a kid who is going to be in the top 1-2% of income (if you and your spouse are MDs that I am inferring from your comment), top 5% of intelligence, hopefully top 5% of emotional intelligence and has a parent who cares enough to be reading a childhood development book. You could hardly have the deck better stacked in your favor, your kid has already won the single biggest lottery of all - which family you are born into.

 

[calvnandhobbs68]

What's Going on in There? by Lise Eliot: 9780553378252 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

As a research neuroscientist, Lise Eliot has made the study of the human brain her life's work. But it wasn't until she was pregnant with her first child that she became intrigued with the study of brain...

www.penguinrandomhouse.com

Solid early childhood development book written by a developmental psychologist at Rosalind Franklin. It's 500+ pages long so somewhat dense and not exactly a few day read but thorough.

and yes being a psychiatrist has nothing to do with whether you're going to have "weird kids" or not....