What to read instead of the Your X-Year-Old child books

Key Takeaways:

• Dr. Louise Bates Ames’ Your X-Year-Old child books are based on biased research that defined “normal” development using only White, middle-class children raised in the 1920s-30s.
• The research methods used by Dr. Arnold Gesell and Dr. Bates Ames were culturally biased despite claiming scientific neutrality, with rigid definitions of what constitutes ‘normal’ child development.
• You can’t simply ‘strip out’ outdated gender roles from these books because cultural context and child development continuously affect each other in ways the authors didn’t recognize.
• Instead of comparing your child to outdated ‘norms,’ focus on understanding your child’s difficult behavior as an expression of unmet needs that can be identified and addressed.
• Building real-life parenting communities that share your values provides better support than relying on outdated books based on research from nearly a century ago.
• Modern resources like my book Parenting Beyond Power offers a needs-based approaches to understanding child development.

 

Recently, I published a podcast episode on why we shouldn’t read Dr. Louise Bates Ames’ Your X-Year-Old child books anymore, which got quite a big response from listeners. 

 

In this blog post I’ll briefly summarize the main points of that episode and then answer the question I received most often via email and in the free Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group, which was: “Well, then, what should I read instead?”

 

The Outdated Approach to Child Development in Your X-Year-Old Books

There seem to be two main reasons why people recommend the Your X-Year-Old child books:

 

Because parents feel alone, and want to know that there are other parents out there who are in the same boat as them

 

Because parents want to know if their child’s seemingly incomprehensible behavior is ‘normal’

 

Recommendations for this book series often come with the caveat that the reader should ‘strip out the outdated gender roles crap,’ but that the rest of the information in the books is still relevant today. That didn’t sit well with me but I couldn’t quite figure out why for a long time. I recently came back to the question after spending the better part of a year digging into these topics as I wrote my book, and suddenly the pieces clicked into place in a way they hadn’t before.

 

Why Gesell’s Child Development Research is Problematic Today

The Your X-Year-Old Child books are built on research conducted by Dr. Arnold Gesell that started in the 1920s, and aimed to find out how ‘normal’ children developed. There are a number of reasons why this approach to child development is problematic:

 

1. Biased Sampling Methods

Gesell deliberately selected White parents who were considered to be in the middle class in the 1930s (so they had job titles like butcher, electrician, and factory operator – ‘unemployed’ was not a possible option).

 

Dr. Gesell was trying to avoid the stressors that are often associated with poverty and racism, as well as the economic advantages that money can bring to education and housing. He says that middle class children are going to develop exactly ‘normally;’ because White children don’t have any cultural influence. When we believe that how middle class White children are brought up is ‘normal,’ we position the way everyone else raises kids as ‘not-normal.’

 

2. False Scientific Neutrality

Gesell provides precise instructions for the 27 pieces of equipment to be used in the exam (e.g. a glass bottle 7cm in height and 2cm in diameter at the opening), and for the procedure itself as well.

 

This method provides a veneer of scientific neutrality. It implies that the research is value-neutral when in fact it is trying to show that White middle class ways of raising children are ‘best.’

 

3. Culturally Biased Testing Methods

The study’s methods were grounded in the cultural norms of the time. As an example, the protocol for testing a four-month-old child involves strapping the child upright in a chair while presenting them with the study objects.There’s also a protocol for what Dr. Gesell called the ‘pulled to sitting’ position, where the researcher trains the child to anticipate being pulled into a sitting position, even as he is looking to understand what constitutes normal development in the absence of cultural influences.

 

The cultural influences are so baked into the study that Dr. Gesell doesn’t see them, and Dr. Gesell then rates the baby’s performance on the task that he has determined is the appropriate one – handling the ball or cube or whatever other object is placed on the table in front of them.

 

The research reports included photos of children completing the study tasks. Dr. Gesell apparently doesn’t notice when a child seems to be using their hands to hold themselves up and relieve pressure from the chair’s chest strap. Instead, he marks them down on their performance in handling the ball or the cube because they didn’t catch it and roll it back to him.

 

4. Rigid Definitions of ‘Normal’ Development

Only the child’s interactions with the provided objects that happen in the ways Dr. Gesell expects are counted as valid. If the child handled the object in an ‘inappropriate’ way they would be trained to handle it in the right way. For example, the only acceptable response to having a ball rolled to you is to roll it back.

 

There is no attempt to understand the child’s behavior outside of what the researcher has decided is the appropriate thing to do with the object – which the researcher considers to be ‘normal.’ Children’s own creativity and ways of exploring and understanding objects are completely ignored.

 

5. Limitations of film in understanding child development

Gesell apparently believed that because the babies’ performance was recorded on film, it represented a true and complete record not just of what physically happened, but inside the child’s mind as they interacted with the objects.

 

He often begins books by looking back to the moment of conception and tracing the development and movement of viewable parts of the fetus. The analysis is then seamlessly continued, via filming, after the baby’s birth – as if watching the formation of mouth movements and the movement of a leg in response to touch in utero is the same as understanding a child’s brain development by recording them engaging with toys in a lab.

 

6. Artificial Research Environment

The mother (and it was always the mother who took the baby to the lab) sat outside the big photographic dome the experiments took place in, because removing her from view was intended to create a situation where only the baby’s performance is examined.

 

But babies don’t exist in isolation at home! We have no idea how their performance in the lab was related to what they would have done at home, with the interactions of both parents and siblings.

 

7. Contradictory Information on Child Development Stages

The information in the various books that Dr. Gesell and Dr. Bates Ames wrote is often contradictory. In one, Dr. Gesell concludes that “at 18 months a child has learned that certain objects must not be touched and he inhibits without command.”

 

But in the Your Two-Year-Old Child book Dr. Ames says that a two-year-old can’t be given the run of the house because “he [sic] still tends to produce his own kind of havoc.” No reason is given for this discrepancy, which is repeated on a variety of topics.

 

8. Problematic Values Around Child Development

Gesell and Dr. Bates Ames see maturation as a journey that the infant undergoes until they ‘arrive’ at the peak experience of adulthood. Anyone who isn’t able to contribute productively in a capitalist society is seen as a burden who is somehow less than fully human (Dr. Gesell draws on a paper published in the journal Eugenics Review to make this point). This view of what constitutes a valuable human being is deeply steeped in cultural values, and is not ‘natural’ or inevitable.

 

4 Critical Problems with Louise Bates Ames’ Child Development Books

The Your X-Year-Old Child books by Dr. Louise Bates Ames (she was Dr. Gesell’s research partner and later established the Institute at Yale University that was named for him) have a number of specific problems as well:

 

1. Vague Developmental Patterns

One of the primary ideas in the books is that development proceeds in a certain pattern of equilibrium and disequilibrium, which is very attractive to parents as they seek explanations for their children’s difficult behavior.

 

But she adds extensive caveats that not all children will behave this way all the time and in fact, “some will behave that way scarcely any of the time.” So what’s the point of naming the specific ages of equilibrium and disequilibrium?

 

2. Horoscope-Like Generalizations

The advice in the books is really no more accurate than a horoscope. Some of it is always true, Some of it can be back-fitted and seen to be true in hindsight, and some of it you have to look past to find the stuff that does fit.

 

A first-born child might be a genius, or they might have developmental delays. So why is birth order important?

 

3. Outdated Gender and Family Roles

Then there’s that pesky outdated gender content – in Dr. Bates Ames’ older, more academic books, Father comes home from work and “generously” offers to take over feeding, and when the child’s behavior doesn’t pass muster, Father insists that “it’s time the child learns to mind.”

 

All of this reinforces the heteronormative patriarchal power structure: father at the top telling everyone else how it will be, and Mother as his emissary enforcing Father’s directives.

 

4. Compliance-Focused Parenting

Parents are taught to use tips and tricks to get their child to “mind” (we might now say “listen”, but either way we mean: “do what I want them to do”). These include keeping up a rapid patter to distract them, letting the child feel like he [sic] is making the choice, not giving choices in important situations, and making sure to ignore tantrums.

 

All of this advice is designed to maintain parents’ power over children. Children’s needs are not seen as valid, and we should withdraw our love and affection to get them to comply with our wishes.

 

Why You Can’t Simply “Strip Out” the Outdated Parts

Every single decision we make about our child’s life. From living in a single family home with a fenced yard to providing every opportunity to enrich our child’s life to paying for hired help because we don’t have a ‘village’ to rely on, happens in a cultural context. So it isn’t possible to simply ‘strip out’ the outdated cultural information in the Your X-Year-Old Child books because the cultural context and the child’s development continually affect and are affected by each other.

 

Dr. Gesell himself told us in one of his books that parenting ideas from 100 years before he wrote seemed outdated and shouldn’t be used. I believe the time has now come to consider the Your X-Year-Old child books, which were written in the 1980s based on research done in the 1930s, as outdated and no longer useful. We shouldn’t read these books anymore.

 

Best Modern Parenting Resources and Child Development Books to Replace Your X-Year-Old Series

When I posted about the new episode in the free Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group, one parent said: “Oh no! Don’t take these away from me, I can’t find any better substitute.”

 

Another asked: “I had just put these on my Christmas list. What are alternatives?”

 

I did cover this topic briefly at the end of the episode, but I wanted to go into a bit more detail on that here.

 

Let’s go back to the two main reasons why I think people read these books that we opened this blog post with, and address them in turn:

 

Building Real Parenting Community Instead of Relying on Outdated Books

Parents feel alone, and want to know that there are other parents out there who are in the same boat as them. I totally hear you on this. When your child is doing things that seem bizarre, you want to know you’re not the only one. You want to know that other parents have had similar experiences and they’ve made it out in one piece and with their sanity intact.

 

But why are we looking to get this sense of solidarity from a book that’s written based on old research grounded in values that we don’t hold? It would be much more productive to build community with people who share our values; maybe even people we can interact with in real life. The people who live in our building and on our street and in our community.

 

It’s so tempting to think: there’s no time for that. I can’t leave the house. I don’t have a sitter.

 

Well, what if you traded house cleaning help? One week you clean a friend’s house, and the next week they come over and help you.

 

Or if you have a partner, trade partners for an evening catch-up – one member of each couple goes to the other’s house – no babysitter required, and any child who wakes up agitated has one of their own parents at home.

 

Or exchange meals with another family – it’s hardly any more work to cook a double recipe, and one night a week you get the night off from cooking.

 

This is where we can find real community.

 

Understanding Child Behavior Through a Needs-Based Approach

Parents want to know if their child’s seemingly incomprehensible behavior is ‘normal.’ Children do a lot of things that can seem incomprehensible. I’ve worked with parents whose children have smeared poop all over their crib, peed in the HVAC vents, fought continuously with their siblings, hit their parent (repeatedly and regularly) for no apparent reason…the list goes on.

 

This behavior seems incomprehensible, but it isn’t. It’s always an expression of a need.

 

Our job is to be the detective who looks for the need underlying the behavior – when we meet that need, the behavior we find so obnoxious very often goes away.

 

In my book I’ll help you to draw your child’s ‘needs cupcake’ – the needs they’re trying to meet over and over again that sit like a cherry on top of the ‘cupcake’ of all their other needs that pop up more intermittently.

 

For many children these cherry-on-top needs are things like autonomy, connection, and movement. And 90+% of the time it is possible to meet their need and meet your need as well.

 

But what if we can’t find the need? I argue that this is when we should look for professional help. Rather than comparing our child to an arbitrary average (that’s grounded in White supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist values from the 1930s), we can look to understand whether we’re able to meet the needs of the child in front of us and if we can’t, then we should look for more support. A professional may be able to identify unmet sensory needs that are overriding the more common needs for connection and autonomy that many children have, or needs for interacting with other people in ways that are less stressful than the ways we’ve been trying to get our child to interact with other people, or things they can do in school to quiet part of their mind so they can concentrate on what the teacher is saying.

 

But the key is that we’re looking at this child’s unmet needs, not at comparing them with a ‘normal’ child.

 

Recommended Modern Parenting Resources for Child Development

There are very, very few books that will help you to take a needs-based approach to child development. Here are my top recommendations:

• Beyond Behaviors by Dr. Mona Delahooke; I interviewed her for a podcast episode (the episode title references anxiety but the ideas are useful whether or not your child is experiencing this).
  
• The lovely little book Parenting From Your Heart by Inbal Kashtan is another; she uses tools related to Non-Violent Communication that I looked at in this episode.

• Raising Good Humans by Hunter Clarke-Fields and How to Stop Losing Your Sh*t With Your Kids by Carla Naumburg can help you to do the inner work to stay calm enough to do this work in difficult moments. My Taming Your Triggers workshop helps you to do this in community, which can help you to take on the ideas in your body and not just in your head, which is much more difficult when you’re doing the work by yourself.

• And of course this is the entire purpose of my book, Parenting Beyond Power: How to Use Connection and Collaboration to Transform Your Family – and the World, wherein you can learn how to look beneath challenging behaviors to find and meet children’s needs, and yours too!

(Links to books are affiliate links.)

 

Frequently Asked Questions About the Your X-Year-Old Child Books

Are the Louise Bates Ames child development books still relevant today?

While these books offer some observations that parents may find relatable, the underlying research is based on outdated values and biased methods from the 1930s. The books promote a rigid view of “normal” development based solely on White, middle-class children and contain problematic approaches to parenting focused on compliance rather than understanding children’s needs.

 

What’s wrong with the research behind the Your X-Year-Old Child books?

Dr. Gesell deliberately selected only White, middle-class families for his research, used artificially controlled testing environments, ignored cultural influences on development, and enforced rigid definitions of ‘normal’ behavior. The methods created a false sense of scientific neutrality while actually promoting specific cultural values around child-rearing and development.

 

Can I just ignore the outdated gender roles in the Your X-Year-Old Child books?

No, you can’t simply ‘strip out’ the outdated cultural information because cultural context and child development continuously affect each other. The problematic values around gender, family structure, and ‘normal’ development are embedded throughout the books’ approach to understanding children.

 

What modern parenting resources and child development books should I read instead of Your X-Year-Old Child books?

Better alternatives include “Beyond Behaviors” by Dr. Mona Delahooke, “Parenting From Your Heart” by Inbal Kashtan, “Raising Good Humans” by Hunter Clarke-Fields, and “How to Stop Losing Your Sh*t With Your Kids” by Carla Naumburg. 

 

My book, Parenting Beyond Power: How to Use Connection and Collaboration to Transform Your Family – and the World helps parents to understand how children’s difficult behavior is an expression of their needs, and how to find strategies that meet everyone’s needs.  These resources take a needs-based approach to understanding child behavior rather than comparing to arbitrary “norms.” (Links to books are affiliate links.)

 

How can I understand if my child’s behavior is normal without books showing age-based milestones?

Rather than comparing your child to outdated norms, focus on understanding their behavior as an expression of needs. Look for patterns in their behavior to identify core needs like autonomy, connection, or movement. This free quiz can help you to understand your child’s most important need, and offers lots of strategies to help you meet it.

 

Why is a needs-based approach to child development better than age-based milestones?

A needs-based approach focuses on your unique child rather than arbitrary averages based on deliberately biased research. By identifying and addressing your child’s specific needs, you can better support their development in a way that respects them as individuals and builds stronger relationships, rather than trying to force them to conform to outdated standards of “normal” behavior.