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Is This a Phase? Continues to Attract Praise

“This book is extraordinarily useful,” the blogger at Grasshopper New Media just raved about Helen F. Neville’s Is This a Phase? Child Development & Parent Strategies, Birth to 6 Years.

She calls the book “the closest thing to an owner’s manual for your child” that she’s found. “And I’ve looked, and looked, and looked.”

The writer continues, “Did I mention that the book is easy to use? Explanations are clear without being too abbreviated and the author uses a series of readable charts that help you compare child development milestones over time. . .One feature I admire about the book is that it attempts to help parents understand how their own child’s temperament might influence developmental milestones.”

You can listen to the advice Nurse Neville gave NPR listeners by clicking through to “Parent’s Journal with Bobbi Conner” (www.parentsjournal.com) and checking the podcasts of archived programs. “Attention Span in Early Childhood” was the topic of the June 4 interview, and “Everyday Challenges (and Solutions) during the Toddler and Preschool Years” was discussed July 7.

Based on Neville’s three decades as a pediatric answer nurse and parent educator, Is This a Phase? offers information on the concerns parents express over and over and over again.

This wonderful new guide is an ideal baby gift—for yourself or for someone you care about. And if you’re in the Bay Area, Neville may be exactly the speaker you want for your next child guidance workshop, early childhood education course or parenting group.

With concise descriptions and dozens of charts and graphs that will make it quick and easy to use for both fathers and mothers, Is This a Phase? is a reassuring guide that explains what to expect at every developmental stage between birth and age 6. Then it walks parents and caregivers through three dozen topics common in the first six years of life: everything from attention span and impulse control to death, divorce, and the red flags that signal reading readiness issues.

The co-author of Parenting Press’s well-regarded Temperament Tools: Working with Your Child’s Inborn Traits, Neville has been affiliated with Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Oakland, California since 1976.

Is This a Phase? is illustrated by Jenny Williams of Wales, who also illustrated Parenting Press’s 25 Things to Do When Grandpa Passes Away, Mom and Dad Get Divorced, or the Dog Dies, by Laurie Kanyer.

The foreword was written by Thomas Breese, M.D., University of California Medical Center, San Francisco.

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