Books

I am reading a Parents' Guide to Raising a Gifted Toddler: Recognizing and Developing the Potential of Your Child from Birth to Five Years by James Alvino. Despite the title and perhaps the first few chapters, I think it's applicable to parenting toddlers in general. It is a bit out-dated, with references to phonographs and cleaning blackboard erasers, but it has made me reflect on some issues I hadn't yet considered with Raccoon, like gender stereotyping in the arts. For me, most of the good stuff started in Chapter 9, "The Enriched Environment."

I'm also reading How to Raise an Amazing Child the Montessori Way by Tim Seldin. It makes me want to run right out and put Raccoon in a Montessori preschool, if I could find an excellent one where I live, and if he and I were different people. Ha. But I do love the ideas on organizing spaces, the need for beauty and reality, independence and involving the child in the family.