An inquiry into the lives of children of similar, if not identical, historical an cultural heritage who today find themselves in radically opposed ideological worlds, regarding one another across the concrete manifestation of their considerable differences, the Berlin Wall. Under these circumstances, what are the significant factors that contribute to the development in children of feelings of loyalty to or alienation from their nation? How do they view not only themselves, but the "other" Germans as well? How do they come to terms, emotionally and cognitively, with a unique, frequently painful, and frustrating reality? What are the lessons intended for them by their societies, and what lessons do they in fact learn? How do these children persist as Germans while at the same time becoming something else -- "communists? or "capitalists"?

Thomas Davey conducted interviews with children both sides of the Wall, participated in their daily lives, collected their drawings, talked with their teachers and families and grew aware of just how attentive children can be to moral and political subtleties of national life. The result is a revealing and dramatic portrait of a young generation coming to terms with complex national and historical circumstances of the two cites of East and West Berlin.

The social and cognitive development of children is a complex yet crucial process for parents to understand, and though there are numerous books on child development, A Good Start in Life stands out from the rest as an acclaimed and important work on the connections between childhood brain and behavioral development.

This new paperback edition, updated with the latest information and new material, offers parents and educators a rich and invaluable resource on how children learn to live in family and society from birth to age six. Norbert Herschkowitz, MD, and his wife Elinore Chapman Herschkowitz draw on their lifetime of experience in studying infants and children to explain how brain development shapes a child’s personality and behavior. Organizing their narrative by age, the authors examine a wide range of social development issues, from appropriate rule-setting to the development of key character elements in a child such as moral sensibility, temperament, language development, playing, aggression, impulse control, and empathy.

Some of the most popular features of the hardcover edition are retained here, including the question-and-answer section that concludes each chapter with real questions posed by parents to Dr. Herschkowitz, as well as brain maps and charts that display milestones in the development of various skills. Additional new material addresses concerns about prematurely born babies and the issue of resilience in children.

In today’s world, children grow up in an incredibly complex and highly sensory environment. A Good Start in Life offers a clear, concise, and richly detailed guide infused with warmth and encouragement that enables parents and educators to constructively stimulate and shape their children’s cognitive and social development.

“A must read . . . a gift to all parents.”—Rosemarie T. Truglio, vice-president, Education and Research, Sesame Workshop

“Do the first three years of life represent a critical period for all aspects of development? Are we the product of our genes or of our environment? Does early exposure to Mozart make for smarter babies? The answers to these and other pressing questions are skillfully and elegantly answered in this wonderful book, which I enthusiastically recommend.”
—Charles A. Nelson, Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Child Psychology, Neuroscience, and Pediatrics, University of Minnesota

“This delightfully written book . . . is not merely a how-to book, but a book about understanding how a child truly grows.”
—Guy McKhann, MD, The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

From growing their children, parents grow themselves, learning the lessons their children teach. “Growing up”, then, is as much a developmental process of parenthood as it is of childhood. While countless books have been written about the challenges of parenting, nearly all of them position the parent as instructor and support-giver, the child as learner and in need of direction. But the parent-child relationship is more complicated and reciprocal; over time it transforms in remarkable, surprising ways. As our children grow up, and we grow older, what used to be a one-way flow of instruction and support, from parent to child, becomes instead an exchange. We begin to learn from them. The lessons parents learn from their offspring—voluntarily and involuntarily, with intention and serendipity, often through resistance and struggle—are embedded in their evolving relationships and shaped by the rapidly transforming world around them.
 
With Growing Each Other Up, Macarthur Prize–winning sociologist and educator Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot offers an intimately detailed, emotionally powerful account of that experience. Building her book on a series of in-depth interviews with parents around the country, she offers a counterpoint to the usual parental development literature that mostly concerns the adjustment of parents to their babies’ rhythms and the ways parents weather the storms of their teenage progeny. The focus here is on the lessons emerging adult children, ages 15 to 35, teach their parents. How are our perspectives as parents shaped by our children? What lessons do we take from them and incorporate into our worldviews? Just how much do we learn—often despite our own emotionally fraught resistance—from what they have seen of life that we, perhaps, never experienced? From these parent portraits emerges the shape of an education composed by young adult children—an education built on witness, growing, intimacy, and acceptance.
 
Growing Each Other Up is rich in the voices of actual parents telling their own stories of raising children and their children raising them; watching that fundamental connection shift over time. Parents and children of all ages will recognize themselves in these evocative and moving accounts and look at their own growing up in a revelatory new light.