Episode 20
===
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Create Thriving Families podcast. I'm your host, Lisa Peterson. I'm a doctor of chiropractic, and I've been in private practice for 20 years, seeing mostly women, babies, and children. The Create Thriving Families podcast is a place for us to have a conversation about how we can help our children become the healthiest, most vibrant and aligned version of themselves, the full expression of who they came here to be.
The quality of our lives and the quality of our relationships is dependent on the quality of our health, and I believe that the greatest gift any of us could give to our children is the best start possible when it comes to their own health. I can't wait to see where this journey takes us. Let's get started
Welcome back. This is the fifth episode in [00:01:00] a series of episodes all about the neural development happening with your baby during the first year of life. This is an eight-part series that is all about trying to give mothers an understanding of what's happening neurologically in your baby's brain and their nervous system in each of the windows of development.
So it's been divided into periods of time, the zero to three-month period, the three to six-month period, six to nine months, and nine to 12 months, and each of those windows of development is divided into two separate episodes. The first part is all about what is actually happening neurologically in your baby's brain and their nervous system during that period of time.
The second [00:02:00] part or the second episode in each window of development is about what kind of things you should be actually seeing in your home on a day-to-day basis developmentally with your baby during that window of time, and what kinds of things you can be doing yourself to facilitate optimal development in the brain and in the nervous system of your baby during that period.
So this is part one of the six to nine-month window We're going to be talking about what is happening in the brain and the nervous system of your baby from six months to nine months of life. My hope for this entire series is really to try to give new mothers the full guided tour of their baby's neurology during the first year of life.
It's such a hard, confusing [00:03:00] time, and it's so difficult to know if what we are doing is working or if what we're seeing is normal. So that's what I'm hoping to give you with this series of podcasts. I hope I'm able to do it in a way that is interesting and actionable and practical, and I wanna talk a lot about what you can be doing yourself at home to support each of these phases.
So hopefully by the end of this episode, I'm hoping to give you more of an understanding about what's happening during this six to nine-month window of time when the higher developmental areas of the brain start taking over from what has primarily in the very beginning been the brainstem, the lower parts of the brain that are running the show, primarily from zero to three months, when you start seeing more of an emergence of voluntary movement [00:04:00] and intentional engagement, which is replacing what was in the very beginning more sort of purely automatic movements.
And you're starting to see more and more of your baby's personality, who they actually are starting to emerge. So really just a quick recap. Episodes 16 and 17 are parts one and two of the zero to three-month window, and episodes 18 and 19 are parts one and two of the three to six-month window. I hope that you will go back and listen to those episodes to, again, get this guided tour through your baby's neurology during what is the first half of their first year of life.
In the first three months of life, a lot of what your baby's doing is they're practicing these reflexive non-voluntary movements through these primitive reflexes that they are [00:05:00] using to train and to build their brain And to be able to move into more mature voluntary movements. There's also so much happening with the beginning of starting to learn to regulate the autonomic nervous system from being in a state of very high sympathetic tone, which is the fight or flight mode of the nervous system, where all babies are dominant from birth, and working on learning to co-regulate with caregivers to find a more ventral vagal or a parasympathetic state where babies find sleep and where they're able to be soothed when they are dysregulated.
Then during the three to six-month window, we're starting to see a baby who is beginning to be more able to control their body and be more intentional in their movements, more intentional in their social [00:06:00] engagement with the world around them. And there's a lot of really exciting development and wiring that's happening around language also.
So again, I hope that you will go back and listen to those episodes for the first half of, the first half of the year, and I will link all of those in the show notes. I reference during these episodes a lot of the authors, researchers, teachers, and clinicians who I have learned from throughout all of these episodes, and I will have a PDF download in the show notes with that reference list.
So if these, if this is something that you hear something that you would like to learn more about or would like to look up any of the people I talk about in these episodes, you can reference them from the list that I'll have linked. So today By the end of this part one of six to nine months, I hope [00:07:00] to help you to get more of an understanding that this window of time, the six to nine-month window, is one of the most active mobility, cognition, and attachment periods of time during the first year.
And I'm hoping that I can give you a more of a clear idea of the postural reflexes that are maturing into things like independent sitting, being able to sit on their own without any help from us, the cross-lateral integration that is maturing even further when they start to be working into developing crawling.
And I want to discuss another primitive reflex, the symmetric tonic neck reflex, that emerges during this window and also integrates during this window. And we're [00:08:00] also going to discuss the emergence in cognition that you'll see with your babies during this period of time, where they're realizing something called object permanence, which is knowing that things continue to exist even when you can't see them.
So when you walk around the corner and they can't see you anymore, they still know that you're there And you also start to see more wiring of the secure base, the attachment. All of the attachment that you're doing during the first y- six months of their lives is becoming something that you're more able to see clearly in their behavior when we talk about the secure base, how the brain is preparing, their neurology is preparing them for solid food, and the way that the sort of babbling that they're doing is really building the scaffolding for actual language that is coming right around the corner.[00:09:00]
I hope to also be able to give you an understanding that this is sort of the period of time where your baby is going from being an observer of their world to being able to participate more actively in it, and that the things that you are seeing at home on a daily basis, all of these things are in a very specific sequence and are very purposeful.
They don't always look purposeful, but they are. So this is an exciting developmental season during the first year. You start seeing them being able to be more steady when they're sitting. You start seeing them be- starting to crawl. You start seeing that they become very aware of strangers and being very particular about who gets to hold them, who gets to be too close.
Uh, there's another sleep shift that happens during this period of time, and then a lot [00:10:00] of what we talked about with starting to be preparing for having solid foods and the beginning of what more and more starts to sound like real actual language. And underneath all of that, in the foundation of all of that, the brain is really working on the biggest sort of cross lateral integration job that it has done up to this point.
So these are all really exciting things. To give you just a quick overview of what we're gonna go through in this episode, the first section we're gonna talk about the postural reflexes and what we're seeing as they mature into more independent sitting. The next section, section two, is all about this cross lateral integration that I talked about earlier and how when they start crawling, what's actually happening in the corpus callosum, which is the part of the brain that allows the right side of the brain and the left side of the brain to communicate with each [00:11:00] other.
In section three, we're gonna talk about the symmetric tonic neck reflex, which was this new primitive reflex that emerges during this time and also should be integrating during this time Section four, we talk about object permanence, like we said, where your baby is starting to realize that things exist even when they don't see them.
And this is really exciting in terms of what it tells you about what the brain and what the cortex is now able to do. Section five is about the-- where this attachment that we've been building goes from being something we think about in theory to something we can see in our children's, our baby's behavior.
Section six is how the brain and the neurology is preparing for solid food, how oral motor readiness and digestive readiness, what that looks like [00:12:00] neurologically, so that you know when your baby is ready for solid foods. And the last section is all about how they're building more and more of the architecture that is going to become language So let's get started in section one when we're talking about postural reflexes.
Postural reflexes is something that I talked a lot about in the last window of development, the three to six-month window of development, all about the emergence of postural reflexes from what has primarily been primitive reflexes during the first zero to three-month time. And these postural reflexes that started maturing in the three to six-month window are becoming even more central, even more developed during this period, the six to nine-month period.
And you can see this through your baby being able to work toward more and more independent sitting. This is the evidence that [00:13:00] the trunk and the cerebellum and the cortex are all integrating at a new level, and the trunk is the midline of the body, the muscles that are able to hold the midline of the body stable.
The cerebellum is the part of the brain that, among many other things, coordinates movement and coordinates the postural muscles so that we're able to hold ourselves upright. And the cortex is the part of the brain that's deciding that we're gonna be doing all of these things. So you're seeing the integration of the intention to wanna be sitting independently, the ability to coordinate the muscles and the movements that get your baby into that position, and the strength and the coordination and the balance that allow them to hold that sitting position independently.
As I have done in the previous episodes, I reference a lot of the, the researchers and the, the books and the articles and the people that I [00:14:00] have learned from. And Sally Goddard Blythe, who I've discussed on every other episode as well, she describes independent sitting as one of the clearest visible outcomes of postural reflex maturation that happens during the first year.
The, the Landau reflex, the head righting reactions, where they're-- you see your baby if you're, you know, if they're tipping to the side, you'll see their head moving back toward the midline, moving them back towards center. And all of these reactions that your baby has to be bringing themselves back to a neutral position, they all have to be doing their job for a baby to be able to sit independently with both of their hands free without holding themselves up.
And when they can do that, when they can sit more independently, the entire upper body is now able to explore, and this really opens the door to the next set [00:15:00] of cognitive and motor skills that they will then be developing. So this is a really important foundational skill that they're developing during this time.
Dr. Robert Melillo, who I have also referenced on every other episode, his lens of working through functional neurology really emphasizes that Independent sitting, again, requires the cerebellum and the brainstem to be working together with the cortex in a really precise way. We're able to see the communication between different areas in the brain.
That's really important to be able to see happening outwardly during this period of time. That cerebellum is doing the sort of moment to moment balance corrections. The cortex is providing the intention that now we're going to be sitting on our own. We're gonna free up our hands, lift ourselves up, and not be holding ourselves anymore.
And the brainstem is regulating the muscle tone and [00:16:00] the motivation to be doing it. And so sitting is an incredibly important activity. And again, I think it's really important sometimes to sort of-- with this, with this series of podcasts, my intention is to make things that look very ordinary and mundane, to explain what's happening behind them neurologically, so you can understand the significance of what you're seeing, because we're not always thinking about it that way.
There's a woman called Karen Adolph. I've spoken about her in previous episodes as well, and her research at New York University shows that babies who are learning to sit, they fall hundreds of times during this learning process, and these falls are information. And with each time your baby recovers from a fall, either falls or catches themself while falling and is able to right themselves, the [00:17:00] brain is fine-tuning things just a little bit for the next time that they practice.
So thinking about it as not necessarily my baby's, you know, tips over every time they're trying to sit. That's not what's happening, but they're practicing the coordination of what they need in order to be able to sit. And there are supposed to be a lot of failures, in quotation marks, around that process because they're learning how to do it better and better each time they fail.
So what you're seeing, what you should be seeing at home during this period of time, you should see in the-- initially that your baby is sitting with their hands forward on the floor for support. This is called the tripod sit. And that it's then progressing to them being able to sit with one hand free, so they're leaning only on one hand, and then eventually they're able to have both of their hands free.
There should be more of [00:18:00] a s- more of an upright stretch, more of a, an upright posture in the trunk of the body and the shoulders. The body is being held more upright. There's more organized synchronicity to their movements They start being able to look around while they're sitting, reach for things while they're sitting, and play while they're sitting.
And what all of this means is that the, the muscles that are the stability muscles that are holding their body upright are becoming, uh, stronger, more, more integrated, b- uh, s- better balance, better coordination between these areas of the brain and the muscles, like we discussed. So you're able to see it looking more and more like it looks when, when an adult, you know, goes from a laying down to a seated position.
And again, falls happen often early in this learning process, and you're-- you can think of it that what's happening is your baby's getting more and more skillful at protecting [00:19:00] themselves and at righting themselves and at preventing the same thing from happening the next time or in the future each time, each time they fall or each time it doesn't go exactly as they were intending.
And by the end of this window of time, this, the nine-month window, the nine-month period of time, sitting is becoming reliable enough that you can start to trust their abilities and don't have to be, you know, building the walls of pillows and blankets and things around them to try to, you know, lessen their fall.
And you can start to trust that they're able to do it more and more independently, and that will become their default position when they're playing, that they will be choosing to be sitting upright rather than laying on their stomachs or on their backs. So Things that, again, you want to be watching for this tripod sitting, then moving into sitting with one hand free, and then sitting with both hands free.[00:20:00]
That you can see increased strength in how they're holding their body, how they're holding their upper body, and how they're holding their shoulders and their arms when they're sitting. And that you can see that it's moving during these three-- this three-month window of time into more and more reliable independent sitting.
And that you can start to see a baby who can move from sitting back into being down on the floor, and they can start to coordinate how to get themselves from a seated position into laying down, that they're not panicking every time they're tipping. They're able to coordinate the movement. So you want to, at home, what we as mothers can do, you wanna resist the urge to be propping them up.
I've talked about this in, in the previous two episodes, the three to six-month window as well, that it's not necessarily being happy with the goal of your baby being in an upright position, where you could prop them up into something and think, "Well, now they're sitting." [00:21:00] But it's the work of them getting themselves into the sitting that's developing the ability to be really good and, and coordinated and have a lo- enough strength and enough balance to do that.
So it's them getting themselves into the seated position that is the biggest part of the development, not just ending up in, in a seated position. So resisting the urge to try to prop them up into sitting before they can do it by themselves. And spending a lot of time on a firm surface on the floor is still what your baby should be spending most of their time doing.
We've talked about this in the, both the zero to three-month and the three to six-month episodes, that they just need as much time as they can get, because sitting develops out of having had enough time working on rolling, working on pivoting, working on pushing themselves up. So they have to have spent the time doing those things [00:22:00] first before sitting can develop.
And you wanna let them, let the falls happen. This is the hardest part for every single parent, is of course, have them in an, in a place where That you've cushioned the fall. There's pillows or there's blankets or there, you're there or whatever. But you want to know that when they're falling forward, them catching themselves with their hands and righting themselves is a postural skill that they're learning.
So they're working toward the place where they can rely on themselves to be sitting independently, and that's what's gonna give them the ability to be able to, you know, the whole way that they play changes when their hands are free when they're sitting. So these are things that you wanna think about in terms of the postural reflexes during this time.
Section two, where we're talking about cross-lateral integration. This is, the [00:23:00] crawling is not just your baby being able to get from point A to point B, it's the biggest job that your baby's done up to this point when it comes to building the scaffolding or the architecture or developing the corpus callosum, which is the bridge between the two halves of the brain.
The ability for the right side of the brain and the left side of the brain to communicate with each other is dependent on the corpus callosum, and you have to build that ability for the right side and the left side to communicate with each other. There's a woman called Carla Hannaford. She has a book, the title is Smart Moves, and she's, in the book, among other things, she's explaining that contralateral movement, which is the right arm moving with the left leg and the left arm with the right leg, is one of the most important experiences for wiring the corpus callosum, which is again, the band of fibers that lets the two [00:24:00] hemispheres of the brain talk to each other.
Crawling is the first sustained contralateral activity in human development, and the wiring that happens during crawling supports every later skill that requires the two hemispheres to coordinate, and that's most of them. So this is really important. Sally Goddard Blythe again is really emphatic that the crawling stage matters, and it should not be skipped, and it should not be rushed.
Her clinical experience and the INPP literature consistently show that children who skip crawling, who go from sitting to walking, or spend most of their floor time in some kind of a container, they are over-represented in later populations of children [00:25:00] who have coordination, attention, and learning concerns.
And so this is a, it's a really, really important developmental milestone to be paying attention to, and supporting, and watching for. Karen Adolph, who I have also referenced in all of the other episodes, her research documents that there is variability in the form that crawling takes. Some babies work from, they start out on their hands and knees.
Some start out army crawling, pulling themselves on their arms. Some start out scooting. But you really wanna be seeing them move toward the classic crawling on their hands and knees, working on the cross crawl, cross lateral movement, and spending as much time on the floor exploring in this crawling position as possible.
[00:26:00] So what you're gonna be seeing at home is they start by rocking on their hands and knees, and the brain is, this is the brain rehearsing the pattern, and we're gonna talk more about this when we talk about the STNR primitive reflex. A lot of babies figure out how to move themselves backwards before they figure out how to move themselves forwards.
My youngest, she was excellent at moving in reverse for a while. So I found her underneath tables, underneath chairs, underneath all kinds of things, and that was a frustrating time for the both of us because she was moving farther and farther away from everything that she was trying to get her hands on.
So that was a fun time. Luckily, she figured out forward motion before either one of us lost our minds. Uh, you can see a lot of variations, like we talked about, army crawling, pulling themselves on their stomach and their arms, variations where they're trying to get the movement patterns down before they end up in the classic [00:27:00] right arm, left knee, left arm, right knee.
And you can see that when you have a baby who is suddenly able to get their hands on what they wanna get their hands on, this changes everything because it gives them an enormous sense of accomplishment. You can see how proud and how satisfied they are with themselves when they start realizing, "I was trying to get my hands on this toy, and I got myself there."
And so w- I've talked about this on all of the other episodes as well, but As parents, it's really easy to come in and save the day, come in and make it easy, g- give them the toy, give, get them where they are trying to go. But working on resisting coming in and saving the day, and letting them... Not robbing them of that experience, of the satisfaction, and the learning, and the huge amount of motivation it gives them when they're actually able to get to where they were [00:28:00] going or get their hands on what they were trying to get their hands on.
And you'll also be seeing increased speed, increased confidence, and increased ability in their locomotion, in the way that they're moving, from the time they're six months old to the time they're nine months old. They just, it goes so fast that you can see that they're just getting better and better and faster and faster at getting where they wanna go, and how the crawling, how coordinated the movement is.
So again, looking for them to be rocking on their hands and knees, preparing for crawling, looking for some sort of them moving themselves from point A to point B. In the very beginning, that can look like pulling themselves across the floor. It can look like, there can be different variations, but you're looking for it to end up in a cross lateral pattern where the opposite arm and leg are working together, and that you're looking for an increased speed of how they're able to do it, and that they're [00:29:00] exploring more and more as they're able to rely on their ability to crawl.
They're focusing less on the crawling and more on what the crawling is allowing them to get themselves into. That's, that's a win. So things that you can do at home to support this time is, again, give them as much floor time as possible. Give them a bigger space to work with, large open spaces with simple things that they can be crawling towards.
Again, like I say on every single episode where we've talked about neural development, limit the amount of time your babies are in some form of containers, whether that's a walker, a jumper, a bouncer. You know, the truth is, my kids didn't have any of those things. You don't have to. Kids don't need to have walkers, jumpers, and bouncers.
They can get through that first year of development just fine without any of those things, and I'm not sa- if you have them, that's okay, but you wanna limit the [00:30:00] amount of time that they're there. It is very helpful to have something to put your baby in where you know you can walk away from them for a few minutes and come back and know where they are.
I understand that. But you don't want them to... You wanna make sure that they're having as much time on the floor, able to move freely, as they can. And let your baby crawl for as long as they want. This is, you don't wanna be Forcing, we talked about this as well in the last episodes, that it can be really easy as a parent to think, "Well, now that they're doing this, let's just get them to the next thing.
M- more must be better." So a baby who is seven or eight months old who's starting to crawl, it can be very tempting for parents to think, "Let's get them up on their feet. Now they need to-- Now that they can crawl, let's teach them how to walk." But you're developing the brain. You're developing, again, this ability of the right side and the [00:31:00] left side of the brain to communicate with each other through crawling.
So you want them to crawl for a period of time until they're getting really, really good at crawling, and that they've developed the strength and the balance and what they need to have developed before they're starting to pull themselves up and be standing on two feet. So allow them space for the crawling.
Section three is about the symmetric tonic neck reflex. This is the primitive reflex that emerges during this window of time And it, this is a little bit of an unusual reflex when it comes to how it is with some of the other reflexes. It doesn't, it's not there from birth like the other, some of the other primitive reflexes.
It emerges around six to nine months, and the point of this reflex is to help your baby get up onto their hands and knees. And then it's meant to integrate quickly so that it's not keeping them from being able to [00:32:00] crawl, but it's getting them into the position to be able to crawl and facilitate the higher areas of the brain being able to take over, integrate the reflex, and then move them into being able to crawl independently.
And when this reflex doesn't integrate, it's a lot of times it can show up later as problems or issues having to do with posture or focus or motor skill movement. And so we will get more into that, but if we're just, if we talk a little bit about what is the symmetric tonic neck reflex, this is a reflex you see when the baby's head tilts backwards into extension, their arms straighten, and their legs bend.
And when the head tilts forward into flexion, the arms bend and the legs straighten. And so this allows for the body to start to move back and forth in a [00:33:00] rocking motion. So it's starting to rock them back and forth when they are on their hands and their knees, and it's priming the movement for being able to crawl in a way that is building core stability and coordination of hand-eye movements and balance.
Sally Goddard Blythe again writes a lot about the symmetric tonic neck reflex, and she describes it as a transitional reflex. It appears around six to nine months specifically to help your baby get into the hands and knees position needed to be able to crawl by linking head movement to limb movement And once crawling is established, well established, the reflex is supposed to be integrating.
And if it's retained past about 11 months, it can, we can start to see it interfering with the ability to be able to sit comfortably upright with the [00:34:00] head in the midline of the body. And that obviously can become a significant issue later for children who are trying to sit at a, a desk and do schoolwork.
Peter Blyth and the INPP team also document that a retained STNR reflex is one of the most common findings in school-aged children who have reading, writing, and attention concerns. And so these two, their clinical position is very consistent that the STNR reflex is very important for crawling, very important for the integration of the right side and the left side of the brain, but it needs to be followed up, and you need to be making sure that it's being integrated when it should be integrated.
Dr. Robert Melillo also adds that the STNR reflex is one of those [00:35:00] reflexes where if the reflex is being retained and not integrated when it should be, it can show up clinically as postural issues, slouching, having a head tilt, the inability to keep the head upright when you're looking down or looking at a book or looking at a screen, and it can, you can see it a lot in kids who sit in a W shape with their legs, where they're sitting on their, sitting on the floor, and they have their thighs against the floor and their legs are out to the side f- making a W shape on the floor.
And so these are all important things to be aware of and to be watching for during this period of time. And again, during this timeframe, things that you can be keeping your eyes out for is you should see your baby starting to push up onto their hands and knees. You should see them starting to rock back and forth.
You should see crawling starting to emerge, [00:36:00] and sometimes that's with figuring out backwards motion before they figure out forward motion. And by the end of this period of time, you should see them really choosing being on their hands and knees as a comfortable default position. And So you wanna have your eyes open for that and have your, again, like I've talked about in the other episodes as well, if you're wondering if there's something that is, if you want help from someone who can help you to be checking any of the primitive reflexes, finding a pediatric chiropractor or a pediatric neurologically trained occupational therapist or physical therapist, or anyone who's had training in developmental neurology can help you to check these primitive reflexes if you're wondering whether there's anything that's delayed or not there when it should be there, or there when it shouldn't.
So [00:37:00] again, things that you're watching for, being more comfortable and choosing this hands and knees position, getting better and better at the rocking movement as the reflex pattern is being rehearsed, and then starting to see crawling emerging in at least by the end of this window for the majority of babies, and a baby who is comfortable getting in and out of the hands and knees position.
So you wanna give them, again, as much time on the floor crawling as you can. The STNR reflex integrates by using it. It integrates and it's controlled. It's developing the higher areas of the brain that are then controlling it and integrating it through using it. So you have to give your baby the time to be on the floor, on their hands and knees, doing that rocking position, because what they're doing is they're using the reflex to, in order for it to be able to be integrated.
So again, don't try to rush past this crawling stage. Let them spend [00:38:00] time crawling on their hands and knees, and this will help more and more with the integration of the STNR reflex. Be mindful of containers, be mindful of propping them up to be sitting before they're able to do it themselves. And again, if you are unsure about any of the primitive reflexes, it can be really hard sometimes as a parent to be checking reflexes and figuring out if it's looking like it should be looking, so finding someone who you can get help from to be checking your child's primitive reflexes is a good idea if you're wondering.
The next section, section four, is about object permanence, and somewhere in this six to nine-month window, your baby is coming to understand that things continue to exist even when they're out of sight. And this is an important cognitive shift. [00:39:00] It changes how they play, it changes their communication, it changes attachment all at the same time.
There's a woman called Alison Gopnik, and her writing and her research on infant cognition makes the case that babies are doing really serious mental work all along, but during this window, you can start to see it, what they're... the work that they've been doing, it becomes visible. The rest of us can see it.
And this understanding that objects continue to exist when they are not in view, object permanence, this is a really foundational element of later thinking. It's the beginning of mental representation. Daniel Stern's framework also adds something, that object permanence is not just about toys, it's about people.
The same cognitive maturation that lets your baby look for a dropped toy [00:40:00] is the same development that lets them know that you continue to exist even when you leave the room, and this is why this window is typically when separation behavior becomes really visible. Lisa Elliot, who I have also referenced in all of the other episodes, she talks about the maturation of the hippocampus and the related memory structures during this six to nine-month window.
The brain is developing the wiring that it needs to hold a representation of something across time and with absence. And the neurological growth that your baby is going through during this time is what makes this possible. So at home, this looks like your baby is looking for a toy that's been hidden under a blanket.
You know, before this, if there was a toy [00:41:00] under a blanket, that toy did not exist. But now they can understand that if the toy is under the blanket, they can look under the blanket and they can find it. You can also see things like they're starting to anticipate the next part of a familiar song or the next-- what's coming up next in a familiar game.
And thing, games, things like playing peekaboo becomes incredibly funny because now your baby is starting to catch on that you are still there behind your hands or behind the blanket or behind whatever. And you'll start to see your baby really having a problem with it when you leave the room because now they know you left the room, but you still exist.
You're somewhere else, and they can't see you, and they're not always a big fan of that, as every mother knows. So Things that you wanna be watching for that are showing you signs of this development of object permanence, [00:42:00] seeing your baby looking for hidden toys, usually by somewhere between seven to nine months.
Seeing that they're anticipating something familiar in a song or a game or a routine. Seeing them start to really delight in games like peekaboo or other appear, disappear kind of games. And seeing that they're protesting when a parent leaves the room or they get handed off to somebody and you walk away from them, that they're starting to protest to that more than they maybe did when they were younger.
So things that you can do at home, play peekaboo. It's a hugely-- Again, this is one of those things that seems so mundane and seems like no big deal, but it's a really cognitively rich game during this window of time. Hide toys and find them together. You know, the every [00:43:00] parent's favorite period of time is when they start dropping things off the table or dropping things off the-- because they've understood you're gonna come and you're gonna pick it up, or they can look for it when they've pushed something off the table that now it's under the table.
But more than this just being a something that you get tired of after they've done it for the 573rd time, they're actually learning something from this experience, and so play those games. And narrate for them what's happening when you leave and when you come back, saying things like, "I'm right here," or, "I will be right back."
These, even though your baby's not necessarily saying, "Okay, I'll be right here," they're starting to understand, and so narration and talking to them about what's happening is a really good idea. And have a little bit of respect for what's happening during this separation behavior. It's a part of their cognitive development, and it can be, sometimes it can be really [00:44:00] hard because you feel like you can't walk away for three seconds without them crying or complaining.
It's a part of their development that's supposed to be happening, and it's a really good sign. So the next section goes into the same kind of an idea, where we're talking about the secure base, where we start seeing the attachment relationship that has been developing all year now becomes very visible in how your baby is behaving, and they're starting to use you as a secure base, a person that they return to for comfort.
They come back to refuel their energy, and then they venture away from. And then this sort of cycle continues, and this is Attachment that's moving from internal wiring to external behavior. John Bowlby, who is the originator [00:45:00] of the attachment theory, described the attachment system as biological behavior that activates whenever the baby feels distress, tiredness, illness, fear, or unfamiliarity.
And the behaviors that we call clinginess or stranger wariness or separation, protesting to separation, are evidence that the attachment system is working as it was designed to work. Mary Ainsworth's research sort of operationalized Bowlby's theory and gave us more language about the secure base, the caregiver that the baby returns to and ventures out from.
And in the six to nine-month window, this secure base behavior, this is the first time we're being able to observe it. Your baby is checking in with you visually before they reach for something. They return to you when [00:46:00] something feels uncertain. They're looking at your face for cues about whether whatever situation they're in is safe.
Allan Schore, S-C-H-O-R-E, his neurobiology of attachment really stresses that this is not just a behavioral shift. The wiring of the right hemisphere, the autonomic nervous system, and the developing limbic structures are all integrating in ways that make this behavior, this secure base behavior, possible. And so this is the outward representation of this attachment relationship being wired into the architecture of the brain.
And so what this looks like at home is that your baby is reaching for you when there's a stranger that's approaching, and usually they look worried. And they're checking your face before [00:47:00] they're deciding whether something new is something that's safe. And they really can start protesting when they're getting handed off to people who are less familiar to them, even friendly people.
But somebody who's less familiar, they will usually start to be protesting that or be afraid. And you'll see that your baby is becoming more clingy. A l- lot of times that will be really evident during transitions and at the very end of the day when they're tired, and that your baby is, again, using you as a refueling station.
They're venturing out into the great unknown, and then they're coming back for contact, and then they're venturing out again. And so again, things that you want to be watching for, stranger wariness emerges during this window, protesting separation from you, visibly being distressed when the primary caregiver leaves, social referencing, looking to your [00:48:00] face before deciding what to do in a new situation, and increased clinginess.
And so things that we can do as mothers is be the secure base. Stay available, stay reliable, stay regulated yourself. Allow them to venture out and explore and come back to you as the secure foundation. Honor the fact that they're wary to strangers. Don't push them into other people's arms or insist on any of it.
Understand that this is something that is, that they're developing and they're, they need you to reassure them that this is safe. And you can narrate transitions. I'm right here. We're gonna play this together. I'm gonna go get this for you. I'm gonna be right back. You know, telling them what's happening so that they're getting the ability to, to learn more and more that you're not leaving them forever.
You're gonna be right back, or you're going [00:49:00] to get this thing and you're coming back with it, so that you're narrating for them throughout the day. And try to resist treating clinginess like a problem. And I know extremely well how hard that can be sometimes, especially when it's been a really long day, you've been with a baby all day long, and they're refusing to even entertain the idea of being with anyone but you, and all you really need is 10 minutes of not seeing them.
It's really hard. I completely get that. But just having the understanding that this is-- they're not trying to give you a hard time. This really is just a part of the development, and they're not able to-- They're not making a choice on this. This is automatic wiring that's happening. So trying your best to not treat it like a problem, but to have a little bit of understanding for it.
Section six, the next section, we're gonna talk about your baby's brain preparing for solid food. And around [00:50:00] about six months, the brain, the mouth, and the digestive system are starting to be ready for solids. And the signs of whether your baby and when your baby is ready are neurological, not based on age alone.
So knowing the underlying biology and neurology takes some of the pressure off and makes the introduction of solid foods easier when it comes to just looking at it as an extension of development. So if we look at some of the research on solids, Suzanne Evans Morris is often cited as the standard clinical reference on pediatric feeding And she describes the oral motor maturation that has to be in place for solid food to be safe and for it to be meaningful.
Your baby, there's a tongue thrust reflex that needs to have integrated, where you're not seeing that as soon as they get [00:51:00] food in their mouth, they're pushing it out again with their tongue. And the lateral tongue movement that lets food move from the center of the mouth to the side of the mouth has to be developed.
If they're still pushing their tongue forward when food gets put in and having this tongue thrust reflex, they're not ready yet. The gag reflex, which is really far forward in the mouth during the newborn period, has to have moved further back, which makes it possible for the baby to handle small amounts of food without choking on it.
So those are things to be looking for. Jill Rapley's research, which is the foundation of the baby-led weaning approach, documents the convergence of motor, neurological, and digestive readiness around about six months. And she talks about once a baby can sit upright with support, when they can bring objects to their mouth with intention, and when they can chew, that's when they have the [00:52:00] equipment that they need to safely participate in solid foods.
Ellyn Satter's Division of Responsibility model gives the relational kind of framework around meals, and she talks about how Parents are responsible for what, when, and where, and children are responsible for whether and how much. So even at six months, this framework applies. The introduction of solids is less about getting food in or forcing them to eat, and more just about laying down the foundation of a trusting, competent, lifelong ability to eat.
You're-- You know, there's a... I think there's-- It's easy for parents to get a little bit stressed and be thinking they need to have more food or they need to-- I need to make sure that they're getting enough food, and it becomes a little bit of a power [00:53:00] struggle around meals that is really unhelpful in this period of time.
So again, children are responsible for whether and how much, whether they eat and how much they eat, and parents are responsible for what's on the plate, when they get presented with food, and where they are when they get presented with food. So that I think can be really helpful to think about. So these things at home look like you wanna be able to see your baby sitting upright with support.
So it's okay if they need to be supported when they're-- as long as they're able to maintain the upright posture and that they're showing interest in food when they're at the table. You'll see that they start to be really interested when you are eating something or when somebody else is eating something, that they're really looking and sometimes trying to get ahold of whatever, whatever you're eating.
You can see that they're interested, and they are able to bring their own hand or other objects to their mouth with intention. You need to see that the [00:54:00] tongue thrust reflex has been integrated, so food is not immediately getting pushed back out, and that they're able to make those sideways movements with their tongue so that they can move food from the center of their mouth to the side of their mouth for chewing.
So these are the signals that you can see that they're ready for textured food. And there's curiosity. They're opening their mouth. They're leaning forward. They're trying to get ahold of your food. These are the things you want to be looking for. So again, independent or stably supported sitting, hand-to-mouth movements with intention, not seeing the tongue thrust reflex.
Their food is staying in their mouth rather than being immediately pushed out. They're interested in what everybody else is eating, and they're doing the chewing motion even if they don't have teeth yet. So things that you can do at home, wait for these readiness signs rather than a date on the calendar.[00:55:00]
Think about you need to be able to see neurologically that they're ready to be eating solid foods more than you need to see that they are six months old today. And eat at the same time as your baby. It's really, I think that, you know, one of the most powerful feeding interventions is just sharing meals so they can see how it works and think of it as a shared experience and the social experience in sharing a meal.
Trust that they-- let them lead the eating. Let them control Whether they eat and how much they eat. And just trust that this first year of solids is more about building skills and building trust, not about how many calories they're getting in their stomachs. So think about that. I know that can be really hard sometimes for parents, for all of us.
[00:56:00] Section seven, this is when we're starting to think about the noises that they're making, the babbling and the, the, the way that the sounds that are coming out of their mouths is really becoming the foundation for language. So hearing them babbling, hearing them cooing, hearing them making noises, that typically starts happening from the three to six-month window.
But during this time, during the six to nine-month period of time, you can really start to hear rhythmic, repetitive, syllable-based sounds that are building the foundation of-- in the neurology, that's building to become real words, real language. There's a woman, Patricia Kuhl, K-U-H-L, and her research describes this kind of babbling, the repetitive ba, ba, ba, ba, ma, ma, ma sounds that they're [00:57:00] making that start happening around six to nine months.
This is the neurodevelopmental milestone That is mapping the maturation of the auditory cortex, the motor speech areas, and the feedback loop that is between those. So between the auditory cortex and the motor speech areas, the brain is rehearsing the production of speech sounds in the language that it's been listening to.
Andrew Meltzoff's research on early imitation, it talks about vocal play during this window of time, that babies are imitating the rhythm and the intonation and the pitch of the speech that they hear, and this is wiring the development of what will emerge soon as actual language. Colwyn Trevarthen's framework of primary and emerging [00:58:00] secondary intersubjectivity talks about the way babbling during this window is more and more directed at the caregiver, and it's really influenced and shaped by the response of the caregiver.
So you can be fooled sometimes to think that babbling is just making noise, that they're trying to hear their own voice, or they're trying-- they think it's fun to be able to be producing these sounds, which I think they do. But what Colwyn Trevarthen is saying is that it's not just noise. Babbling is the beginnings of building a conversation.
And so what you as a parent need to be thinking about is give them the space and the time to be making these sounds and babbling, and then answer them, and then wait for their response after you've been the one talking so that it's the back and forth that looks like an actual conversation. So things that, you know, what this actually [00:59:00] looks like at home, these repetitive kind of consonant vowel babbling, the ma ma ma ma, da da da, these sort of start to take on more of a rhythm and more of an intonation in the same way as the language that the baby is hearing spoken at home.
And this vocal play is clearly aimed at you. The baby is-- they're watching for your response when they're babbling and waiting for a response from you. And that you're starting to see more varied kind of sounds. Even sometimes you'll start to hear where you think you heard a word. You think you-- they think-- you think it was a specific-- You can really start to see that it starts sounding like something.
And that the, again, that it's the, your, what your baby is looking for seems to be a conversation. They're waiting for you to take a turn, and then they wanna have their turn. They want you to wait for them to, it, for it to be their turn. So again, this more specific [01:00:00] type of babbling from seven to nine months, an increase in variety of sounds, including more consonants like, you know, B, D, M, G.
Babbling that's directed at people, not just them in a room by themselves making noise, and that it starts taking on some of the intonation and some of the patterns of actual language that they're hearing in their home, and imitating sounds and rhythms that you produce so that they can imitate whatever sound you've been making.
So again, at home, things you wanna think about are talk to your baby, talk constantly, talk face-to-face, tell them what you're doing, tell them what you're thinking, tell-- I mean, it doesn't have to it doesn't always have to make sense, but just tell them what's going on, and have these conversations and wait for them to respond.
Pause for the response. Conversation is built in the space between, not just the words that are being said, but the i- actual back and forth, the interaction. [01:01:00] And you can sing, and you can narrate, and you can repeat, and that rhythm and that repetition, it, that's what the language part of the brain is looking for and wanting.
So again, I've talked about this before, but keep screens out of this. Patricia Kuhl's research, it's very concrete on this area. Babies do not learn language from screens. They learn it from people And so we are at the end of part one of this period of development, the six to nine month development. And everything that you are seeing in your baby during this period of time, them being able to sit more reliably, being able to start crawling, this separation kind of behavior, the looking for the dropped toys, looking for the hidden toys, the babbling that sounds like an actual conversation, the new interest in food, all of these things trace back to the fact that the brain is in the [01:02:00] middle of a huge integration project.
And the two hemispheres are developing th- more and more communication. The right side of the brain and the left side of the brain are developing this bridge between them. The cognition and their ability to think about and be an active part in the world that they're living in is really becoming more and more clear.
The attachment system that you've been building is becoming really visible in their behavior, and they're really starting to prepare for an entirely new kind of independence in the world. And so in the next episode, in part two, we're gonna take everything we just covered that's happening under the surface and turn it into what you will actually see and what you can be doing to support it.
So I hope that you will join me back here next week for the next episode. That will be episode 21 and part two of things that [01:03:00] you can be seeing and looking forward to during the six to nine-month period of time. Thank you again for spending time with me. Thank you for being here, and we'll see you in the next one
Thank you again for joining me today for this episode. I hope you found something valuable in the time we spent together, and I hope you'll join me again next week on the Create Thriving Families podcast. Until then, be well
