THE JOURNEY SO FAR

KEY CONCEPTS – FOUNDATIONS

COMMUNICATION

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Words are needed to form complex thoughts.
The basics: Keep the word count high, varied, and full of serve and return back and forth.
New: Humans communicate in many non-verbal ways and through many senses.

One major area is facial expressions – both the automatic ones and intentional ones. This is how we infer what others might be feeling. It’s a building block of empathy. It’s also where a lot of bias emerges. The understanding or lack of understanding (bias) about things and people, including racial impressions, stems from how the brain categorizes people and objects.

Categorization is simply how the brain buckets similarities and differences. The more experiences, words, and variety, the more comprehensive the mental model. This process is best supported, over time, by comparing two things at a time for similarities and differences while attaching as many attributes as possible.

Keep it Going: Be extra expressionate through month 9. Make eye contact. Explore diverse faces and attributes. Help with categorization by pointing out depths of similarities and differences in people and objects.

P.s. Use the “High/Low” exchange of checking in with your partner – on what’s a high, what’s a low any given day/week. Communication is important to any relationship.

SENSES

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The first several months are a window of opportunity to engage the senses – the eyes and ears, specifically, but best to keep scent and touch entertained too (development doesn’t happen in silos).

Science is continuing to show that in these windows of specific firing and wiring, babies tend to have preferences that align with their development stage. These preferences are a way to tap into moments of focus and attention – where baby horsepower is concentrated on a single thing and where high quality firing and wiring (learning) happens. Don’t interrupt those moments.

As sight is progressing, vision is building with physics models of the world in motion. Alongside that, as the language window ramps up, sign language can be a useful tool to bridge these windows, if the commitment isn’t too daunting.

Keep It Going: Work in motion and meaning to the things seen. High contrast images and bright solid colors work well in the first year, but you will know your kid best in terms of what makes a good activity.

MOVEMENT

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Baby will continue to move with a lot more intention. Keep movement progressions and variety going, and limit the time during the day in devices that might constrain movement.

Keep moving with tummy time, head movements, reaching, grasping, and working toward supported sitting (only as they are ready). Finding the right scaffold place is the key. For supported sitting progressions, specifically, the support hands will move down the spine as the baby develops. Same applies for things like baby sit ups moving toward less support being needed. Variety is acheived by hitting many positions through the day and moving the body with variety – winding, unwinding, and moving across the center.

Movement can also be stimulated by touch – stroking palms, back, arms, legs, inner thighs, bottom of feet. Movement is a great place to incorporate a variety of textures to build those tactile senses. This includes physically interacting with Dad via positive touch – which further promotes bonding.

Keep It Going: Move with variety, move daily, move with progressions – but don’t force development. Watch for excessive time in baby devices (carriers and supports).

DUDE TO DAD

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The transition to Dad includes everything from changes in identity, habits, routines, relationships and finances – to skills and more. It can be a lot. Everyone goes through it. Good news is that the first year is the place to experiment with what works and doesn’t work – so the skills are stronger for navigating the future years.

Developing the “Dad as Coach” skill involves understanding how others, and babies, learn. As social creatures that progress through skills – scaffolding is finding ways to break things down and adjust help to where they are at. It’s also the attunement, excitement and encouragement that keeps motivation up. It’s knowing that pushing way beyond limits doesn’t work – and that development isn’t a race.

The Dad transition may include forming new habits and routines or unlearning a few, such as limiting the tech device blank face around the baby – or using time with the baby to get some Dad Moves in. It’s mostly about finding your own ways to create an intentional environment for the relationship to flourish. And to amplify that, it can be useful to check in on the attitudes and beliefs that guide how we perceive events and choose to react to them (Event + Response = Outcome). It starts with awareness, then using various tools to build more helpful beliefs and behaviors over time. Part of raising a kid with good outcomes is helping them develop many aspects of self. Growing the dad self supports this. Win-win.