Baby Parenting Guide

Bring the noise and strengthen your baby’s listening skills.

Set up a Baby Olympic event by creating an obstacle course in your living room.

Even before babies can pick up books and turn the pages, they will enjoy being surrounded by colorful, familiar board books.

Our learning experts explain how to choose the best educational toys for your new toddler.

In this free webisode, a field trip to the beach teaches Hippo a valuable lesson about confidence.

The easiest way to get babies excited about books is to make reading a consistent and fun part of your day. Some parents find reading is a relaxing activity that helps babies wind down at nap time and bedtime. Whenever you read, cuddle your baby close and let your baby explore the book (sturdy board books are better for babies who want to pull, drop or chew on books).

Experts distinguish between "parentese" (high-pitched, stretching out the sounds in words) and "babytalk" (meaningless babble sounds). Childhood language specialists suggest that while goochie-goo style babytalk is unecessary, parentese plays an important role in infant development. Parentese is a universal practice across languages and cultures and cues the baby to pay attention. Babies are more interested in the high pitched noises and exaggerated facial expressions of parentese than in regular adult speech. This helps babies learn language and speech patterns. So, go ahead and speak parentese to your baby.

With more parents placing infants on their backs to sleep, in accordance with doctor recommendations for preventing SIDS, more babies are skipping crawling. Some experts believe the bilateral integration of crawling is important to developing strength, motor skills and neural connections. Because both sides of the body must work together during crawling, this engages both sides of the brain. There are no long-term studies at this time showing a negative effect of skipping this stage, however. So, although crawling is an important developmental milestone, parents should not worry if their baby skips this step.

Though most parents are clued in to their child's physical and intellectual development, misconceptions prevail on their social and emotional milestones.

My kids will crawl into my lap pretty much anytime I am seated (which, given that I am almost 8 months' pregnant, is fairly often) and pick out book after book to read.

Get the most out of reading to your child with these expert tips.