Episode #23
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[00:00:00] Welcome to part two of the nine to 12-month window in this neurodevelopmental series that is all about what is happening in your baby's brain and nervous system during the first year of life. Each window of development is split into two separate parts. The first part is all about what is actually developing and happening in the brain and the nervous system, and part two of each window of development is all about how to navigate this at home, what you should actually be seeing your baby doing, and what kind of practical things that you can be doing at home to support these windows of development.
And today, we are rounding out the final episode in [00:01:00] this eight-part series, and we're talking about part two, what you should be seeing at home and what you can be doing yourself at home to support your baby during this nine to 12-month window. So at the end of this series of episodes, I'm hoping that all of you who have been following along during this series of, podcasts, you really have the blueprint now.
You really have what you need to be able to understand what's happening neurologically. And I know for myself, when I understand why something is happening, both that it makes it easier for me to, have patience if there's, you know, a lot of these areas of windows of time for, during the first year of life are, they're not all easy.
And so when you know what's happening, and you understand what it is that you're seeing, it's so much [00:02:00] easier as a parent to support that, first of all, to know this is, my baby is doing exactly what they should be doing, and understand that what they're doing is not something, they're not trying to give you a hard time.
They're moving through that phase of neurological development that they should be moving through, and it just makes everything easier, I think. And I think it's very helpful to know how we can all support our children in each of these phases so that we are, if we're not seeing something that we should be seeing, we're catching it early.
And when we're seeing that everything, you know, the development is moving into the next phase, we're prepared for it, and we're able to be as helpful and be as supportive to our kids in that window of time as we can be. And so , part one, the last episode, was all about what was, what's actually happening developmentally, and this part is what you're going to be seeing and things that you can actually do.
And [00:03:00] so just to give you a little bit of an overview of the sections, in the first section, I wanna talk about the motor development things that you should be looking for. Your baby should be pulling themselves up to be standing. They should be holding onto the furniture, holding onto anything that's standstill, and walking along those things as they're doing it.
First, , holding on with two hands, and then holding on with one hand, and then sometimes forgetting to hold on. And then we kind of wanna see that they're taking their first step or two by the time they are, , within about that 11, 12, 13-month window. Section two is all about the pincher grasp.
We've talked about this obviously in the last episode as well, what it is and why it's there. And today we're gonna talk about, more about how it relates to how your baby's more able to feed themselves and how it relates to the nutrition part, in addition to being helpful for them to pick up and interact with [00:04:00] anything they see in their environment.
Section three is about these peaks that we're seeing with separation anxiety, what is actually happening and what you can be doing practically in those moments. Section four is about hearing their first words because typically about the same time that you're seeing babies start to stand up and pull themselves onto two feet and be taking their first step or two, you're also starting to hear the first words coming, or you're at the very brink of it beginning to happen soon.
Section five is, we've talked a lot about, in the last episode, joint attention and your baby looking at something, pointing at that thing, looking at you to see if you're understanding that they're trying to tell you something about a third object, why this is important and what it means and what you should be seeing and how you can support that.
In section six, we're gonna [00:05:00] talk about early intentional behavior, which is the first signs of your baby becoming an independent self. And that can be, that brings its own set of challenges, but it's as it should be if you're starting to see it develop, and how you can be supporting that. Section seven is about sleep and what happens around this 12-month mark.
Section eight is, what kind of things do you wanna be watching and being observant of at home, and what kind of things do you want to see as something that maybe you should be having your child checked out by someone who is competent in pediatric neural development. So knowing what is what from what you're seeing.
Section nine is we're just gonna be rounding it all out and putting it all together and closing this first year of development and all of [00:06:00] these, episodes that we've been through together. So in section one, this is the grand finale , of locomotion.
Watching your baby over the past year going from not being able to do anything except for lay in the position you put them in, to now being able to, conquer the world because they can get themselves wherever they wanna get themselves, kind of. Or they're at least just about to be able to get themselves wherever they wanna get themselves.
If they have something to hold onto, they can get themselves wherever they're going, right? But we're seeing that by, 12 months, 12 months to 13 months, we wanna be seeing the first couple of independent steps. They don't have to be, you know, walking themselves to the grocery store, but they need to be taking a couple of steps where they're not holding onto something, and usually that happens, it almost looks like, they [00:07:00] forgot to hold on and they took a couple of steps.
That counts. That's ex- perfect. That's what we're looking for. And so our job as parents is to set up the environment to give them the space and the room and the environment to be able to practice this. We've talked about this in every single episode and, not to be propping them up or forcing it to go faster, but just to give them the space to be developing the skills they need to be able to do this like I say in every episode, I mention all of the research, all of the books, all of the clinicians who I have found helpful to teach myself and to learn more about neurodevelopment.
I'm mentioning all of them in every single episode, and I'm-- I have the reference lists that are linked in the show notes if you wanna know more. And the reason why I do this is because some of you wanna know, where am I getting this from? Is it something I've made up? No. [00:08:00] But some of you are also interested in looking these people up or reading their books or looking, reading their research.
And so all of that is linked, and I'm naming all of them as we're going, so you're getting an idea of what it is they've contributed to the information that I'm presenting. So Karen Adolph's research at New York University, she talks a lot about that there's a range of, , time where babies are taking their first independent steps.
And like I said, I don't mean that by the time your baby is twelve months old on the day, they should be able to walk from point A to point B, taking twenty-five steps on their own. But you should be seeing that they are-- they've been up, pulling themselves up on their feet, holding onto things, walking along the furniture, walking along the walls, walking along whatever they can hold themselves steady on, and going from needing to hold with two hands to being able to hold with one hand, [00:09:00] to once in a while forgetting to hold on at all, and then seeing that they're taking a step or two or three, and that should be happening by the time they are through their twelfth month, before they're starting in their thirteenth month, ideally.
And so we've talked about this in the other episodes as well, but you're gonna see that , my ranges for windows of development and milestones are shorter in a lot of cases than you see when you read about them online. There's a reason for that. I talked a lot about this in the last episode, because what we're looking for here is we're looking for what is the optimum window of development, not what is-- what can be normal or , what are some babies doing or what are...
If everything is happening as it should be happening in an optimal window of development, this is what you should be seeing. And I know that there's a huge range when you're looking at it. A lot of sources are saying, anything up to [00:10:00] 18 months, and they're right that there are a lot of babies who are not taking their first unassisted steps until they're 18 months old.
But in a lot of those cases, you're seeing that there's a reason for that. It's because they have retained primitive reflexes, or there's a vestibular, there's a balance issue, or there's a, you know, their ocular motor, there's something going on, that's making it so that it's taking them longer to take their first couple of unassisted steps.
So there's a difference between what is not unusual and what's optimal, and we're talking here about what's optimal. Esther Thelen, her framework on dynamic systems reminds us that walking is what emerges when you have an alignment of a lot of different systems that are working together. You need leg strength, you need balance, you need the function of the oculomotor system, you need to be motivated to walk, and you need to [00:11:00] have the coordination of these systems.
So it's not like you push a button and then that day your baby gets up and walks. But it's about see-- you're seeing that, I talked about it on the last episode as almost being like a symphony. You're not just hearing the horns. You're not just-- It's not just that they have the leg strength to be able to stand up, but they've also have to have the entire symphony needs to be playing together for them to be able to do this.
And so what you're seeing, and that's what they've been practicing all of this time up until now in things that sometimes look not necessarily that exciting. You know, when they've been standing there holding onto the sofa for the last two months, they've been developing all of these things, and it doesn't look like much is happening, but that's exactly what's happening, and it's really important.
Sally Goddard Blythe talks a lot about the, the quality of the walking. You know, if there's a baby who is pushed to walk really early you'll [00:12:00] see that maybe they're walking, but they are walking with a really rigid posture, or they're walking but they're up on their toes, or they are walking in a way that isn't coordinated, they don't look confident, they seem fearful.
They're-- all babies are falling during the time when they're learning to walk, but if you're seeing something where they're really having a lot of, their coordination seems very off, it's not just about them being up on two feet as early as possible. It's about being able to see that there's a smoothness of movement and that
you can see progression in how confident and how developed their balance and the, their ability to be, walking stably on both of their feet flat on the ground. So the quality of the walking, not necessarily just seeing that they're doing it as early as they possibly can. [00:13:00] Magda Gerber, we've talked about also before, she talks a lot about r-respectful motor development and, talks about that motor development happens best when adults do not interfere.
So you're not propping them up, you're not holding their hands to walk a baby across the room, which it doesn't mean that you can never hold your baby's hands and help them to learn the sequence of walking. But, pulling them up when they're nine months old and trying to get them to, walking them everywhere that they go, first of all, it takes away from the time that they could've been crawling during that window, which is really important.
And second of all, it's not-- they're not-- it doesn't count when they're not doing it themselves. The baby moves through these sequences of motor development at their pace and the result of that is that they've practiced it enough that they've developed [00:14:00] the strength and the coordination and the confidence so that they're good at that movement.
Not, , they're not excellent at it the first times, but you know what I mean. They're, they're confident and able to do that movement because they've practiced all the steps of getting themselves able to do that movement. So it's different than if you're putting them into a walker and their legs are moving and they're going across the floor.
That's not the same as all the steps that need to happen for them to be able to pull themselves up, stand on two feet, balance, and have the coordination to move themselves across that floor without the walker. So that's something we really need to, be aware of. So what you should be seeing at home is you should be seeing during this window of time, the nine to 12-month window, that your baby is pulling themselves up to stand next to anything that they can get, anything available.
You should see them moving sideways using first two hands and then one hand and then sometimes forgetting to use their hands. Standing alone for a [00:15:00] few seconds, looking surprised that happened. You know, they usually look like, "Oof," and then they get scared and then they hold on again. But seeing that they're confident enough that they could forget to hold on is a really good sign You want the first steps appearing in that period of time, up to the point where they're through their 12th month into the 13th month.
And their walking style that, they're, they usually have their, they have a wide stance, their hand, their legs are further apart. Their their hands are usually up for extra balance. They're falling and recovering, and it doesn't look, it look-- I describe it often as Frankenstein with two glasses of wine.
It doesn't look really coordinated in the very beginning. But you'll be shocked by what happens once they've been practicing that for a few months. So that's what you're looking for. You wanna think that there's I've talked about this a lot, and I, again, [00:16:00] the reference to Magda Gerber's work, but there's such, um...
It's so exciting as a parent to see your baby able to do something new that it just really gets away from us sometimes, that we just think like, oh, if this could just go more, just a little faster, just this is great, you know? And it doesn't matter if they're learning how to swim or if they're learning how to walk or if they're learning how to, compete in the half pipe on their snowboard.
There's such a, there's such... We just, we want our kids to succeed and do well, and be good at things, and so there's such a tendency as parents to push it a little bit more than we should be pushing it, and I see it so often in my office. And, so I just wanna remind you that cheering them on as they're doing it for themselves, that's what we're looking for during this period of time.
That's what we wanna be doing. So resist the urge to walk your baby across the room holding, both of their hands when they're nine months old. Let the cerebellum, let the motor cortex, let all of these areas that are developing in the [00:17:00] brain develop, and they have to develop by doing the repetitions and doing the work themselves.
So skip the walker and the jumper and the bouncer. They are bypassing that integration that we're looking for during this window of time. Set up the environment at home with stable, low furniture that they can use and a clear space on the floor, and there's gonna be a lot of falls, and there's gonna be a lot of miscalculations, and that's just part of the game And so these are the things that we wanna be seeing in terms of motor development.
The next section, section two, we're talking about the pincer grasp. This is where you're seeing that your baby is picking up small objects between their thumb and their index finger, and this should be fully maturing, this grasp, during this window of time. It starts, we talked about it in the last episode, but it starts as them using their full hand and raking things toward them almost when they wanna get ahold of something.
And then [00:18:00] it moves into where they can, get their thumb into the, the whole side of the index finger, in a grasp that looks more, you know, using the whole finger. And then it develops into the thumb and the tip of the, the index finger coming together. And so this is what you're looking to see.
This is... It's not just an indication of a fine motor milestone. This is how they this is how they feed themselves. This is, our fingers are our earliest tools and our most effective tools in a lot of cases, and it also is developing the hand that will, they will be writing with in the years to come.
Lisa Elliott describes the way that the motor cortex is developing this fine motor representation of the hand, so the, the development of the... so that we get a picture of what the muscles in the joints in our hand is doing, that's happening in our brain. And the pincer grasp becoming more and more [00:19:00] mature and developed is showing us that this maturation and this development in the brain is happening the way that it should.
So it's an outward sign of what's happening in the brain, as is everything else that we've discussed. So it tells us something about their hand strength, but it also tells us something about the wiring in the brain. Susan Evans Morris is a speech language pathologist, and the work that she did was on feeding therapy, and she talked a lot about the oral motor and the fine motor systems maturing parallel to each other, the same way we talked about the whole symphony, the whole orchestra playing together.
And as the pincer grasp is becoming more and more specialized and more, mature, you'll see at the same time that the baby is also starting to be able to handle small pieces of food, and the tongue is learning how to move food from side to side [00:20:00] so that they can be chewing, and the jaw is learning how to do rotatory chewing, and the lips are learning to, clear food off of the spoon.
And all of these things are happening at the same time Which is just, I'm always reminded how brilliant the human body and the brain and the nervous system are when when we talk about things like this. Jill Rapley, she's the founder of the Baby-Led Weaning framework, and she really talks a lot about this pincher grasp window of time, that once a baby can pick up small pieces of food on their own, the natural progression is to let them feed themselves.
Because when they're self-feeding, then the baby has control over the pace of the feeding, the amount, the texture, and all of these support the development of, healthy hunger and satiety regulation. And so it's sort of a cultural thing that we started to puree [00:21:00] up food and feed babies from a spoon.
It's much harder to get a spoon into your mouth with whatever was on the spoon still being there when it gets to your mouth. That's much harder for a baby than picking up food with their hands and putting it into their mouth. And so if we're looking at it from a cultural perspective, it might be very normal to feed babies from a spoon, and I'm not saying don't, but letting them also be in control of feeding themselves is a really important, something we've always done evolutionary.
And so I said this earlier, but you can, if you're interested in learning more about baby-led weaning, that's, it's all over the internet. You can, do your own research and try to find out what's the right, what you think is the right thing for your family. Um, there's a, woman named Ellyn Satter, and we've talked about her framework before, but she's talking about division of responsibility.
And that, again, to repeat it, that means the parent's job [00:22:00] is to decide what food is offered, when that food is offered, and where the food is offered. And the baby's job is to decide whether or not they eat and how much. So as they start feeding themselves more and more because they have the ability to hold the food in their hands because this pincher grasp has been developing and maturing, they can actually use their hands to get the food from the plate into their mouths.
That division of whose job is, you know, what's the baby's job and what's the parent's job becomes more visible and easier to honor. So what you're seeing at home during this time, you're seeing that they're picking up pieces of food. They're picking up blueberries. They're picking up, bits of meat and, or peas or pieces of fruit between their thumb and their index finger, and they're bringing the food to their mouths with increasing accuracy And [00:23:00] so, handling a spoon is usually more for exploration than for actually getting food into their mouths in this early period of time.
They get better at it, of course, but it's-- , we don't have enough respect for how hard it is to get a spoon into your mouth when you're, when you're that, when you're that small. So you should see... you'll be also seeing at home more that they're developing, your baby's developing more and more of a clear preference for things.
They're turning their head away when there's something they don't want. They're pushing food off of the table or off of the plate. They're reaching for something that they want more of. You're starting to be able to see what they, that they have a preference for something or not. And so offer them safe finger foods that invite them to be working on and developing more and more of this pincer grasp.
Let them feed themselves, even when it's messy. The mess is part of the learning. [00:24:00] It's not a clean activity having a baby learn, you know, starting with solid foods and learning how to feed themselves, but it gets better. Takes a little while, but it does get better. And honor, if they're refusing something, you don't need to make a battle out of it.
You just honor that refusal. If they refuse something today, sometimes, that will become their new favorite food in two or three weeks. So just thinking about not making mealtimes a stressful event for the nervous system for both baby and mother, I think is really important.
And sit and eat with your baby whenever possible. Modeling and sharing mealtimes helps with the part of feeding that makes it... a social relational experience as well. In section three, we're gonna talk about separation anxiety, and we talked about this in the last episode, that it's really reaching its peak in this window.[00:25:00]
It's not a behavioral problem. It's not a sign that your baby is too attached. It's , the developmental signal that the attachment system is working exactly as it's designed to work. If they weren't becoming attached to you in a way that's very important, then they would be fine when you left the room.
It wouldn't matter. So seeing that they are anxious or waiting for you to return or upset when you leave means that the attachment that you've been building, it's working. It's doing what it should be doing. John Bowlby, who we've also spoken about in every episode, his attachment theory really framed protesting to separation, not as a problem, but as evidence that the attachment system's working, like we said.
From nine to 12 months, this window of development, [00:26:00] the baby has a really clearly preferred caregiver, and they have developed an active attachment to that caregiver, and they also have developed the cognitive ability to remember that when that person isn't in front of them, they still exist. And so all of those three things mean that the baby will be protesting separations, and that's a healthy, positive sign Mary Ainsworth's research showed that securely attached babies in this window protest separation, and they recover when they are comforted on return.
And they use their caregiver as the secure, safe base from which to explore the world. And we talked a lot about all of those things in the last episode. And the protest and the recovery are both part of this secure pattern. And so if there is no [00:27:00] protest, that's more concerning than the presence of it.
That's important. Alan Shore's neurobiological framework talks about that every attuned reunion, every time you come back during this window of time, you're helping to wire the right orbitofrontal cortex, the front part of the brain that regulates emotion for the rest of your child's life. So the reunion is not just comfort, but it's building the part of the brain that is helping them develop their emotional regulation that they'll have for the rest of their lives.
So Mona Delahooke, who we've also discussed, her framework is a polyvagal framework, and again, helps us look at separation protest as what it is. It's the nervous system is alarmed because the secure base [00:28:00] is gone. And if you're trying to stop the crying through distraction or through, training them to stop crying, you're, they, you're missing the point.
The cry is them alerting that I need my person. I need my safe base. And working on that emotional regulation, and that can be, the caregiver coming back, but it can also be through another caregiver working to soothe the baby and help them to learn this emotional regulation that they will work on for years.
And so this is something that shows us that developmentally they're progressing exactly as they should. So things that you're seeing at home, you're seeing that they're crying immediately a lot of times when the primary caregiver leaves the room. They're not happy to be passed off to somebody that maybe they were fine being passed off to a month ago, and they can be clinging really hard if there's a drop-off or if you're, they're having to be, taken care of [00:29:00] by someone else.
And then they settle into the routine once they get used to being in a new place and with another caregiver, and they will settle again, and that will happen easier and easier as they are growing and developing and maturing this, emotional regulation center. So it's something that we're, it's not from one day to the next, but it's something that we're working on over time.
And you'll see really big delight at being reunited with their primary caregiver. Their hands are reaching, their whole face is lighting up, their whole body is, looking for that. They wanna be back with their person. And sleep can be harder during this period of time, we talked about that as well, because this separation, it's not something that only happens during the day.
They're waking up during the night and wanting to make sure they're still safe and they're still connected to this primary caregiver And so, what you wanna be seeing is, [00:30:00] all of this, that sleep can be disrupted as this separation is, you know, affecting them also during the night.
There is recovery, when you come back, when the, when on returning, when the caregiver comes back, it's warm, and it's predictable, and it's important. That part of it is wiring their, that emotional regulation that even when they leave, they come back. That's something that they're practicing every single time you're away from them.
And so this reunion is a really, it's a brain-building moment, so it's important to be, give them some attention when you come back, when you've been separated from them. And don't sneak out. Say goodbye, even if saying goodbye produces tears, because you're, building trust in their nervous system by being predictable.
Sneaking out because it buys you peace in the moment disrupts the understanding that they're getting that when you come and you [00:31:00] say goodbye, you will also be back. So it's important. Um, yeah, this, and again, these can, this can be a really hard period of time for especially mothers, and I know that.
But this is, again, say goodbye, and then when you come back, spend a little bit of time really just being both equally delighted to see each other again. And so the next section, section four, Has to do with their first words and their first... Because a lot of babies are saying their first words during this window, and maybe not just yet, but as soon as you start seeing that babies are spending more time up on two feet and starting to take their first step or two, their first words are either have already been there or are just right around the corner.
And what's more important than the first words themselves is the fact that you [00:32:00] need to know that your baby is understanding more words and more of what you are saying to them than they can say back to you. Patricia Kuhl, her research shows that by about 12 months, the baby's auditory system has become more and more specialized towards their native language or their languages.
The first words during this window is usually, sometimes you'll think you're hear- they'll be making sounds that sound a lot like what is going to soon be, more succinctly their first word. So they're starting to mimic and because they've been there, they've gone from being able to just hear sounds coming out of people's mouths to become more specialized at the specific sounds that are being made in the languages that they're hearing at home Andrew Meltzoff's research demonstrates that even before babies can produce their own words, they're mapping [00:33:00] these sounds onto people and objects and actions.
And by 12 months, a, typically a baby understands between 10 to 15 words, even if they're only saying one or two themselves. And so this gap between understanding and speaking is normal. That's how anybody who's learned a new language, even as an adult, you know that you can understand more than you can get out of your mouth for quite a while, which is frustrating.
Michael Tomasello's framework reminds us that these early words are social acts. So a lot of times the first word is they're using words to request something or to comment on something. But the fact that these early words are usually tied to social intent, that's why wor- learning language from a screen doesn't produce the vocabulary or the-- it's not effective in the way that real [00:34:00] human conversation is effective in learning language and learning vocabulary and learning all of the things that we want our babies to be learning.
So at home, you should be seeing or hearing babbling that is increasingly sounding like speech, so they're using the rhythm and the intonation and the stress patterns of your language that you're speaking at home. And a lot of times, one or two consistent words by about 12 months, "mama," "dada," "no," the dog's name, things that are easy and short, but y- typically you'll be seeing a couple of words during this period of time you'll see the use of gesturing alongside the attempt at words.
So they're pointing or they're reaching or they're shaking their head no, or they're waving bye, but they're doing something, they're using gestures also to communicate. And so you wanna see all of these [00:35:00] things. You wanna see speech-like babbling, a couple of intentional words, receptive language, looking-- If you say the dog's name while you're looking at your baby, they're turning their head to look for the dog.
If you say, you know, "Go find your book, your Sesame Street book," they're off looking for where the Sesame Street book is. Not necessarily the Sesame Street book, but objects that they recognize the names of, they're going to find it, they're going to get it, they're looking at what you're...
when you say the name of something so that you can see that they're understanding what it is that you're saying. Things that you can do at home to promote this development is talk in real conversational sentences. Talk to them like you talk to anyone else, and name the things that your baby is already looking at, because if they're looking at something, this joint attention, the two of you looking together at something, whether that's something in a book or pointing at an object [00:36:00] or looking out the window at the neighbor's cat or whatever it is, this is how you're teaching them and developing their vocabulary.
So reading books together every day. A shared book is a really-- that's a great way to have this, to be developing this joint attention, which is the two of you looking together at a third object. And so these are all really important things when it comes to language. Section five is more in depth of-- that we've talked a lot about this, but this concept of joint attention, pointing at something and shared meaning, and pointing is one of the most important behaviors in the first year.
I think it's important to talk about, because this is again, one of those things that if you don't know what's happening, the importance of what's happening, it's really easy to miss why this is important. It's not just a gesture. It's the expression of this social cognition that's developing.
So [00:37:00] Pointing at something, sharing your attention, the two of you sharing your attention on a third object and having a shared meaning, these are the signals that your baby is becoming a small social person, and they're really important. Michael Tomasello, in his work, talks about that the, the human capacity to point at something and share attention with another person on a third object is one of the most important behaviors of early development.
And he's distinguishing that between requestive pointing, like pointing at something that you want to ask for something, and declarative pointing, pointing at something else to share what you've noticed. Declarative pointing, pointing at a third object, is a more advanced form, and it's one of the strongest indicators of this neurotypical social cognitive [00:38:00] development.
Andrew Meltzoff's research shows that babies in this window begin to imitate actions in a way that is very intentional and goal-directed, and so they're watching you pour something, and then they're trying to pour. They're watching you stack cups, and they're trying to stack cups. It's no longer a reflexive imitation.
It's a chosen action, and that shows us a lot of really important things about the development of the brain and the nervous system Daniel Stern's framework on the developing infant talks about this as the emergence of a shared meaning. So the baby and the caregiver are now able to mean the same thing by the same act.
So a wave means bye-bye. Pointing at the cat means this is the cat, and that shared meaning is, it's the whole foundation behind language. It's the whole foundation between [00:39:00] how we build a culture, and this is the first emergence and the first development of that, and it's important. And so the things that you're seeing, should be seeing at home during this time, pointing at things to request them.
I want the snack. I want the toy. I wanna go out the door. I wanna put my shoes on. You should be seeing that, and you should also be seeing pointing at things that they wanna share. So they're showing you the moon, and then they're, pointing at the moon, and then they're looking at you to see, are you getting it?
Are you seeing the same thing that I'm seeing? Bringing objects to you to share them. I picked a flower outside, or I found this toy, or, bringing something to you to show you this thing. Imitating your gestures and your actions. Clapping when you clap. Brushing their hair when you're brushing your hair.
Seeing that they're imitating the things that you're doing, and then playing really simple, you know, sharing games together. Playing peekaboo, rolling the ball [00:40:00] back and forth. Hiding something under the blanket and pulling it out again. The things that the two of you can be doing together that are simple games, they are predictable and they can participate.
So all of these kind of things are things that you wanna be seeing at home. Things that you can do to support this is always respond. When your baby's pointing or showing you something, they're, you're wiring in that shared attention, and so respond to them when they're doing that. And it can happen six million times during the day, but try your best to be responding because they're developing.
They're wiring something important when they're doing that. And name what it is that they're pointing at. Because again, this joint attention and giving it a name or giving it a word is the formula for how to build their vo- vocabulary. And play simple, you know, taking turns games every day. Roll a ball back and forth.
Play peekaboo. Do [00:41:00] different, games where it's my turn and then it's your turn. And if pointing, how we talked about this in the last episode, but if pointing at things hasn't appeared by 14 or 15 months, I think that's important enough that you wanna be taking your child to see someone who is trained in pediatric neurodevelopment, because it's a really important indication of a lot of things developing.
And so if they're not doing that yet, you wanna get an opinion from somebody who's trained in this as to if everything is developing as it should. In section six, I wanna talk about early intentional behavior, which is the first signs of the baby becoming more of a toddler and becoming more of their own individual self So you start to see, things like, again, intentional behavior.
They're refusing certain things. They're choosing certain things. You can see they're asserting [00:42:00] more of their preferences. And again, this is not defiance. This is the development and the maturing of the prefrontal cortex and how, what it looks like as it's developing. Allan Schore's work, we've talked about this a lot, in the last episode as well.
The, his work shows that the right orbitofrontal cortex, the front part of the brain that is most involved in self-regulation, attachment, and intentional behavior, is having a big developmental growth spurt during the second half of their first year of life. And these are signs of that maturation or that development, is the things that we are talking about, intentional behavior, making a choice, refusing something that they don't want.
Margaret Mahler's separation individuation theory describes this period of time [00:43:00] as, their new mobility and their new sense of self that your baby's having produces a grandiose joy at moving away from the caregiver. They can get away from you, but then they need to come back and refuel.
And so the first signs of refusal and the first signs of preference are a part of this individuating process. They're becoming a separate person from you. They're trying to figure out, what do I get to decide about my own life? And, again, it can, it's a really fun time and can also be a really intense, frustrating time because they're trying to figure out, do I wanna be right next to you all the time, or do I wanna be away from you?
And they want both. Daniel Siegel describes intentionality as the capacity that's emerging that your baby's developing to act with purpose rather than just reacting. So by the [00:44:00] close of that first year, the, the brain has matured enough that the baby can hold a goal in mind, and they can plan a simple action toward it, and they can adjust the plan if the plan isn't working.
And this is the foundation and the emergence of executive function, which will be developing for many years to come, but it's the first signs of that emergence of executive function. Mona Delahooke's framework reminds us again that seeing your baby, that early refusal and assertion, it's not your baby being naughty.
It's, they're not trying to defy you. They are, this is the signaling from the nervous system of a preference or of, their discomfort or of hunger or of fatigue. So being able to read the signal accurately matters more than trying to manage the behavior. [00:45:00] So, reading what's going on behind that they don't want to have, they don't wanna eat anything, or they don't wanna e- th-this or that, whatever it is.
Trying to look at what's happening behind it is more important than trying to manage the behavior and get them to do whatever it is you think they should be doing. So what you're seeing at home is you're seeing, they're turning their head away from food that they don't want. They're reaching for one toy and refusing to take another.
They're shaking their head no. A lot of times that's before they have any other words. You can see really clearly when they don't want something. They're looking at you, and then they're doing the forbidden thing while watching your face, which is the first cause and effect testing. We talked about this, but, you know, they're seeing, you know, "I know I'm not supposed to do this thing, but what's gonna happen if I do this thing?"[00:46:00]
So that's fun and supposed to be there. They wanna do things themselves. They wanna hold their own spoon. They wanna push the door themselves. They wanna put on their own shoes. They wanna put on their own jacket. It is the most, it will grow you as a person, having a child this age because you, if you haven't developed your patience accordingly, you will be forced to do so.
And try to, you can't always, you don't always have time to let them spend 47 minutes putting on their own shoes, but if you have 47 minutes, let them try, let them be able to do as much for themselves as they can be doing. Give them the time and give them the space, and then I know practically that that's not always possible, but understand that they're try- they're, they're becoming their own individual, and they're trying to assert that individuality, and let them when you can.
It's really important So [00:47:00] again, other things that you can be doing, honor those preferences when you can. Choosing the red cup or choosing the blue cup, or having the banana or having the toast. Let your baby practice intentionality when you can and when it's safe to do so. And don't punish them saying no to things.
This capacity for them to be able to refuse something is an achievement of the development of the brain, so it's not bad behavior. It's, they're supposed to be a You know, you, what you don't want is a baby who is a year and a half old or two years old and has never said no. You think you want that, but when you understand what it means, it's not what you want.
And so don't punish their, these early nos. Understand what's happening and see that they need to be able to decide over their own lives when it's safe and when it is possible as well. And set the limits that you need to set. Be calm and be [00:48:00] consistent. And limits that are set and delivered, warmly and from a place of a regulated nervous system from the parent, those are also, those are wiring their prefrontal cortex for safety and that's important.
So I don't mean now you have a 12-month-old and they get to do whatever they wanna do. That's not how it works. But you set the limits that you need to set, but don't set limits on things you don't ne- you know? Some parents really just have a need to, they have to decide over everything that their kids do, and that's limiting their development.
It's setting you up for a very long day and a lot of battles and a lot of meltdowns from both of you. And it's not supporting their neurologic development. And then be, good obviously about knowing when it's, this is something that I decide and then these things are things that you [00:49:00] can decide for yourself.
So that's something that you will have several years to be thinking about and working on, but it's emerging now during this period of time. And then when all of the big feelings, because they're really starting to have a lot of big emotions about things, they're understanding that I wanted to put my shoes on myself and you came and put my shoes on and that just ruined my entire day.
So when these big feelings are coming, this is when you're practicing helping them learn emotional regulation by, staying calm yourself, letting your baby have those big feelings, but letting them regulate from your nervous system, which is calm and which is, not as stressed out as theirs.
So they can find their way back to emotional regulation and then they will get better and better and faster and faster over the next years because it takes years, not weeks or [00:50:00] months at doing this for themselves. But every time there's big feelings, it is an opportunity to practice co-regulation. You are, you have to, their nervous system is still very immature.
They're not able to calm down. We are not born knowing how to calm down. We have to learn how to calm down. And some of us are better at it than others, even as adults. Section seven is all about sleep and, sleep at the close of this first year is really shaped by everything else that's happening during the same window.
So The anxiety that they're feeling about separation and the everything that's happening with their language development and the maturation of the hippocampus, which is their memory center, and the motor development that they're having toward walking. A lot of parents [00:51:00] will see that sleep gets a little bit harder before it gets easier, and this is just a sign of everything that's happening at the same time.
James McKenna, does a lot of work on biologically normal infant sleep, and he really emphasizes that human infants are not designed to sleep through the night for, the entire first year. Night waking is really common, and it's biologically appropriate, and it's a survival protective behavior.
And it, can go on into the second year of life. And if parents are measuring their success against the cultural expectation of sleeping through the night, that's, something that has been made it's a cultural, norm, not a biological norm for babies to be sleeping through the night early on Helen Ball and her research at Durham, Infancy and Sleep Center underscore, this the same.
She's talking about responsive nighttime parenting, [00:52:00] going to a baby who wakes up, comforting that baby, feeding them if they need to be fed, supports both attachment and the parent's own sleep over time. Because a baby who is responded to consistently learns how to settle faster than the baby who is left to escalate.
We've talked a lot about infant sleep, and so this is something that you've heard in the previous episodes. Sarah Ockwell-Smith also writes about the way, this separation anxiety is really peaking during this period of time, and the new mobility, this you know, pulling themselves upright that they've been practicing all day long also means a lot of times they're practicing it when they wake up in the middle of the night.
So they're standing up in their crib or in their cot, and sometimes you can't for the life of you get them to lay back down again. They're they wanna stand for half the night. And, there's a lot of processing of these cognitive leaps that's happening at night. And a lot of [00:53:00] babies are starting to nap a lot less or dropping it entirely.
And so there's a lot of transition and, happening with sleep during this time and a lot of simultaneous developmental work that's going on. T. Berry Brazelton, we've talked about him a lot, and his model frames this kind of disruption of sleep, this period of time as a predictable, temporary disorganization that always comes before a new level of integration.
And so the sleep changes that can happen at the end of the first year is, you're knowing, you can see it coming, and you know that you're also coming out on the other side of it because you're moving toward a period of more, better integration So this looks at home like, you could definitely have increased waking up at night around eleven to twelve months for a lot of babies, standing up in their cot or in their crib at night.
Sometimes they stand up and they can't, [00:54:00] they can't remember how to get themselves back down. It's almost like a reflex where they, as soon as you put them down and as soon as you think, "Okay, now we're all going back to sleep," they are standing up there again, and they can't figure out how to get themselves back down.
And so it's not, it's not always the most fun period of time, but the fact that it's normal at least can make you feel a little bit better. Having separation distress at bedtime. They wanna be held longer. They cry when you leave the room. Bedtime gets less easy than it maybe was before they started feeling the way that they do about being separated from you.
And then a lot of times you'll see that sleep is settling into a whole new rhythm again by the time they're thirteen or fourteen months old. So things to watch for, again, increased waking up in the night, standing up in their cot or in their crib. Sometimes you need to help them remember how to lay back down.
Sometimes you need to help them remember that many times during the night. That if they're dropping some of their naps and then you, that you're [00:55:00] seeing that things are stabilizing again by about thirteen to fourteen months. So things that you can do at home is just stay responsive at night throughout this transition.
Your baby is processing real big-time developmental work, and so being present is the support that they need. And if they're standing up and they can't remember how to get back down again, just help them to lay back down. They're not messing with you. They're not trying to be, rough on you.
They're stuck. It's the middle of the night. They're good at getting themselves to standing up, but they can't remember the laying down part. So be patient with that. Hold onto or, extend the bedtime contact through this period of real separation. Give them a little bit of extra support if they need you to be there just a little bit longer during this period of time.
You're not-- It's, this isn't creating, a bad habit. It's supporting their brain [00:56:00] during a period of time when they need more support, and just trust that this will restabilize. So this is not a permanent regression. This is just a change in the change in development. Section eight, we need to think about when is it time to be, keeping your eye and observing something at home and seeing what happens, and when do you need to be looking for a practitioner who is trained in pediatric neurodevelopment, and seeing the difference between the two.
Sally Goddard Blythe, all of the books, all of the literature, all the research that she did consistently has shown that retained primitive reflexes, reflexes that should have been integrated by the end of the first year, they contribute later on to learning and attention and coordination challenges.
And so if you are seeing that there, if you're wondering whether or you know that your baby [00:57:00] has retained primitive reflexes, being able to help with reflex integration is so much easier when they're 12 months old than trying to address it when they're six years old. And so if you are, we've talked about this in every episode, but if there's something that you're questioning or if you want help checking your baby's reflexes to see whether they're integrated, find someone who can help you to do that.
Same thing with Robert Melillo. I mention him in every episode, and all of his work emphasizes, asymmetry between the two sides of the body. If you're seeing a strong preference for one hand before they're 18 months old, if you're seeing a strong preference for one, they're moving more of one side of the body or one foot or leg over the other leg, or if you're seeing something that looks asymmetric in how they're moving, this is an early sign that is worth paying attention to.
Your brain is meant to be [00:58:00] developing the motor skills in both sides of the body. Babies will often learn to do something on one side of the body or in one direction first, but you shouldn't be seeing asymmetry for very long. Within a very short window of time, you should see and now they can, roll the other direction, and now they can use, have both of their knees under them, and now they're able to, move both of their arms and legs equally when they're crawling.
You wanna-- it should look symmetrical what they're doing with their bodies, and if it doesn't, it's important to have somebody who knows what they're looking at check your baby and see if everything is developing as it should. Michael Tomasello and Andrew Meltzoff, both of whom we've talked about, they have both documented that the absence of this joint attention behavior, which is you and I together looking at a third object, pointing at an object that both of us are looking at, and if it's not there [00:59:00] by the end of the first year, it's a, strong early signal that is worth taking seriously.
And by 12 to 14 months, typically the baby is pointing, putting your attention onto something, looking back at you to check and see, are you getting this? And they're imitating you intentionally. They're clapping when you're clapping. They're stacking cups when you're stacking cups.
And, if there is an absence of those at 14 to 15 months, even before then, you want to find someone who, knows what they're looking at and have them check your baby. So the things that you wanna be seeing at the 12-month mark. You wanna see your baby pulling themselves up to standing position, walking along the furniture, in the beginning using two hands and down to one hand, and then forgetting to use their hands sometimes for a couple of seconds, and taking their first step or two unassisted pretty close to this window of time.[01:00:00]
Babbling sounds like the language they're hearing at home, so you're starting to hear that they're, using the same... It's, you can think that you're hearing words or it sounds a lot like words even if they're not words yet. Pointing to show you something, recognizing and responding to their own name, using the caregiver as a secure base, having clear preferences and refusals, having a receptive understanding.
You can tell that they're understanding more words than they can produce. When you say the dog's name, they're looking for the dog. When you say the green cup, they're looking for the green cup. You can tell that they're understanding what you're saying even if they can't say, "I want the green cup," yet. Seeing that they're starting to have preference and preferences on what they want and what they like and what they don't want and what they don't like.
And again, If you see that your baby is in a place where they're [01:01:00] not pulling themselves up to stand, and they're not walking along the furniture, and they're not, if you're seeing a lack of several, one or several of these things happening at this period of time, I think, again, you never regret the extra consultation to go to see somebody who can check these things for you.
You never regret going one too many times. You regret if you didn't go when you should've gone. So finding somebody who can do an, an examination and check your baby and who's really good at pediatric neurodevelopment, if there's something that you're not seeing when you should be seeing So let's see here.
Uh, again, we talked about this, but if you're worried, ask. Trust your instincts. You have been the one watching this baby every single day for a year. And find a clinician who looks at the whole nervous system. You want somebody who can check the reflexes. You want somebody who can look at posture, who knows about this joint attention, who knows about [01:02:00] language, not just someone who's has a milestone checklist that is asking you questions.
That's not enough. And resist the, I'm gonna say false assurance of every baby is different. When-- If something feels off, yes, variability is real, but so are the signals or your intuition that something is off. That's also real. And so having somebody who takes you seriously and who does a neurologic examination is really important.
Okay, so we're getting to the very end. This is section nine. And we've seen a lot of, what we're looking at at the end of this 12-month mark is the integration of a lot of different systems that are now able to work together in a way that they weren't able to in the very beginning. Daniel Siegel's interpersonal neurobiology framework talks about, the [01:03:00] central work of the developing brain is integration.
It's linking the different parts of the brain into a more coordinated whole brain. And the first year is the really foundational integration year. And so you have been watching your baby's brain integrating motor and sensory and emotional and attentional and relational systems into a working whole that they will continue to develop.
So they're not done yet, but you've been seeing the start and the development and you know what you're looking at while you're seeing it happen, which just changes the entire thing for parents, in my experience. Alan Shore's, body of work, again, we've talked about him, but he is really talking about that this second half of the first year of life is a really sensitive period for the development of the right brain circuits, the part that regulates emotion.
And the mother's attuned, regulated presence across this year is the single most important factor in [01:04:00] how those circuits wire. T. Berry Brazelton, again, his framework, gives parents a way to look at development as a series of predictable peaks and predictable disorganization that is followed again by integration.
So by the end of the first 12 months, you've been through several of these, peaks and then disorganization and integration in, the four-month, period of change in sleep and the eight-month, being more aware and wary of strangers and the changes in sleep that can happen during the first year and all kinds of changes that you've seen where you've seen that now something that was working before is suddenly not working very well, and now we're out of it, and we're back to things working well again.
You know, so seeing that that is the rhythm that development happens in. And so by this 12-month period, your baby is mobile, they're communicative, they're social, they're [01:05:00] intentional, and they're attached, and they've done the foundational neurological integration that is building the foundation of the house, like we've talked about.
And, the next decades of development will be built on top of the foundation that they've been building during this first year. You, as their mother, have been the secure base and the co-regulator and the attuned, partner in crime and the one who, kept the, the glue, who kept it all together.
And so the skills that you as the mother have been building, re- being able to read your baby's nervous system, being able to honor the sequence of development, the sequence of events that needs to happen for their development, supporting the integration of these systems, trusting your instincts, you have developed important skills that you need for the years to come, where you're going from having a baby who's a year old to having a toddler who's going through new things and different things.
But the skills that you developed [01:06:00] during this first year are what you also need to be their mother through these next years. Fascinating how all of that works together, right? The universe is just so brilliant that way So again, across the zero to three-month window, you're seeing regulation, you're seeing attachment, you're seeing sensory orientation.
From three to six months, we're looking more at, seeing postural changes. They're able to hold themselves more upright against gravity. We're seeing the social brain emerging more and more. We're seeing that the way that they're sleeping is becoming more like adult sleep, more mature. From six to nine months, we're seeing that our babies are able to be sitting more independently.
Crawling is emerging. Object permanence, when just because I don't see something, I still understand that it's there. You're starting to see this attachment in action. From nine to 12 months, you can see that they, your baby is living their life more in an upright posture, an upright position. [01:07:00] They're starting to display joint attention.
You're starting to see language skills emerging. You can see intentionality. You can see the first signs of them wanting to decide for themselves, having preferences for things. And across all of this is, having an attuned, present, regulated mother or parents or family. And, and again, none of this happens perfectly
So don't be fooled. We-- I know and we all know that this is not, it's not happening perfectly from day to day, but just that we know what's supposed to be happening, we're present to it, and we're doing our best, and we're involved, and we are, and we're there. That's huge. Every single day doesn't have to be the perfect example of being an attuned, regulated mother.
That's not what it's about. All of us would fail if that were the test. But this conversation, these conversations that we've had during these podcasts and just [01:08:00] being aware of what's happening, what you should be seeing, and how you can support it, and then not using perfection from day to day as the gold standard, but just knowing that everybody's waking up again tomorrow, and then we're all gonna do the best that we can do again.
That is huge. And, it's very easy to focus on the hardness of the hard days because there's a lot of them during the first year of a baby's life. There are so many hard days But just knowing that showing up and being present and trying to keep yourself somewhat together in the process, that is like 95% of the game.
Let them be on the floor as much as you can, and try to not lose your own mind. That is solving parenthood during the first year to you know, 90%. So write that on a Post-it and put it next to the coffee machine, right? [01:09:00] Things that you can do from here, because, first of all, celebrating what you've been through during this first year and making it out on the other side is incredibly important.
And I think that, I say this, I've said this at the end of every episode, but if you... I think that there's a lot of power in information, and I wish that I would've had these series of podcasts, all of it summed up and not in necessarily as much of a clinical way as I had it when my kids were really small.
And so the more that you know about what's happening, and the more that you can, understand the ways that you can support things, and the more you know what you need to be worried about and what you don't need to be worried about, the more empowered you are as a parent and as a mother, and I just think that's hugely important.
And so if you know someone who you think could benefit from these episodes, please send them these [01:10:00] episodes. Send them the first one and see if it's something that resonates with them, because I think that this information is something that's so important, and I think if all of us can get into a position where we don't have something that we need to try to fix when our children are 10.
It can't all be perfect, and of course, things can happen, but if we can at least be trying to support healthy neurological development, then it's an easier job during the first years than it is later on, and so that's really important. And again, I hope that you, you know, all of the references that I talked about during all of the episodes are linked in the show notes.
And if this interests you, come and subscribe to my Substack. You'll see a link to that as well. I write articles, I have workshops, I do things there that are different than what happens on the [01:11:00] podcast, and I would love it if you came and subscribed so that you could get copies of the articles sent and see what's happening in the workshops.
That would be fantastic. You can, send me a DM on Instagram. I would love that. And subscribe to this podcast. Please subscribe, because then you won't miss anything, and you will be able to see when new episodes come out. There is a toddler series coming. We're gonna take a little bit of a break because it's been, we're not taking a break from the podcast, but we're taking a break from these heavy neurological developmental episodes for a little bit.
But we're not done here. There will be much, much more to come, and so I hope that you will subscribe, and thank you again for being here with me. Thank you for listening to these episodes. Thank you for supporting this show, and I will see you in the next one
