A funny, honest, and practical guide to attachment parenting from actress, mother, and neuroscientist Mayim Bialik.

Mayim Bialik was the child star of the popular 1990s TV sitcom Blossom, but she definitely didn’t follow the typical child-star trajectory. Instead, Mayim got her PhD in neuroscience from UCLA, married her college sweetheart, and had two kids. Mayim then did what many new moms do—she read a lot of books, talked with other parents, and she soon started questioning a lot of the conventional wisdom she heard about the “right” way to raise a child. That’s when she turned to attachment parenting, a philosophy and lifestyle popularized by well-known physicians like Dr. William Sears and Dr. Jay Gordon.

To Mayim, attachment parenting’s natural, child-led approach not only felt right emotionally, it made sense intellectually and instinctually. She found that when she followed her intuition and relaxed into her role as a mother instead of following some rigid parenting script, both she and her children thrived. Drawing on both her experience as a mother and her scientific background, Mayim presents the major tenets of attachment parenting, including:

CO-SLEEPING

How to avoid “sleep training” and get a great night’s sleep for the whole family.

BREASTFEEDING

Learn how to listen to your baby’s cues rather than sticking to a rigid schedule—and why people on airplanes love a nursing mother.

BABY WEARING

How to “wear” your baby in a sling or a wrap to develop a closer bond with your child—it’s possible even for mamas with bad backs (and with big babies)!

GENTLE DISCIPLINE How to get your child to behave without yelling, threats, or time-outs—it really can be done.

Mayim describes the beauty, simplicity, and purposefulness of attachment parenting, and how it has become the guiding principle for her family. Much more than a simple how-to parenting guide, Beyond the Sling shows us that the core principles underlying attachment parenting are universal and can be appreciated no matter how you decide to raise your child.

Mayim Bialik is perhaps best known for her lead role as Blossom Russo in the early-1990s NBC television sitcom Blossom, and she currently stars on the top-rated comedy The Big Bang Theory. Bialik earned a B.S. from UCLA in 2000 in Neuroscience and Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from UCLA in 2007. She designed a Neuroscience curriculum for homeschoolers in Southern California, where she also teaches biology, chemistry, and piano to middle and high school students. Married to her college sweetheart with two young sons, Bialik is also a Certified Lactation Education Counselor.