Here's an excerpt from Amazon on the book mentioned...
What most parents want out of the early years is a well-developed child, along with a good deal of simple pleasure for both the child and themselves. They also want to avoid unhappiness, anxiety, and of course danger to the child. If optimal early development were incompatible with enjoyment for both the parents and the baby, it would be unfortunate. Happily, that is clearly not the case. Especially in the first months of life, the vast majority of child-rearing activities I'll recommend will lead to both an involved, happy baby and a more contented parent. By the later stages of infancy and toddlerhood, I have found that the well-developing baby is by far the most pleasant to live with and the happiest.
General goals, however, are simply not enough. After you have decided you want a well-developed, happy child, then what? How do you achieve that goal? Indeed, what does it mean? Let's look first at the goals for the first eight months of life.
We recommend that parents work toward three major goals during the first eight months of the baby's life:
1. Giving the infant a feeling of being loved and cared for.
2. Helping her develop specific skills.
3. Encouraging her interest in the world around her.
As we follow the developing child from Phase I through Phase IV, I will refer repeatedly to these basic aims. Let us examine them more closely.
Giving Your Infant a Feeling of Being Loved and Cared For
During the first two years of life all children have a special need to form at least one strong attachment to an older person. Clearly, if a baby is to survive, let alone develop well, protection and nurturance must be available from the very beginning and for a long time thereafter.
During the first eight months of life, social development is comparatively simple. Erik Erikson, the famous personality theorist, called the primary social goal of this period the establishment of a sense of"trust." I believe the term is an appropriate one. No requirement of good child-rearing is more natural or more rewarding than the tending of your baby in a loving and attentive way in order to establish a feeling of being loved and cared for, or a sense of basic trust. Although there is little reason to think that an infant of eight months has more than a simple awareness of his mother, most students of human development agree that the basic foundation of a child's personality is being formed in his earliest interchanges with nurturing adults.
