You Don’t Have To Be A Parenting Expert To Know It All About Your Baby
For the record:
- Milestones are guidelines for the journey. Not markers for a race.
- Babies have distinct personalities.
- There will never be an adequate expert substitute for bare-knuckle parenting.
So much parenting advice out there … but, none of it matters if it doesn’t apply to your baby. Forget the formulaic advice. The best strategy? Moms and Dads — know thy baby.
To know your baby, you must observe your baby. A key fact to remember is that babies grow via observable processes that we in the baby biz call “domains.” The developmental domains interconnect, they are interdependent, and an infant’s proficiency in each domain strengthens quickly. Babies have steady work. Even in this economy.
Regular readers have noticed that every MommyGarten.com blog post pertains to a specific domain of development (refer to the icon beside each post title). Just to be clear, here’s what I mean when I bandy those terms about:
The Developmental Domains:
Emotional Development and Social Development – (Think “People Skills.”) Because both of these intricately related domains comprise the basis for the quantity and quality of all future relationships in life, I sometimes discuss them together. Your newborn’s emerging interpersonal skills really function as questions at first:
- “If I cry, who will come?”
- “What will they do?”
- “If I give a smile, will I get one back?”
The quality and quantity of your answers will teach your baby all that he knows about relationships. He will also use this information to form a belief system about his self-worth, and the role of others in his life. He will spend his future living out these beliefs, culminating in the development of his character. Children don’t begin “working on” social skills in preschool — I don’t care what the brochure says.
Motor Development – (Think “Body Awareness” or “Body Self.”) The word motor comes from the Latin word that means movement. At first innate reflexes offer an additional layer of protection against this startling world. Babies drop off to sleep to shut out overstimulation (which is brain-damaging if left unchecked), they turn toward possible food sources, you know — survival-oriented things like that. When newborns shed those programmed responses, they gain (enjoy, even) a sense where they are in space, what they can do (making a noise by shaking a rattle), and how they feel (oooh, those feet are soft. Yummy, too).
An awakening body awareness is the beginning of self-sufficiency. That is why I have been known to advise thumb-sucking for parents looking for extra ways to soothe their babies – when again in life will baby be able to stick something in his mouth, make it all better, and not have to brush his teeth or jog afterwards?
Language Development – The first communication is the cry. That’s all a baby can pronounce, isn’t it? Soon, parents will notice the different sounds of baby’s cry. Please pause long enough to be amazed, folks. Your baby is organizing his communication around an intention. (Think “Communication.” Think “Skills!”)
Brain Development - The brain domain is a dynamic one. There have been revolutionary discoveries about infant brain development since I became a mommy, and since I began my career. For my purposes here, I include intellectual growth (“Thinking Skills.”) Sometimes brain development posts will be about the almost mechanical processes by which your baby learns (e.g., experiences create brain pathways, repeated experiences deepen the pathways, and the deepened pathways facilitate the ease of future experiences of the same nature). Sometimes I will talk about intellectual milestones like the acquisition of object permanence, and the parenting implications (the need to safety-proof your entire home), or how learning styles are as individual as personality.
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Carly Jennings | Parenting Skills | 
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