On Becoming Babywise, Book Two: Parenting Your Five to Twelve-Month-Old Through the Babyhood Transitions

It's reality-check time You're at least four months into your tour of parenting, and the complexities of child training are starting to multiply. While your baby is growing physically, his mind is adapting with ever-increasing awareness to new sights, sounds, sensations and relationships. He can now interact with his material universe withgreater attentiveness. Watch out: big changes are coming to his world and yours

Preserving the order and structure that brought security to your baby's day, peaceful sleep in your baby's nights and stability in your home is still the priority, but now it must be viewed through a new developmental lens. For example, feeding time is more than a biological response initiated by a baby's sucking reflex. For the five-month-old, meal times become a complex and conscious interaction between him and his parents, food and drink, preference and need, likes and dislikes, must dos and won't dos