Raising a Self-Reliant Child

March 4, 2013
Levine, an AAP spokesperson and pediatrician affiliated with Englewood Hospital and Medical Center in New Jersey and Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, focuses on how to set the groundwork for self-reliance and independence in the first six years of life. Pointing out the trend in helicopter parenting, Levine argues in favor of a more balanced approach, rejecting more extreme “fads” such as “free-range,” “Tiger Mother,” and “attachment” parenting. Addressing an array of topics, including sleeping, eating, pacifiers, potty training, and chores, Levine helps parents empower children to problem-solve, make good decisions, and learn from their mistakes. Parents, she maintains, are often too swift to come to the rescue, whether the child is crying in his crib, stuck at the top of a slide, or having trouble articulating a thought. Levine weaves in useful anecdotes from her own experiences as the mother of two (for example, her daughter learns to “make breakfast” from cereal and milk at age three). Her advice for teaching babies to sleep may be more difficult for some readers to embrace: crying “to extinction,” for instance, is the rather unfortunate description used for Marc Weissbluth’s sleep-training method, which begins at about six weeks. (Levine also gives a thumbs-up to the popular and less extreme Ferber method.) Her practical text will help parents overcome their hovering tendencies and help kids learn to confidently stand on their own two feet.