Rating: 
Summary: Read if you have a high needs baby
Review: I did not read this book till after my high needs baby had grown up, but I sure wish I had read it sooner.
You can't prevent a high needs baby, but you sure can work with him to make his and your life easier...all you need is this book :)
I only gave 4 stars cause most of this info is already in the Sears AP book.
Rating:
Summary: The ONLY book that helped me!
Review: I have gathered a vast collection of child care books, and none of them were as helpful as this one. It was frustrating when my friends/family just didn't understand how it was that I simply "couldn't put my daughter down" until she was about 7 months old... how it was possible that she didn't like to be touched, but had to be held all the time... how she simply didn't nap... I was told that I was only making it worse by indulging her ("let her cry a bit!", "teach her to be patient!", etc.) Well, when I read this book, I felt an enormous sense of relief that my baby wasn't the only one like this. I was also thrilled to learn about concrete ways to care for my not-so-ordinary baby. We have ended up with a happier child and happier mom, too! This is THE book for parents of high-maintenance, high-sensitivity, high-needs babies.
Rating: 
Summary: Sanity Saver
Review: I love this book! I got it in excellent condition and I got a lot of ideas. So far they have been working on my high need child. I would recommend this book to anyone in the same situation.
Rating:
Summary: Sanity Saver
Review: I love this book! I got it in excellent condition and I got a lot of ideas. So far they have been working on my high need child. I would recommend this book to anyone in the same situation.
Rating:
Summary: This book is such a relief!
Review: I read through this book whenever I start thinking, 'What is going on with my baby?!' It always helps me to put things in perspective and remember that I'm certainly not the only one out there with a baby who isn't "easy" (if there is such a thing...). The Sears' don't offer many quick solutions, but they do let you know that "fussy" babies can be wonderful and that it's important to accept them and the work that needs to go into them. If you're looking to train your baby to be "good," skip this book. But if you want help in developing a close positive relationship, this book is the one for you.
Rating: 
Summary: Judgemental and simplistic
Review: I really wanted "attachment parenting" to work for me and my baby, but it did not. I had a baby with colic, and I found that the ideology in this book that you, as the mother, have to do everything possible to stop your baby from crying increased my stress and made me feel worse (while the advice did not help, and the baby still cried). After my experience with a colicky baby, I believe that babies sometimes do cry for "no reason," or at least not one that we as adults can always discern with our current knowledge. I think that in general this book has an overly simplistic view of what crying means, even to babies. If you felt like you needed a good cry, would you really want someone always sticking an object in your mouth, rattling a toy in your face, singing, moving around in a sling, putting you in a car seat on a washing machine, whatever? Couldn't that be even more frustrating for the baby as well as the parent? This book sets up a false dichotomy between attachment parenting and "crying it out" (which seems to be a catchphrase used to beat up verbally on well-meaning pediatricians, friends, and family) which can be quite stressful in its own right if your baby cries inconsolably.
Rating:
Summary: I'm Not Alone!
Review: I was so happy to see in writing the thoughts I had privately established regarding my child. It was as though the Seares had looked into the future and saw my child. I was especially grateful for the chapter on saving mother's sanity. This book helped me to understand why my baby is acting the way he is and to accept and nurture him for who he is.
Rating:
Summary: A must-read
Review: I wish I had this book when my toddler son was a baby. I'd heard of it back then, but was skeptical-what a mistake!! The description of a high needs baby read like a description of my son. It was wonderful to know that he is perfectly normal, and probably a lot like I was as a baby. The only drawback is that there was not enough information on what to do with your high needs toddler if you misunderstood him as a baby. The information presented in this area was useful though.
Rating: 
Summary: Danger! Danger!
Review: I'm a new mother of a beautiful, active little girl, now just over 3 months old. After time with one of her more "mellow" infant friends, this book was tactfully suggested to me. After all, our daughter constantly fussed or howled if put down, she slept little and fitfully, was demanding of our attentions, and seemed so "wired" that she kept us up night after night way past our bedtimes. We were at our wits' end.
According to the criteria listed in Sears' book, our daughter did qualify as "high needs". Essentially his advice boils down to "be grateful you have such a unique little person" and "well...did you think parenting was going to be easy?!" and "to avoid burnout, share childcare between you (i.e. the parents)" (duhh!). We found all this all the more frustrating, not to mention guilt-inducing.
Luckily, at the same time we bought this book we also bought Marc Weissbluth's "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child." According to Weissbluth, children "diagnosed" as high-needs are often just chronically overtired. We put her on a sleep regimen and after only THREE days she was a different child...quiet, happy, and quite happy just sitting there when we put her down. As one other parent commented in these reviews, turns out that our child wasn't high-needs at all, just overtired!
Beware of this Sears book, is all I can say. His "diagnosis" of a child as "high needs" is hardly scientific; most of his analysis seems to come from his own experience raising a single fussy daughter, not from years of research, and the suggestions he offers simply don't work. He advocates breastfeeding as a sure-fire way to put a high-needs child to sleep, for instance, especially what he calls "nestle nursing" or nursing in the bathtub. OUr daughter simply could and can not be nursed to sleep. And woe to you if you bottlefeed or don't have a tub! in short -- unless you are prepared for more frustration and guilt on top of that, steer clear of this book.
Rating: 
Summary: amending my earlier 5 star review
Review: In September I gave this book 5 stars. At that time, it WAS a big help - our son cried basically all the time, and reading this made me feel better. HOWEVER...as time went on, things did not get much better. The colic, or whatever it was, didn't go away. "Parenting" our baby to sleep was becoming more and more difficult - an hour of rocking, only to have him wake up screaming 10 minutes later. Co-sleeping was a complete joke with this kid. But Dr. Sears puts the fear of God into you about sleep training, warning that it will ruin your baby. DON'T LISTEN TO HIM. Finally at about five months, we did Ferber because our son was waking up all night and would never nap. And you know what? I don't have a fussy, high-need baby at all. I had a TIRED baby, tired from three months of colic where he probably only slept about 9 or 10 hours a day, instead of 15 or 16. If I had not decided to ignore Dr. Sears's sleeping "advice," I would still have a high-need baby. Our son still trusts us and is about a million times happier now that he can play and be interested in things, instead of just sitting there and crying because he's so tired. So get what you can from this book, but I would be willing to guess that for many kids, being a fussy baby is a self-fulfilling prophecy if the parent follows Dr. Sears to the letter. Also, his advice is very breastfeeding-centered, so if you're not nursing you may get less out of it.
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