THE JOURNEY SO FAR

KEY CONCEPTS – FOUNDATIONS

COMMUNICATION

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Language exposure in the back half of the first year lays foundations for a lifetime of language.

Babies are born with basic brain plans (nature/genetics) – as the brain develops, it wires (nurture/learning) with data/information from within and from the external and social world. This is how we develop our perception of the world and our place in it.

Everything we perceive and everything we eventually communicate stems from the words we know and the way we learn to use them. The words that we use and those that we are exposed to play a part in shaping our own identity as well as theirs.

Language exposure in the back half of the first year lays the initial language foundation – and baby is near the peak of that first sensitive period. Get it while it’s hot – keep up the exposure.

Learning to be more intentional with words and language, over time, is a skill that can benefit anyone, but it’s also an incredibly powerful dad skill that you can pass down. This is specifically true in the areas of emotions and feelings. The better one is at knowing their feelings and emotions, and those of others, the more equipped they will be for the journey through modern life. And few parents know how to teach this.

The foundation of managing emotions is labeling emotions. Once we learn to notice and label, we can appraise and act. Refer to FD20 for ways to build that emotional vocabulary in yourself and your kid. The first year is a great place for self reflection, as the “terrible twos” are known for the two years of social emotional meltdowns – which can be softened with some process.

Keeping It Going:
Humans are social creatures. For conversations, reading, etc – be extra expressionate, make eye contact. As a quick refresher – four ways to help baby wire language more efficiently are to: slow down your speech from time to time, segment out the important words, use gestures like pointing, and emphasize words that are location, action, noun, and shape oriented – and those that describe emotions. Lastly – look to food and funny sounds as a way to build further speech muscles.

SENSES

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All knowledge is built through the senses. External data comes in via what we see, hear, taste, touch and smell. Internal data comes as we move, and feel, and tune into body signals (hunger, sleep, etc). The brain takes this data – and attempts to assign meaning to it. Three areas of sensory learning/development that are more often overlooked are 1) how we learn about food with our senses 2) how we learn about the auditory world via natural sounds, language, and music and 3) how the mouth works – including how it’s care impacts development.

Keeping It Going:
Explore the sights, smells, tastes, touches, and sounds (music is a powerful tool for bonding and even energy management – amp up, chill, drift off to sleep). Try to find one new sensory experience in each category in the upcoming week.

MOVEMENT

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Every movement milestone unlocks a new way to explore the same old world – new positions, with new perspectives, and in new ways.

Every baby has a unique journey, but fundamentally, wherever they are – we can always help them build more stability in more positions, build more skill in the transition into and out of positions, and start to combine movement with more complex patterns and involve more senses. Part of learning is to let them explore both success and failure (in a safe, low risk manner).

This is also a period of time where fine motor skills are developing in the hands and coordination of the upper body is getting better. Exposure to a variety of shapes, sizes, textures helps move the learning along.

A note of caution – if you notice things like asymmetric or strange crawling patterns or other movements and they don’t remedy or progress over 3-4 weeks, this would be a good time to have an assessment done with a professional to check for tightness or weakness in muscle groups. These kinds of imbalances are resolved easiest when addressed early.

Keeping It Going:
Mindset: Access to movement everyday, big and small. Move with variety, move daily, move with progressions – but don’t force development. Keep building and tuning that “Dad as Coach” skill. Look for opportunity in water play, and with things like bubbles for vision tracking.

DUDE TO DAD

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Right around the middle of the year, many dads start hitting some strides, getting into a swing of things. We’ve found this to be a good time to check in on routines and rituals – those things we tend to do each day with some regularity and the aspects of those things that create meaning and memories. It might be a good time to tweak the reading routine, finding some new books. Maybe the bed time routine or “me time” routine need an update. Routines have a lot of power and humans, especially the small ones, like the predictability.

Part 3 of 4 of the Father Stressors series dug deeper on the biology that underpins resilience (homeostasis, allostasis, allostatic load) and added some tools to the gear bag. The series will round out soon with how we can stack the deck on having strong resources to tackle stressors.

And finally – with the ever changing transition into fatherhood, it helps to check in on self from time to – to really “Know Thyself”. As we better understand ourselves, we can start to see why we see the world in the way that we do, why we feel the way that we feel, and why we make the decisions that we do. The key to this was to check in on how we see ourselves – is it through values or labels. To know this can help us to be more impeccable with our words, as this is what shapes our beliefs and will shape the beliefs of our children.

Identity changes as life changes, and if built too tightly on narrow labels or a narrow set of labels – a sudden change in life, a debilitating injury, a sudden change of job, a loss of a loved one – can create challenges in how we move forward if we were entrenched in a narrow set of beliefs.

Keeping It Going:
In the end, every dad’s journey will be different. We can always be better prepared and we can always be positioned to find more contentment along the way. Reach out if you have anything you’d like to share or think might be useful to other dads on their journey.