The Happiest Toddler on the Block

How to Eliminate Tantrums and Raise a Patient, Respectful and Cooperative One- to Four-Year-Old: Revised Edition

By: Harvey Karp Md

Narrated by: Tim Fannon

Perfect for expecting parents who want to prepare themselves for the challenging toddler years (which starts around eight months of age), this essential guide, a national bestseller by respected pediatrician and child development expert Dr. Harvey Karp, not only helps reduce tantrums but makes happy kids even happier by boosting patience, cooperation, and self-confidence.

Toddlers can drive you bonkers...so adorable and fun one minute...so stubborn and demanding the next! Yet, as unbelievable as it sounds, there is a way to turn the daily stream of “nos” and “don’ts” into “yeses” and hugs...if you know how to speak your toddler’s language. In one of the most useful advances in parenting techniques of the past 25 years, Dr. Karp reveals that toddlers, with their immature brains and stormy outbursts, should be thought of not as pint-size people but as pint size...cavemen.

Having noticed that the usual techniques often failed to calm crying toddlers, Dr. Karp discovered that the key to effective communication was to speak to them in their own primitive language. When he did, suddenly he was able to soothe their outbursts almost every time! This amazing success led him to the realization that children between the ages of one and four go through four stages of “evolutionary” growth, each linked to the development of the brain, and each echoing a step in prehistoric humankind’s journey to civilization:

• The “Charming Chimp-Child” (12 to 18 months): Wobbles around on two legs, grabs everything in reach, plays a nonstop game of “monkey see monkey do.”
• The “Knee-High Neanderthal” (18 to 24 months): Strong-willed, fun-loving, messy, with a vocabulary of about 30 words, the favorites being “no” and “mine.”
• The “Clever Caveman” (24 to 36 months): Just beginning to learn how to share, make friends, take turns, and use the potty.
• The “Versatile Villager” (36 to 48 months): Loves to tell stories, sing songs and dance, while trying hard to behave.

To speak to these children, Dr. Karp has developed two extraordinarily effective techniques:

1. The “fast food” rule - restating what your child has said to make sure you got it right
2. The four-step rule - using gesture, repetition, simplicity, and tone to help your irate Stone-Ager be happy again.

©2008 Happiest Baby Inc. (P)2019 Novel Audio Inc.

Very helpful

My daughter’s pediatrician recommend this book. I’ve already started to implement some of items. Wish I had known about the baby book.

Super Helpful!!

I’ve been trying the tips in this book for a week and already have seen huge improvements in my toddler’s tendency to tantrum

Good resource!

Overall, this was a great resource for me in navigating the toddler years with my little one. There are several concepts that are repeated throughout the book. Normally this would be a negative for me, but this was actually helpful for me because it helped me remember them easier. The numerous examples of different child behavioral scenarios with the therapeutic and/or non-therapeutic response of the parent was also super helpful! A lot of these methods are well known and already in use by my husband and I, but there are some new ones that I’m already incorporating into my parenting. On the contrary, some methods I don’t foresee being effective with my toddler, but maybe would be for other families. Overall, highly recommend this for parents of toddlers!

Informative

Great tips! But the narrator needs to learn how to pronounce etcetera. One “ex-cetera” is forgivable. Every other paragraph is almost unbearable.

Essential for all current of future toddler parents

Harvey Karp was a life saver for us as new parents of our infants. We had absolutely positive results. However, when our child grew into a toddler, we needed a little more actionable training. This book was it and has given us techniques, methods, and actions to take to raise a healthy and happy toddler. Extraordinary!