Episode #22
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[00:00:00] Hello, and thank you for joining me here for the first episode in a two-part miniseries, which is within this new neurodevelopmental series, which is eight podcasts in total, two for the zero to three-month window, two for the three to six-month window, and so on. This is part one of the last window of development, so part one in the nine to 12-month window.
This is the last two episodes that are going to be concluding what is happening neurologically in your baby's brain from nine to 12 months of life, and the next episode will be specifically what should you be seeing at home and doing at home to support your baby's [00:01:00] development during this nine to 12-month window.
So my hope for this series, this has been a lot of information, long episodes, meaty episodes, and as I say every time, I'm trying to make them as interesting and as fun as I can. But my hope for the series really is that at the end of it, new mothers will have everything they need to have in terms of information and specific tools to support knowing what they're seeing, knowing what's normal, knowing what's not normal, knowing what they need to be doing, and knowing what they need to be avoiding during the first year of life to help their babies develop a healthy, optimally functioning brain and nervous system.
So for this part one of this window of time, which again is the nine to 12-month window, just [00:02:00] before your baby is turning a year old what I'm hoping at the end of this part that you understand that this 9 to 12 month window, this is the completion of the phase of the first year of brain building.
I want all of you to have an understanding of what's happening in the brain and the nervous system when these postural reflexes are maturing into more, your baby's starting to live a life in an upright, sitting, standing, still crawling to, obviously but standing in an upright position, and building the cerebellum, which is the part of the brain that helps integrate and helps to coordinate these movement patterns with the motor cortex that allows you to know what you wanna do and actually do it, , building a lot of myelination, which is , the fatty insulation around the nerves that allow the nerve signals to move and [00:03:00] communicate faster, looking at things like joint attention and your, these sort of precursors to your baby building more social cognition, looking at things like attachment and how that's moving into a really clear, clearly visible, phase right now, and looking, of course, at what's happening with language, because language really explodes during this period of time, and how development in the hippocampus area and this memory, the way that our babies at, during this age are able to remember things is really different from what they've been able to do before.
So just a quick overview, we're gonna have a few different sections of this episode. Section one is gonna talk a lot about how these postural reflexes that we've talked about in all of the previous episodes are maturing into more upright skills. You're gonna see that your baby is pulling themselves up to standing, and they're starting [00:04:00] to walk along things so that they're holding onto something, whether that's the sofa or the coffee table or holding onto your legs or whatever it is they're holding onto.
But they're pulling themselves into more of an upright standing position. The cerebellum and the motor cortex of the brain are having more and more Control and are developing and maturing in a way that we're gonna get into in section two. Section three, again, is about myelination and the way that the nerves are now able to fire when they're building more and better myelination, they're able to react and respond in a more accelerated, faster way, and what you will be able to see with that at home.
Section four is about joint attention and how, what joint attention is and how that is the precursors of social cognition. Section five is all about attachment and [00:05:00] how we're really seeing this, what we've been talking about in previous episodes, the secure base, what it looks like in action and what you're seeing at home, why it's happening and what you're able to see.
Section six is about receptive language and how much of a huge developmental window this period of time is , and to talk a little bit about how we don't wanna underestimate our babies at this age because they're understanding a lot more than they're able to say in words. So we'll t-talk more about that.
And section seven is about the hippocampus, which is the memory part of the brain, and how development and maturation in this area is really affecting their memory and what that means, what you'll be seeing as a result of that. So this is a really exciting, fun period of time. I'm excited for these episodes.
So section [00:06:00] one, talking about postural reflexes and how they are maturing and what we're seeing. We've been seeing from the three to six-month window that our babies are changing from more of a reflexive, automatic kind of movement that you're seeing during the zero to three-month window into more and more intentional movement patterns, where they can make a decision about how they wanna move and then make that happen.
So what we're seeing during this window of time is that babies are able to express themselves more and more in upright skills. So they're pulling themselves up to standing, and they're walking along things that they can hold onto. And these are the-- this is the visible evidence we have that the vestibular system, their balance system, the cerebellum, the part of the brain that among [00:07:00] many other things, initiates motor planning and coordination of movement and the postural reflexes that are, have been being built from three months until now, that these different areas of the brain have done their job and are doing their job.
That's what we're seeing when we're seeing our babies starting to pull themselves more up into standing and, walking while holding onto things. Sally Goddard Blythe, we talk about her during every single episode. She talks a lot about this move into more of an upright posture as one of the most demanding postural integration jobs that happens during the first year.
The, , tonic labyrinthine reflex, which is a primitive reflex that, when it's present, what you're seeing is that when the baby is bending their head forward, their arms and their legs are curling [00:08:00] inward toward the midline of the body, and when they tip their head back, their arms and their legs are extending outward backwards.
These reflexes have now been integrated, and they're making it so that the baby's ability to, their equilibrium and their balance and their eyes' ability to coordinate with their head movements, all of these reactions have to be working together in order for a baby to pull themselves up to standing and to be walking along,, holding onto the furniture.
So when that integration is good, you'll see that these upright skills, when they start to emerge, there's a lot of, the baby's really confident. If there's an unevenness there or an imbalance, you'll see a baby who can pull themselves up, but maybe they can't get back down. They can't figure out how to sit down again, or they can walk along holding onto things, but they're really-- there's a lot of fear or a lot of rigidity when they're doing it.[00:09:00]
Robert Melillo, looking at it through a functional neurology lens, he really emphasizes that upright posture it shows us and tells us a lot about what the cerebellum, how much the cerebellum is maturing and developing during this period of time. The cerebellum is doing constant micro-corrections , and working to keep the body balanced against gravity while the motor cortex is providing the intention to want to move.
So you're pulling yourself up to stand, and you're, walking along the sofa or along the coffee table. This is showing us, this is the visual representation of the partnership or the coordination of the cerebellum and the motor cortex Karen Adolph, who does research at New York University, she documents that babies who are learning to walk [00:10:00] fall on average seventeen times an hour during peak learning.
So that falling is not a sign that they're not figuring out how to do it. It's the way that you learn how to walk. It's the mechanism by which this postural map is really being refined. So each fall and each recovery teaches the body and the brain something about gravity and momentum and where the edges of how to make this work are.
So it's learning. You're looking at learning in real time. Esther Thelen, her dynamic systems framework also, in the same sort of idea reminds us that walking is not like a single, you know, you don't push a button and now you walk. It's the emergence of what happens when many of the systems underneath that are working together.
You have to have leg strength. You have to have developed enough balance. You [00:11:00] have to have eye movement coordination to be able to do that. You have to have the motivation to want to pull yourself up and start walking. You have to have, the integration of the reflexes, which we've been talking about during all of the other episodes.
So walking happens when all of those systems align. So things that you're actually seeing at home during this period of time, you're seeing that your baby is pulling themselves up to stand next to and hold onto everything. Again, the sofa, the furniture, the legs of any and everybody, trying to stand holding onto the dog who's moving.
It's everything they're trying to pull themselves up , and be standing during this period of time. You can see during this window, usually, toward the end of it, that they're letting go with one hand. Maybe they're standing just holding on with one hand, and then maybe they you know, they take both of their hands off.
They're, sh- they forget to hold on for brief moments. They're testing their balance. You'll see them [00:12:00] falling backwards onto their bottom all the time and having these,, protective reflexes catching themselves that you can see. And the first steps are appearing somewhere during this window.
Some are a little bit earlier. But you wanna see them taking their first actual steps, across this window, up to the time when they're, from about 12 to 13 months. So these are things that you wanna be looking for and be aware of, that you're seeing these final phases in the development and the coordination of many of the other systems that they've been practicing and working on when they've been doing things like rolling themselves over, and climbing over things, and, learning how to crawl, and practicing, and getting faster and faster when they're crawling.
And all of these things are training all of the systems that have to learn how to work together to enable [00:13:00] them to pull themselves up onto two feet and to eventually walk on two legs. So again, keep the floor as the primary play space. Standing is something that happens after they've been crawling, not from, being artificially propped up and held against something.
They have to get themselves there, and they have to be able to get themselves there by practicing getting themselves there. So they need space and time on the floor. We've talked about that during every single episode. And then you wanna... It's really easy to think that if you just hold them and help them walk across the room, well, they'll get where they're going faster.
But the cerebellum, the part of the brain that is coordinating these movements, it needs to practice your baby doing its own balance work. So we can't shorten the process. We can't make it easier for them. We can't. They have to get there by putting in the time and the repetition. [00:14:00] And so make sure they have somewhere where there's stable, low furniture to practice this on, whether it's a coffee table or whether it's a low bench or whatever it is.
And think about, they are Every time you see them lose their balance or you see them fall or you see them, what they're doing is they're figuring, they're learning the information that came with that fall, and they're recalibrating to be able to do it better the next time. So it's really important.
It's a really, fun and frustrating, all at the same time, period of time for everybody who lives in the house. Section two is all about the cerebellum and the motor cortex. And again, the motor cortex is providing the intention and the plan for wanting to move, and then the cerebellum is doing the corrections that keep the movement smooth and accurate [00:15:00] and the planning of how these movements are going to work together.
So, this is the specifics of why parents are suddenly seeing a really big jump in coordination during this second half of the first year of life. Lisa Elliot, I talk about her on every episode. Her book is called What's Going On In There?, among other books she has, and she walks through how the motor cortex matures from, the head down and the center of the body out across the first year.
So by this nine to 12 month window, the motor cortex has developed a reliable representation of the legs and the trunk and the hands, and this is why we start to see that upright skills and fine motor skills and refinement of those and intentional movements and reaching are sort of all happening at the very same time.
It feels like a period of time where a lot is happening all at once. [00:16:00] Robert Melillo- talks a lot about this, the cerebellum and the cortex are functionally intertwined throughout all of development. And the, the cerebellum is the part of the brain that is learning the patterns of movement and refining these patterns into automatic, smooth sequences.
And so when babies first start to stand, and they first start to walk, and they're first taking those steps, from, and go from holding onto something to taking a few steps where they're not holding onto something, that looks very different than it looks when you see a three-year-old who's walking and running and jumping.
You know, they look, I say it all the time, but they look like Frankenstein who's had two glasses of wine in the very beginning, and that's because the cerebellum hasn't yet developed these smooth, [00:17:00] automatic sequences. But that's what they're learning. And so they're working to make them more automatic and more coordinated and more, uh, the way that it looks when you see an older child or an adult walking.
But it's something that's practiced over the first, it's not, it doesn't automatically happen that way once they stand up on two feet. Carla Hannaford's, the way that she frames it, her book is called Smooth Moves, and she talks a lot about that movement is not separate from cognition.
Movement is the scaffolding that builds cognition. And this is something that I talk a lot with parents who come and see me, bring their kids to see me, is that we move our bodies, which allows us to develop our ability to think. So when we move better, we think better. The motor leaps that you see during this nine to 12-month window, [00:18:00] and the leaps that happen in cognition are not coincidental.
They are linked because you can't... the movement is what drives the ability and is building the brain to be able to have more, have a higher level of cognition. And so, what you're seeing at home that is, allowing you to see this development of the cerebellum and of the motor cortex is you're seeing movements that used to take a lot of effort and be shaky, reaching for things and transferring objects between hands and going from sitting up to lying down.
Those movements become really smooth and really automatic. And your baby can-- is also, during this period of time, developing the ability to start to do two things at once. They can be walking along the sofa while looking at you, or they can be sitting on their own while playing with something with two hands, or they [00:19:00] can, crawl while also babbling.
And you'll start to see that it's not one and one thing, but they can start to do two things at once The fine motor skills and coordination that we had talked about in the last episodes as well is also starting to get noticeably more coordinated. You can see that they can both be picking up small things, and they can be putting things deliberately into containers or taking those containers and dumping out all of the things that they just put into them.
You're seeing more coordinated multi-step kind of actions, and you'll also see things like clapping or waving or, picking up two objects and banging them together. So you're starting to see, a baby who is more in control of how they're, affecting the things that are around them.
So, things that you wanna be thinking about doing to support this period of time and this development of [00:20:00] the cerebellum and the motor cortex, let them have a lot of repetition. Repetition is how the cerebellum sort of cements these patterns, so doing the same thing again and again and again.
Provide them simple objects that let them do these multi-step actions. Give them cups to stack. Give them containers to fill with something and empty out again. Give them two objects that they can bang together, so that you're providing the m- something to do that is allowing them to develop these skills.
We talk about it during every episode, but keep screens out of this window. The brain needs to be you know, this is body-based learning, not looking at flat visual input. So,, also be aware of, look at the smoothness of the movements, not just that they're doing something, but seeing that they're getting better and more smooth and more coordinated in what it is that they're doing.
That's important. [00:21:00] Section three is all about how the myelination that's happening in the nerves is accelerating what you're seeing in the motor pathways and the prefrontal pathways. And so myelin is the fatty insulation around the nerve fibers, and it lets nerve signals travel more quickly and more reliably.
So during this window of time, this nine to 12-month window, you're seeing myelination is accelerating noticeably in two places that you can see really clearly. One is the motor pathway that's, the pathways that are serving the legs and the trunk of the body, and also the early, the prefrontal pathways that are, that they're using for attention and for, intention and inhibition.
And this is the, what you're see- when it comes to what you're seeing both [00:22:00] when it comes to walking, but also in seeing intentional behavior So Lisa Elliot talks about myelination as one of the most underappreciated drivers of the first year of development. These motor pathways that are myelinating from the head down, this is why head control comes first, and then sitting, and then standing, and then walking.
And, by nine to 12 months, the leg and the trunk pathways are myelinated enough to support upright posture and locomotion. Alan Shore, we've talked about him on several of the episodes as well, and his work emphasizes that the right orbitofrontal cortex, the part of the prefrontal cortex or the front of the brain that is most involved in emotional regulation, attachment, social processing, this area of the brain is undergoing a really major growth spurt across the [00:23:00] second half of the first year.
And this is why we are seeing the emergence of attachment-driven behaviors, which is, you know, things like being more aware of strangers and having more anxiety when it comes to being separated from their caregivers, and the first signs of empathy. These are all happening at the same time that we're seeing walking starting to emerge.
Daniel Siegel, he has written so many different books on, neural development, and his interpersonal neurobiology framework calls this period of time one of the first major integration phases of the brain. So that means different regions,, the cortex, the limbic system, the brain stem, the cerebellum, they're not just growing and maturing in isolation.
They're being linked together by the myelination [00:24:00] and the long fiber tracts that connect them, and this is-- So they're, they're learning how to work together and maturing together in a way that, you know, this is the structural basis for everything that's gonna come after that, from emotional regulation to developing more language to executive function.
And so it's not just, hearing the horns play. It's the entire orchestra is getting stronger, better, faster, and better able to communicate with each other during this period of time. So you will see at home that this looks like, we talked about this before, but the movements are becoming faster and smoother as these motor signals can travel more quickly and more efficiently because of the myelination.
You'll see the early signs of intentional inhibition. So that means, if you tell a 10-month-old baby "Don't touch that. That's ow ow," which is, you [00:25:00] know, there's nothing that's ever been as interesting as whatever they're not supposed to touch, right? So, you'll see that they will reach their hand out to touch whatever it is that's ow ow, and they'll look at you to check and see.
And then, more than likely they're gonna touch the thing that's ow ow. But they're looking at you because they're understanding, "Now I'm doing something that I shouldn't be." You know, "Should I do this or should I not do this?" It's the beginning of that, and that's gonna continue for the first few years of their life.
You'll see more and more of that. But, but these are the early signs, that they're understanding that they shouldn't be continuing with whatever they've got in their head as an idea. You'll see more sustained attention to, a single activity. Sometimes this is the first time that you're starting to see that.
You're seeing a baby who can be really enthralled with one toy for several minutes or even longer than that. And then you'll also start to see really big emotional [00:26:00] reactions, that are starting to be more organized into recognizable patterns. You know, when you leave the room or if you take this toy away from them or if you, when you are taking them away from something that they are finding fun and exciting, you'll see these really big reactions that are starting to happen.
So, things that you can be doing at home,, healthy fats in the diet matter always. But healthy fats in,, the mother's diet if she is breastfeeding and in the baby's diet, because the brain is making myelin, and myelin is made from fat. Thinking about having as calm of an emotional environment at home as you can.
This supports myelination. It supports the wiring of the prefrontal cortex. It's, more effective for development than any toy you could buy or any [00:27:00] activity you could be doing with your baby. Talk to your baby through ordinary routines. This time is really important when it comes to repetitive language and emotional attunement to what's happening with your baby.
This is helping to wire the prefrontal pathways. And, when you see that your baby is pausing to study something, if they're looking at something or if they're interested in something they see or something that's, a toy that's there or something in their environment, don't interrupt them if, you can help it.
You know? Let that just slow down and let them study and have some time with whatever it is that's caught their interest. It's important. Section four is all about joint attention and these sort of the first indicators of social [00:28:00] cognition that are developing. And joint attention is when your baby starts to share attention with you about a third object.
So this is the foundation of social cognition and language and learning, and it's the neurology of what's happening when they start to point at something that they're trying to show you or to get your attention about an object and then look at you to see if you're understanding that it's about this thing here.
So it's, this joint attention is something that Is a sign that they are developing the ability to be, um, you know, w- uh, s- that's sort of what makes us human, that we're able to share our attention on an outside, object or event. Michael Tomasello, who, you know, in The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition, which is his book, he talks [00:29:00] about the ability or the capacity for sharing intentionality, the ability to, attend to the same thing as another person, and everybody knows that you're both attending to that thing.
That is a very unique developmental milestone that makes humans human. And he documents that this capacity really emerges during this window of time from about nine months up to 14 months, and it's the foundation of language and of learning and of culture, so it's important. Andrew Meltzoff, his research on infant imitation shows that babies during this window of time, this time from nine to 12 months, they're copying actions in a way that is really intentional.
It's not reflexive anymore. They're watching what you're doing, and then they're trying to do the same thing, not because the movement was triggered, but because they're [00:30:00] choosing to do what they saw you do, which is different. Colin Trevarthen, we've talked about his work before. The framework of secondary intersubjectivity is describing what's happening here.
In the first half of the year, your baby was sharing emotional states with you face to face. Now, in the second half of the year, your baby is sharing attention with you on a third object, a toy, a dog, the neighbor's cat. This is secondary intersubjectivity, and it's a doorway to more development when it comes to language and to culture.
So things that you can see at home when you see your baby pointing to something and then looking at you to make sure that you saw it, that's what they're doing, and bringing things to you to share. "Look, I found this leaf out in the garden. Look, I found this toy in my room." And they're-- You'll also see that they're [00:31:00] following your gaze.
When you look at something across the room, they are looking across the room for that thing And you'll see that they're imitating you on purpose. They're clapping when you clap, and they're waving when you wave, and they are making the conscious choice to imitate the movements or the things that you're doing.
And, the development of social referencing, which is looking at your face when something unexpected or new happens to check how you're reacting. Are we safe in this situation? And, trying to figure out how they feel about this thing based on how it looks like you feel about this thing.
So things that you can do, to support this during this period of time, respond. Every time your baby points or shows you something, respond to what it is that they're showing you. This attention loop that they're trying to share with you, that's be-- that's wiring during those moments, so you [00:32:00] have to be responsive to that.
And sometimes you've gotta get down to your baby's eye level, you know? Not sometimes, but often, because it's easier to have that joint attention when you are, when you can see what it is that they're seeing and be in their environment. And you can also name what it is that they're looking at.
So if you're pairing this, shared attention and giving them the language for it, telling them what the thing is called or describing what's happening, that's how language begins. And if pointing hasn't appeared by, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen months, that's something that is, worth taking note of and, again, considering having your child checked by someone who is trained in pediatric neurodevelopment because you want-- this is an important landmark or milestone, and you wanna make sure that you're seeing it.
So in the next section, in section five, [00:33:00] we're gonna talk about attachment. We talked about attachment and the secure base when we talked about the six to nine-month window of development as well, but we're gonna get a little bit more into it because it's emerging more and more clearly as this first year, at the end of this first year.
John Bowlby, who is the founder of the attachment theory, he described it in four different phases. And so the third phase, where you're seeing really clear-cut attachment, that's what begins around six to nine months, and we talked a lot about that in the previous two episodes.
And now it's reaching its full expression during this nine to 12-month window. The infant is now actively seeking the preferred caregiver. In most cases, that's their mother. They are protesting separation, and they're using this caregiver as the secure base [00:34:00] from which to explore the world. This is a developmental achievement, not something that you should be trying to modify their behavior out of, because it can feel really intense sometimes.
It can feel like they are, unnecessarily anxious when they are too far away from you. But this is a sign that they are developing exactly as they should be, and they're in the phase that they should be in. Mary Ainsworth's strange situation research mapped specifically the way that babies in this window use their caregiver as the secure base.
They explore when the caregiver is present. They're checking with their caregiver visually. They're returning back to the caregiver for emotional refueling, and then they protest and eventually recover when the caregiver leaves and returns back to them. [00:35:00] And all of these behaviors are expected at this age.
The absence of them is concerning, not the presence of them. Margaret Mahler, her separation individuation theory describes this period as, the baby is now mobile, and this new freedom or this new mobility creates a little bit of a paradox because they're moving away to explore, but then they need to come back to refuel emotionally.
They need to refuel and remember that they're safe. And so the walking and the crawling and the exploring baby is the same baby that's clinging and checking back with you and returning all the time. Those are, that's, they're two sides of the same, individuation. They're learning that they're both separate from, and they still need to return back and be, close to and refueling together with and, using our nervous system again as a recalibration, [00:36:00] with their caregivers.
So again, Allan Schore's work sort of links these observations, and he's talking about how the right, again, we talked about this, but the right orbitofrontal part of the cortex, the very front of the brain, is the part of the brain that is most involved in regulating attachment and in emotion and emotional regulation, and that this is a sensitive period during the second half of their first year of life.
So You, we as parents need to be thinking about being consistent and being attuned and being, observant in this window because what's happening is they're wiring the circuitry that will support your child's emotional regulation for the rest of their lives. That's what they're building during this period of time.
So what you'll be seeing at home, what this looks like, [00:37:00] you'll see a really clear preference for one or two primary caregivers and the willingness for them to be passed around to other people sort of fades. They're not as interested in that when they get to be this age. They are visibly distressed when their preferred caregiver or caregivers leave the room, not just crying, but looking for them, searching for them.
Their wariness with strangers becomes even more intensified even with people that the baby knows and used to be really comfortable with. You'll see this clinging and refueling behavior. They move away to explore and then they need to come back and be reset. And you'll see really visible delight on return.
You know, when you come back into the room when you've been gone for three minutes, your whole baby's face lights up because you're back and you'll be able to see, the, that's really clear during this time. So again, what you're looking for, clear preference for primary [00:38:00] caregivers, being distressed when they're separated from those caregivers, being wary of strangers, moving out to explore the world and coming back to refuel and being really delighted when you come back if you've been gone.
So you you wanna think about you're not trying to train separation anxiety out of your baby. It's not a behavior problem. It's a it's a part of the developmental, staircase and so just be the reliable, secure base. Predictable returning and, being as delighted and as excited to see them when you come back into the room, that matters.
It's inevitable you're going to leave, you're going to be separated from them, but how you come back and are as excited to see them as they're excited to see you and talking to your baby through these transitions. I'm leaving. I will be back. Grandma's coming.
She's gonna be here with you. [00:39:00] Talking about this using language, it helps this front part of the brain begin to organize the emotions. And trust that, when they're clinging, this is a baby who really explored their environment really hard maybe, you know? Maybe they just need to be back and to be refueled and to have some time with you because they were really out checking out the environment, and so just, this is a part of it.
And so you just have to do your best with it because it can, some of the days can be harder than others, but when you know why they're doing what they're doing, in my experience, that makes it also easier because you're understanding the neurology behind it. So the last couple of sections, I want to talk about in section six about language, because there's a lot of language development during this period of time, the [00:40:00] nine to 12-month window, and there's a lot of understanding that's starting to happen before you're maybe seeing as many words coming out of their mouth as they're able to understand.
And so there's a, a researcher, Patricia Kuhl, her research at the University of Washington has shown that babies are born able to discriminate the sounds of every single human language, but by the time that we're in this window, by around 12 months, their auditory system has narrowed to be able to specialize in the sounds of their native language or languages.
Some babies have two languages at home. So this narrowing of their ability to perceive, the sounds of these languages is, that's the maturing that's happening in their neurology that's allowing them to start to develop real, words. Andrew Meltzoff, shows in his work that [00:41:00] babies during this window are beginning to map sounds onto objects and people.
So they're looking at the, you you say, you know, " there's the dog," and they're looking at the dog even before they can say dog themself, and this is how you're forming the foundation of vocabulary and building their vocabulary. Michael Tomasello, in his work, he talks about that early language is fundamentally a social experience.
Babies do not learn words from, background talk on a screen. They learn words from shared attention with a caregiver who is naming what the baby is already looking at And so this explosion in their language development during this window of time is built on that joint attention wiring that we talked about, where the two of you together are looking at a third object, and you're naming that object.
Or you say the name of that thing, and they know exactly what it is, and then you're both looking [00:42:00] at that together. This is something that can seem really small, but when you know what's actually happening, it becomes really-- it, , brings a new light to what it is that you're seeing at home.
So again, this looks like, your baby looks at the dog when you say dog, or they are, you're also seeing that they are responding to hearing their own name more reliably. They're responding to instructions. Wave bye-bye. Where's your nose? Where's, where's your blanket?
You're seeing that they're responding to that, even if they're not themselves able to say, "Where's your nose?" yet. They understand. They get what you're saying, and they can understand more than they can produce. So you might be starting to see a few real words by twelve months, but they're understanding dozens of words at this stage.
And this, the babbling, the sounds that they're making themselves are really becoming more and more language-like. So they're starting to sound-- They're [00:43:00] having the rhythm and the intonation of your language that you're speaking at home So things that you can do at home during this period of time, talk to your baby in real sentences, not just in simplified, you know, short labels.
The brain is learning from real, actual language patterns. Name what they're already looking at. This is that joint attention shortcut to developing their vocabulary. Read books together. This shared attention to what's happening on a page is the sa- you're building the same neural networks as that shared attention to objects in the world.
And again, like we talk about on every episode, keep screens out because real language, it wires through human interaction during this age, and so learning it on the TV doesn't count. The last [00:44:00] section of this episode is about, the hippocampus, which is the area of the brain that holds memory.
And so during the first nine months of life, memory is largely implicit. Patterns and associations are stored in the body and stored in the limbic system. Their body can remember if there was a noise or something that happened that scared them . But during this window of time, from the nine to 12-month window, this part of the brain, the hippocampus, is maturing enough that explicit memory, so the conscious memory of specific events and specific people, is developing more and more.
And so this is why you'll see that your baby now remembers where the toys are kept, or they recognize somebody that they haven't seen in days, or they are anticipating a routine, something that's [00:45:00] about to happen, that they recognize, that they know this thing is about to happen. And that's why you're starting to see that happen a lot more during this window of time than you've seen up to this point Lisa Elliot describes the hippocampus as, one of the sort of later maturing or later developing structures of the limbic system.
And in this last window of development, it begins to start storing explicit memories so they can consciously retrieve memories of specific people and places and events, and that is-- that's a huge deal. Daniel Stern's framework on the developing infant really emphasizes that memory and a sense of self mature together or develop together.
And so by the end of the first year of life, the baby is [00:46:00] starting to hold a continuous sense of themselves across time. So the same person who went to bed is the same person who woke up. The same caregiver who left is the same caregiver who came back, and the continuity of that is the work of this maturation in the hippocampus Alan Shore, he, we've talked about him in, I think, all of the previous episodes.
His work talks a lot about the maturing of the hippocampus or the maturing of the ability to store memories and the maturing of the attachment system. This, during the same period of time, this is what's allowing your baby to remember that you exist when you're out of sight. And so this is the sort of the neurology that's developing the foundation of this separation anxiety.
But it's also what's developing the, what's building the foundation of the secure relationship that's being built, because not only are you-- they're [00:47:00] anxious when they're not with you, but they're understanding you're, you come back. You're always coming back, and they can come back to you.
And so at home, again, what you're seeing is you're seeing your baby remembering where the toys are, where the snacks are, where the cat's water dish is, you know, all of those things are, they know where everything is. They can recognize and really react with usually a pure delight to people that they haven't seen in days or in weeks.
They anticipate routines. You'll see they're holding out their arms before they're being lifted. They're opening their mouth before the spoon gets there. They're pointing to the door as you're putting on your shoes because they know we're going outside. And they start to really remember the rules of some of these games where, this is the, they're, they know what's gonna happen during peekaboo, and they know what's gonna happen when you're saying, "Where's your nose?"
They're remembering the rules of these sort of memory games. And so-- and you can sometimes see some early [00:48:00] senses that something happened in the past. You'll see that a memory of, if they fall on, let's say, one of the stairs, they'll be pointing to the stairs, and you'll see they're trying, they're remembering that the, this is where, this was where there was ow-ow.
Whether they have the language for that or not, you can see that they're remembering like this, something happened here in a way that's completely different than they were able to do before this period of time. So things that you can do at home during this period of time to help to develop this is build really predictable rhythms into the day, because predictability is what gives this maturing part of the brain, the hippocampus, something to consolidate, something to remember.
Name what's happening as it happens, because language and memory wire together. So talk to them a lot during the day about what's happening. And honor, when you see that they're [00:49:00] anticipating something that's about to happen, do that thing. When they're reaching for, reaching out to be lifted up, lift them up.
When they are waiting for the part of the book where, there's something, there's a song that you sing, sing the song. Make sure that the thing is happening that they're anticipating. That anticipation and that confirmation that, "Yep, I knew this thing was gonna happen, and there it was, it happened," this is meaningful.
And trust that, this period of time with separation anxiety can be really hard, especially for moms. But just know that every time you come back, every time you're back in the room or you've come home from wherever you've been, that's the, the way that you greet them again and the way that you are, , reminding their nervous system that every time they're away from you and anxious about that, you come back, and when you come back, it's really good.
So these are the kind of things that, as a mother, you need to [00:50:00] remember, that this separation anxiety is a part of development, but, you can't be, it just how you come back is as important of a piece of the puzzle. So think about that more than you think about feeling bad if you've gotta be away from them a little bit.
So that's important. And we are now at the end of this part one of the nine to 12 month window of development. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for spending the time. Thank you for, it's a huge amount of work to set yourself into everything that happens with your children all throughout their entire lives, but there's an incredible amount that's happening during this first year of their lives.
So thank you for being here and being interested. And the next part, the last episode in this eight-part series, is again going to be more specifically what you will see at home and what you can be doing at home to support all of [00:51:00] these areas of development that we just talked about. So the last episode after this one is going to be exactly what you should be seeing and exactly what you should be doing to support your baby during this nine to 12 month window.
So please come back, join me for the next episode, and again, I'll link to the previous episodes that we've had, so the zero to three month window, three to six month window, and so on, in the show notes. So if you, if this is the first episode that you're listening to and you're interested in the first period of time, please go back and listen to those episodes.
I think that you'll get a lot out of that. Thank you so much for being here, and I'll see you in the next one
