A great movement based book for infants and carers.

I am fascinated by infants, their innate intelligence and their infinite desire to learn all the time. As a mother of three children, of diverse developmental needs I have treaded this journey with great enthusiasm and curiosity. I have read books and engaged with much scientific content in order to get a better understanding of how I can help and support my babies as they grow. In Understanding Babies by Ania Witkowska I have found a gentle, evidence based and practioner led book. This book has a wonderful balance between speaking to new parents in an understanding tone, bringing in Ania’s own long standing expertise and weaving in research to help the reader navigate the broad range of topics that are covered. If you are interested in knowing how to engage your baby and understand their developmental milestones and pathways this is a great book. It has neat sections on emotional development and how to incorporate these ideas into an infant’s play. It also has simple exercises that you can try and incorporate into play with your baby. This is a very gentle book with a comforting appeal to parents who would like to not follow rigid doctrines and be led by the child’s own development needs. As a facilitator of infant and parent yoga classes, I have used many of the gems of knowledge from this book into developing my babywearing yoga class even further. Ania’s last book is invaluable addition to the genre of progressive parenting books and her expertise will be sorely missed.