Hetty Van De Rijt Frans Plooij Popular Books

Hetty Van De Rijt Frans Plooij Biography & Facts

The Wonder Weeks: A Stress-Free Guide to Your Baby's Behavior is a book with advice to parents about child development by physical anthropologist Hetty van de Rijt and ethologist and developmental psychologist Frans Plooij. Xaviera Plas-Plooij is a third author of recent editions. It was first published in English in 2003 as the translation of the 1992 Dutch book Oei, ik groei! The 6th edition in 2019 includes a chapter on sleep. The book claims that the cognitive development of babies occurs in predictably timed stages. This has long been a controversy in developmental psychology. Experts in child development have objected that sleep regressions are not so predictable. The publisher has produced a mobile app based on the book. Claims The book describes 10 predictable 'leaps' observed in a child's cognitive development during the first 20 months, with 8 in the first year. Months are counted from the due date because development begins with conception. These developmental 'leaps' consist of two phases, A phase where the baby is generally unhappy, followed by a period where the baby is generally happy, due to discovering new things with the newly gained cognitive skills. They are predicted to occur at 5, 8, 12, 17, 26, 36, 44, 53, 61-62 and 72-73 weeks old. Plooij's initial study was based on a survey of the mothers of 15 babies showing periods of greater and lesser fussiness. However, a follow up study by his former graduate student, with four infants and measures of cortisol as an indicator rather than the mothers' reported observations, failed to find a predictable pattern of stress. A third study, with 18 babies, also found an effect on fussiness, but again based on maternal report. None of the studies show evidence that the periods of fussiness are related to changes in cognitive development, a key component of the theory. Controversy A follow-up study by Plooij's PhD student, Carolina de Weerth, examined the claims of the book. She tested both behaviour and cortisol levels and failed to find any evidence of greater fussiness or higher cortisol levels corresponding to the leaps, though this might be due to inadequate sample size. According de Weerth, Frans X Plooij tried to pressure her into not publishing the study. Plooij disputes this account. The controversy that ensued led to Plooij's departure from academia. References. Discover the Hetty Van De Rijt Frans Plooij popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Hetty Van De Rijt Frans Plooij books.