Secrets of the Baby Whisperer

The next book in my review of the parenting literature is Tracy Hogg's Secrets of the Baby Whisperer. My initial impressions of this book are very positive. Hogg's book presents, to my mind at least, a much more balanced perspective on the idea of parenting. Where Attachment Parenting takes a very baby centric approach to parenting, Secrets take a family centric approach. One of the baby whisperer's themes is that everyone in the family needs to be getting what they need to live a happy life.

There are some basic principles that under pin Hogg's philosophy. One is that there are different kinds of babies. Attachment Parenting only seems to acknowledge two kinds of babies. Those who are subject to nipple confusion and those that are not. Even on that distinction, Attachment seems to tell us that since we cannot know which our baby is until it is too late, we have to treat all babies as if they are subject to nipple confusion. Hogg clearly recognizes that all babies are different. She identifies five general classes of babies. Throughout the book she explains how the different classes of babies need different kinds of attention.

Another underlying theme is "begin how you mean to continue". Since this sounds a great deal like Covey's "Begin with the End in Mind", it has immediate appeal to me. She explains how many new parents cope with the immediate stimulus of their new bornbaby in ways that are not sustainable. So, as time goes by the parents change their behaviors to something that can continue forward. To the baby, though, this represents a change from how things have been it's whole life. The baby can become upset by the change. So, Hogg advises us to begin how we mean to continue.

One corner stone of Hogg's approach is the E.A.S.Y. method. Hogg recommends that parents adopt a structured schedule for their child. She does not recommend an absolute schedule, however, she recommends a relative one. Rather than schedule your baby's time along a rigid timeline, she recommends that you approach how your baby spends his time by following a series of phases whose order is fixed but whose duration is flexible. The EASY acronym lists the order of the activities: Eat, Activity, Sleep, Your time.

Another basic policy, the one from which the baby whisperer appellation stems, is S.L.O.W. This acronym stands for: Stop, Listen, Observe, What's up? Hogg firmly believes that with practice, you can understand why your baby is crying and use this information to meet the need they are expressing. She contends that many parents react so quickly to a baby's cry that they don't take the time to distinguish between the "I'm hungry" cry, the "I'm tired" cry or the "I'm gassy" cry. The ability to understand the baby's needs also ties back into the structured schedule. If you're in the "eat" phase, the baby is probably crying because she's hungry. If you're toward the end of the activity phase, he's probably tired. These are simplifications, but the structure helps to anticipate the baby's needs.

Hogg also acknowledges that parents sometimes make mistakes. This is also very appealing when juxtaposed with Attachment where I frequently got the feeling that if I made a mistake I may have just screwed up the whole process and doomed my child to a substandard life.

Most of the mistakes that Hogg discusses involve parents not beginning as they mean to continue. This involves bad habits that babies develop. Hogg asks the interesting question, "Where did those bad habits come from?" Clearly they must have been learned from the parents. So, Hogg provides some general frameworks for retraining a baby that has picked up bad habits from her parents. Hogg's philosophy is one of gentle change between the current pattern and the desired pattern.

All in all, I thought Baby Whisperer was a great book. While I have only read two so
far, it is my definite favorite. I was not left with the unbalanced feeling that I had with Attachment. I can understand why thousands of parents have asked Ms. Hogg to come into their homes and help them raise their children. I think she, and her co-author Melinda Blau, have done an excellent job of conveying a coherent system of principles to use in dealing with the challenges of new parenthood.