Today's parents are faced with a wealth of exciting but often confusing new ideas about child development and parent-child relationships. In this liberating and enlightening book, Stella Chess and Alexander Thomas, whose pioneering studies have earned them a worldwide reputation, draw on their own and others' research to systematically sort out fact from fantasy about how children develop. In lively layman's language they provide authoritative and timely answers to the questions parents most often ask, such as "How crucial are my child's first three years?", "Can IQ be changed?", and "Is adolescent rebellion inevitable?". Along the way they explode many of the myths that shackle parents and professionals alike.