cover image Parent's Magazine It Worked for Me!: From Thumb Sucking to Schoolyard Fights, Parents Reveal Their Secrets to Solving the Everyday Problems of Raising

Parent's Magazine It Worked for Me!: From Thumb Sucking to Schoolyard Fights, Parents Reveal Their Secrets to Solving the Everyday Problems of Raising

. St. Martin's Press, $27.95 (480pp) ISBN 978-0-87596-340-2

The editor-in-chief of Parents Magazine, Pleshette Murphy assembles 2500 child-care tips and strategies in this book-length rendition (with all new material) of the magazine's column of the same title. Various nuggets of parenting wile and wisdom, with names and locations of contributors, are grouped into 16 chapters, each of which addresses a particular concern such as bedtime, potty training and dressing issues. While few parents are likely to wade through all of this advice, as a resource for specific problems, the book offers original solutions for everyday child-care conundrums gathered from creative, inventive parents (many of whom submitted their ideas via the Internet). One mom feeds her messy toddler in the bathtub to avoid clean-up aggravations. To save time, another puts her stubborn, dawdling youngster to bed in the comfy sweatsuit he'll be wearing the next day. One parent employs the sound of a fish tank filter to calm a colicky infant; another serves dinner in partitioned TV-dinner trays to children who object when different foods ""touch."" Each chapter includes suggestions for further reading and an ""ask the experts"" section on current child-rearing theory. While not all the advice is equally palatable (e.g., the editor's tip to camouflage beets and spinach in homemade ""vegetable cupcakes""), this is a quirky, sprightly and useful collection. Author tour. (Mar.)