Author(s): Paul Holinger

Babies

How many times have you held your fussing or crying baby and thought, "Come on, please tell me what's going on with you!" Well, your infant does tell you. In What Babies Say Before They Can Talk, Paul C. Holinger, M.D., M.P.H., a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who has been studying children and their emotions for more than twenty-five years, explains how infants communicate with us, and we with them. Dr. Holinger decodes the nine easily identifiable signals -- interest, enjoyment, surprise, distress, anger, fear, shame, disgust (a reaction to bad tastes), and dissmell (a reaction to bad smells) -- that all babies use to express their needs and wants.