Love and Limits In and Out of Child Care is a roadmap for parenting happy, healthy children. Coauthored by day care provider Margaret (Peggy) Thomas, her husband, Richard, and Lisa Dobberteen, a pediatrician who entrusted her own children to Peggy's care, this is an enjoyable and educational guide to everything from TV watching to toilet training.

Drawing on the authors' expertise in their respective fields, Love and Limits offers a peek into an ideal child care situation along with advice on medical and developmental issues of real concern to parents. Conversations between Peggy Thomas and Dr. Dobberteen highlight the authors' shared view about the value of loving routines—love and limits—in raising children today. Whether their young children are in full- or part-time child care settings or at home, families will find the combination of common-sense parenting advice and medical insight just right for today's complex world.

With a healthy balance of time-proven wisdom and up-to-date medical information, the book offers parents proven strategies for deciding which day-care situation is best, along with practical tips for

• establishing bedtime routines
• getting along with others
• negotiating the logistics of child care—sick days, payment, vacations, and more
• enticing picky eaters to eat
• keeping toddlers occupied during travel
• selecting first aid essentials—what to keep on hand
• helping children cope with problems and frustrations

Charmingly illustrated by award-winning children's book illustrator Susanna Natti, this invaluable resource will guide and reassure all parents.

Margaret Thomas has been providing child care in her Cambridge, Massachusetts, home for over 45 years. Retired from the M.I.T. Libraries, Richard Thomas writes from home. His travel articles and essays have appeared in the Boston Globe, Porthole Cruise Magazine, and Cambridge Chronicle. Lisa Dobberteen, M.D., is a practicing pediatrician and an associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.