Achieving Potential

Hello, subscribers new and old! I wanted to take a moment to explain my silence over the past few months. I am a full-time mom to three awesome kids. My youngest is a whopping 7 months old! I prefer to write at night, once everyone is asleep, or early in the morning before everyone wakes up. Even though this is my third child, watching their development never ceases to amaze me. It’s simply amazing watching your little human grow from the tiny gummy bear at the first ultrasound, meeting them fully on the day of their birth, and the wild journey to adulthood. Nothing compares to the early formative years from birth to four years old.

During these years, your child is on fire, learning and mastering skills. I am a huge fan of the Wonder Weeks by Frans X. Plooj and his wife Hetty van de Rijt. This husband and wife duo studied babies and found predictable periods of upset, clinginess, and sleep disruption that correlated with neural development. During the first 20 months of a child’s life, they learn vital skills that we take for granted every day. We often forget that we once had to learn different sensations and how to recognize patterns. Before mastering rolling over, we first had to gain control over our movements and then learn to coordinate them. Our lovely little girl has just passed through one of the toughest periods where she recognizes when her parents leave her. In colloquial terms, she is going through the “6-month sleep regression”.

I believe regression is really the wrong term for the situation. What is happening isn’t a regression at all, but a massive burst in neural development. It is progress. She is becoming more coordinated and more aware. Calling it regression only puts parents at odds with their baby, leading them to mistakenly view normal development as “bad behavior”.

Right now, I have less time for myself because, in her infant mind, the world feels brand new. At times, she finds it upsetting and needs to be close to me. Other times, she is fully confident in her new skills and gets into things she shouldn’t. All things considered, she is achieving her potential, and I couldn’t be happier to be absorbed in it.