I have had the special pleasure of talking briefly with Dr. Glade Curtis of the famed series, Your Pregnancy Week By Week. This being the penultimate primer for both first time Moms and Dads. Dr. Curtis and co-author Judith Schuler provide detailed information about the current development of your baby and describes in detail all the changes happening in mother right up until birth as well as important health issues (for both mother and baby) to be aware of during the course of the pregnancy.

meta-DAD: First I would love to find out how long this week-by-week book series has been going on? And what led you to create the first one?

Dr. Curtis: Your Pregnancy Week By Week was first published in 1989. Looking at pregnancy a week at a time makes sense to me, and it is the way I was taught as a medical resident and resident. As a practicing OB/GYN I found that my patients wanted to follow their progress through pregnancy this way as well. I came across a book with photographs of fetuses and developing babies beginning very early in pregnancy. I thought patients could benefit from understanding the changes taking place in their growing baby. The first edition came out my desire to share this information with pregnant couples.

mD: With technology and medical practices changing as quickly as they do, does it affect how you approach each new edition?

Dr. Curtis: People looking for medical information want it to be current and up to date. This has been important to me and is the reason that this is the “Sixth Edition” of Your Pregnancy Week By Week I am constantly looking at many resources for new developments and advancements in technology and information. I believe it is important to look carefully at advances making sure they are proven, safe and effective. This is an important responsibility that I take very seriously.

mD: Can you give me an example of one of these changes or advancements in the recent past?

Dr. Curtis: Until recently, the standard of care dictated that women age 35 or older at the time of delivery were offered ultrasound guided amniocentesis. This age was picked years ago because the risk of delivering a baby with Down syndrome at this age (1 in 350) was about the same as the risk of miscarrying as a complication of the amniocentesis procedure. Now, less invasive procedures are recommended to all pregnant women instead of amniocentesis. Now ultrasound with nuchal translucency (fold of skin behind the fetal neck) along with blood tests is recommended. If these tests are normal, an amniocentesis is not recommended. This helps many women avoid the more invasive procedure. If the blood tests-nuchal translucency screening test is abnormal, an amniocentesis may be recommended.

mD: Both my wife and I are curious how it is decided to include new information. Specifically, it sometimes feels there is a fine line between educating the Mother (and Father) and really kinda freaking them out, when it comes to some of the health concerns to be aware of within a certain week or trimester.

Right now my wife is in week twenty three of her pregnancy with our third boy and we were reading about the elusive nature of having an appendicitis when pregnant (whew). I’m sure there are a few Moms who walk away from that chapter gripping their right side…

Dr. Curtis: Yes, it is a very delicate balance between educating and scaring people to death. It would be nice to write a happy, everything is good all the time pregnancy book. The reality is that even in today’s world of advanced technology and treatments, there are complications or problems that can occur. All couples don’t need to know about all of these issues, but the ones who are going through it, want it.

I am often contacted by people expressing gratitude for the information – and asking for more details, more information. By discussing these topics, I hope we informing people and making it possible for them to ask their doctor questions.

mD: One of the most interesting weekly topics in your book is “How Your Actions Affect Your Baby’s Development”. Can you talk in general about this topic and maybe share with us some of the biggest pregnancy myths that have persevered through the years.

Dr. Curtis: I think this is one of the most important aspects of this or any pregnancy book. That is, a pregnant woman’s actions before and during her pregnancy can have a major impact on the health of their baby. We continue to learn about pregnancy and developing fetuses, learning about things that are good and bad.

An example is that of folic acid. We now know that a large percentage of cases of neural tube defects (such as spin bifida) can be eliminated by proper diet or supplementation prior to and during the early weeks of pregnancy. Some of the more silly myths include concern about raising your arms above your head or reaching for something high on a shelf resulting in a knot in the cord or the umbilical cord. Both are not true.

mD: Yeah, a lot of those myths we didn’t even know about. My favorite ones are all the different ways you can “tell” the sex of the baby (based on the shape, orientation or size of the belly, et al.).

Personally, I feel some of the best things that you touch upon in your book is some of the practical stuff the Moms and Dads have to think about regarding hospital care and doctor services.

I want to thank you for taking the time to answer my questions and wish you well with future editions.

Sited Links:
Your Pregnancy Week By Week
Mayo Clinic | Amniocentisis

Additional Titles by Dr. Curtis:
Your Pregnancy For The Father-to-be: Everything Dads Need To Know About Pregnancy, Childbirth…
Your Pregnancy After 35
Week by Week Gift Set: Your Pregnancy & Your Baby’s First Year

Dr. David Elkind is a leading child-development expert and Professor Emeritus of Tufts University and his work has been published for over two decades. He has written a plethora of books on child development, and his latest effort is a meditation on the art and science of play as it pertains to the developing child. His latest book, “The Power of Play; Learning What Comes Naturally,” explores with thoughtful analysis and solid examples how unscheduled, imaginative play helps forge a solid and lasting path for both academic and social success for children.

Recently, I have had the opportunity to ask him a few revealing questions about the importance of kids playing. Yes that’s right, playing. He has reminded me of the importance of shutting off the television (and the computer for that matter) and grabbing a ball or fashioning a super-hero cape and sheparding those kids to the backyard or park.

Meta-DAD: As a new Dad of two boys (and another one on the way), I am very curious to find out – in a nutshell – what kind of impact healthy play has on a child’s development?

Dr. Elkind: Play is a basic human drive, which like love and work, takes different forms and serves different functions at different stages in the life cycle. Through self initiated play, children create new learning experience essential to healthy mental, emotional and social development.

MD: What should parents be sensitive to with regard to the way boy and girls play (both together and separately)?

Dr. E: Play should be constructive and joyful. If children are being destructive or fighting, parents need to step in.

MD: What are your feelings about role playing games? Specifically the “Cops and Robbers” or “Good Guys vs. Bad Guys” games that kids play? And separately, I am interested in what your feelings are on “horse-play”? Meaning that rough and tumble physical play that you find on playgrounds around the world.

Dr. E: Role playing is a healthy activity, children playing doctor or teacher are not really practicing to taken those roles as adults. They are dealing with the fact of being small and weak in comparison to adults. In role play they can be the adults and have the power and confidence that goes with it. It is a form of therapeutic play. Rough and tumble play is universal among boys and reflects the fact that boys relate to one another differently than do girls. Girls use language to express relationships while boys do so with physical contact. High fives are a case in point.

MD: What are the different types/categories of play and what are their advantages on a developing child?

Dr. E: here are many ways to categorize play. I talk about mastery play, wherein children learn new skills through repetition; Innovative play wherein children create new games, including dramatic play; Kinship play (the tendency of children to play with children of the same age even if they are strangers): and therapeutic play through which children work through anxiety and stress.

MD: Are there distinct links between language development and play?

Dr. E: Most dramatically in babbling. Through self initiated babbling children create all the sounds of language and are able to select out those that map on to the language of their caregivers. No on teaches a child to babble; it is a form of play essential to language growth.

MD: So essentially, kids babbling is their way of stumbling upon or practicing the phonemes or verbal building blocks necessary for sounding out words?

Dr. E: Exactly.

MD: When parents are at the toy store what kinds of things should we be thinking about when choosing a toy?

Dr. E: It depends upon the age. For infants and young children, look for a good set of wooden blocks and other toys that leave room for the child’s imagination. Books are important at all age levels and encourage fantasy and imagination. For older children, board games like checkers and Monopoly teach children strategies and ubteroersibak skills such as reading body language. It is best to avoid the “watch me” toys that offer little opportunity for interaction.

MD: Do you have any thoughts you want to share about computer games and/or video games?

Dr. E: There are so many different types of games it is difficult to generalize. Many games like simulation games are very educational whereas many puzzle games are not really educational but do exercise the mind in the way that crossword puzzles do. The shoot em up variety have little to say for themselves. They may be a way for some children to expend their aggression in a socially acceptable way, but we don’t have much evidence on this.

Other Reading by Dr. David Elkind:
The Hurried Child
The Best Schools: How Human Development Research Should Inform Educational Practice
Miseducation: PRESCHOOLERS AT RISK
All Grown Up and No Place to Go: Teenagers in Crisis
Blocks to Robots: Learning with Technology in the Early Childhood Classroom

I have had the special opportunity to interview Philip Lerman, author of the recently published book – Dadditude. When Phil, about to turn 50, quits his job as the producer of one of the longest-running network TV shows ever (America’s Most Wanted), he believes a lifetime of management experience will carry him through his new job of full-time fatherhood. He’s sure that his years of controlling a wild pack of roving producers have prepared him to conquer the world of one small boy in a Beatles haircut.

Lerman soon learns how easily a three-year-old can take that belief and stuff cheese balls in its ear.

By turns poignant and hilarious, Lerman’s journey from the control room to the playroom (and, ultimately, from obsessing about control to accepting the natural chaos of things) offers a lesson for the modern age: that somewhere between strict discipline and unconditional love, lies¦ Dadditude.

MD: What is Dadditude, in a nutshell for those who haven’t heard of the book?

PL: I think it’s all about Dads learning to find that middle ground between always being right (which, of course, we are) and going with the flow (which, of course, is not exactly our best thing, truth be told). Dads love consistency, but Dadditude’s about learning the Zen Riddle of parenting: That It’s OK to be consistent just not all the time.

MD: Who is your target audience? Do you have one? If I was to venture a guess I would say by your “Every-Man” conversational tone it is probably for any and every guy out there and maybe more importantly every woman, since it is a wonderful meditation on all the funny neurotic and silly stuff that (I will speak of myself only here) we Dads think about.

PL: Actually, moms have been enjoying the book (and anytime you can make a mom happy, you know, you get karma points, so that’s a good thing). They tell me they’ve been reading sections to their husbands in bed. So I have now been officially inducted to the American Foreplay Society, an honor for which I am truly grateful.

Women, however, don’t get why there are so many asides about music and lyrics and movies and such. Guys like that a lot more. That’s a guy thing.

MD: I gotta ask, what does you wife think of the book?

PL: She likes it a lot, although she says I mention her boobs a few too many times. But hey, when you’re a guy talking about pregnancy, let’s be honest: there are certain side-effects that we are just crazy about.

MD: Fast-forward twenty years from now, what do you think your son, Max, will think of the book?

PL: I hope he thinks, wow, my dad was a funny guy, and a cool guy. But that’s what every man wants from his son. When they asked God about the bible and said hey, what do you think your son with think of the book in 20 years, he said basically the same thing. Not that I’m comparing myself to God, or anything. He’s much, much taller.

MD: By the way, I love the idea of Intermittent Reinforcement. Can you talk a little bit about this? How did you arrive at this? Was it something that came from managing “run-and-gun” productions on America’s Most Wanted for so many years?

PL: Just the opposite, actually. It all goes back to that question of consistency. As a manager in the workplace, you can be consistent it’s expected, in fact. A run-and-gun operation like AMW requires almost military precision. If anyone sends a fax and doesn’t follow up with a phone call to confirm, you have to reprimand them about it, because one day the whole operation will stop because that fax didn’t go through. To be fair to a roomful of employees, you try to react to things as consistently as possible.

Parenting is the opposite. Dads WANT it to be about consistency if I pick up the baby when she cries, she will learn that crying brings daddy to the room, so I must never do this — but moms know you have to pick your battles if you’re gonna get through the day. Remembering what we learned back in Psych 101 that the rat learns more quickly through intermittent reinforcement is the hardest thing for dads. We just have to keep reminding ourselves that kids are much more pliable, more flexible, than we think (although, in my experience, they’re really lousy at sending faxes).

MD: What would you say to younger guys thinking about having kids someday. What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of having kids later in life?

PL: People tell me, Phil, you’re too old to have a kid. You don’t have the stamina, you don’t have the strength, you don’t have the ability to pull an all-nighter anymore. Well, I’m here to tell you they’re absolutely right.

But there are advantages to being an older dad, too. You tend to have more patience. You tend to crave going to the bar less, and being home more. Most importantly, you’ve either had kids before, or your friends have, and you know how astoundingly quickly it goes by. So you are more likely to spend time with your child now, rather than putting it off. So many of my friends who had kids at an earlier age say, you know, I wish I spent more time with them when they were little. I feel like I missed a lot. So, us older dads benefit from their testimony, and can pass it along.

Here’s the thing, when the days ahead of you are shorter than the days behind, you tend to appreciate each one a little more, to thank God for the blessing of being with your child, today, now. And so you put down the paper and get down on the rug and pick up a car and make the car noise, and fall blissfully into this moment, this perfect moment with your child, perfect just because you’re lucky enough to share it, and if there’s anything older dads can teach younger ones, it’s that: just Be Here Now. The rest will take care of itself.

Related Links:
Dadditude.Com
FOX & Friends | Interview With Phil Lerman