Book excerpt: Your infant is crying and you don’t know why. Your toddler refuses every kind of food–except one. Your preschooler wages war with you each morning over what to wear. Every day, parents struggle unsuccessfully to understand why their children act the way they do. Now child development expert Priscilla J. Dunstan breaks down those barriers to understanding with this revolutionary and accessible guide that teaches a new way of parenting–custom-designed for each child’s personality. The product of eight years of groundbreaking research, this book will help you understand how your child interacts with the world. Dunstan begins from the premise that every child has his or her own dominant sensory “interface” with the world. Some children are highly sensitive to touch, others to sound or to sight. And some are unusually sensitive to all outside stimuli, especially taste and smell. This sensitivity affects how your child behaves, learns, and communicates from the very first days of life. Uncovering your child’s dominant sense–and knowing what your own dominant sense is–is essential for finding common ground and creating bonds of trust and intimacy with your child. Use this book to • take comprehensive “sense tests” to determine your child’s dominant sense–and your own • understand how sensory overload plays out from infancy to age five, at home and in school • learn why your child’s sensory personality shapes the way he or she instinctively reacts to new experiences and people • appreciate the richness of your child’s emotional life, and help your child thrive in the outside world For every parent who has ever looked at a child’s behavior and thought What is he trying to tell me?, Child Sense shows you how to find the answer.