- About Us
- Advertise
- Contributors
- Grab our blog badge!
- Contact Us
-
-
Advertisements
The key to infant communication? I’ll keep looking.
I watched the Dunstan DVDs one week before my baby arrived. My first impression was that the DVDs seemed awfully short. Each of the DVDs lasted barely more than 20 minutes! Also, some of the information in the DVD seemed superfluous. After explaining what each type of cry means, Ms. Dunstan walked through “solutions” with ways to feed the baby, burp the baby, and put the baby to sleep. For the small amount of information, unnecessarily divided on two DVDs, I wondered about the $40 price tag, too.
So, what was my opinion when the new baby arrived? Honestly, the DVDs have not been too helpful. I have been listening for my “nehs” and “ehs” and all the other sounds, but I have been more able to figure out what he wants by thinking about how long it has been since he ate, slept, or had a new diaper. What I did take away from watching these DVDs is that my baby has different cries based on the situation. I can definitely tell a difference between his “I’m hungry” cry and his “My stomach is full of gas and hurts really bad” cry.
The verdict? There are people out there who have found great solutions in this DVD set, but there are also many like me who did not get much help at all, so I cannot recommend it. If you feel this is something you would like to try, you might want to look into whether or not your local library carries it before shelling out the money to buy it for yourself. - Sara I.
I’m always amazed that people make money selling what intuition takes care of. Simply paying attention to your child seems very informative! (Can you tell that I did not try to teach my baby to sign?)
A friend taped Dunston on Oprah for me - it was a 7 minute segment. I saw it when my baby was around 8-10 weeks old. I found Dunston’s 5 explanations so incredibly easy, and my husband and I started using her 5 cry classifications immediately. It was such a help! Of course the baby only cried like that (neh, eh, oww, etc) until about 4 1/2 months, and then it gradually stopped. But during that time that I was able to use her explanations, I was so grateful for them. As a new parent, I was very glad to have this help.
ThE dunstan DVD was really helpful. we used the sounds over the first 3 months and it made the experience so much easier. i think the best thing was how it allowed my husband to be so much more involved. that he could learn the sounds and then apply them, made him feel very competent when looking after Josh.
Stephanie and Julie, I am so glad to hear positive experiences from people out there! Thanks for sharing! For anyone interested in the Oprah episode, you can find a little blurb at http://tinyurl.com/dunstan.
I fall into the category of those who weren’t really impressed. I was excited an ready to use the information, but my baby was either giggly and happy or totally enraged, no happy medium to interpret. And why can’t 40 minutes of information fit on 1 DVD anyway?
Learn about our
A friend of mine recommended this to me after seeing it on Oprah, I think. After watching the DVD from the library (and I agree it is very short and not much information there) it seemed like it would be useful and so easy. Not! The thing is that they say you have to listen for the sounds while the baby is still calm, before they escalate to a screaming cry. Um, I don’t know about anyone else’s baby, but mine went from happy to screaming in about 1 second flat. On top of being completely flustered by the screaming baby, this just wasn’t for me. No time and no energy to figure it all out.