What Do I Need For Baby To Learn?

How Do Babies and Toddlers Learn?

It’s so easy to get bombarded with the “stuff” of early parenthood.

Especially when hormones are “out of whack,” and the idea of getting more than a few hours of uninterrupted sleep seems years away.

The sense that we’re “winging it” is often all encompassing. We feel like we’re constantly playing catch up – which can be especially daunting for those perfectionists among us, or if we felt like we were pretty good at most things in life before parenthood.

So, we go out in search of the “best toys” to support our babies, or the “parenting expert” that can tell us the formula for sleep, discipline, introducing solids, potty training, or anything else we need to know – often right in that moment, and often desperately.

But let me tell you something…

We are all asking the same questions.

And our babies are all so very, very different.

In fact, when I incredulously placed my second child down in his bassinet “sleepy but awake,” (something that I had never ever done successfully with my first baby), I could NOT believe my eyes when he actually did the thing SO many of these so-called “sleep experts” said was supposed to happen.

I suddenly felt so validated – that it hadn’t been “my fault” – and that I simply had two tiny humans with radically different needs and preferences.

And what did I do first?

I called my mom.

I wanted to share my experience.

Learning Is Relational

I wanted to scream this information from the rooftops, and chat with every single new mom (and dad) I knew – about how some babies are sleep unicorns, and some simply have different preferences!

Because learning is relational. And we’re all learning off the cuff about how to parent each of our children.

But when we know more about how our babies learn and develop, and when we can compare notes with other families and have a sounding board about this crazy early period of time in parenthood… 

Then we feel like we have options and ideas to know what our next steps are – even if we feel isolated at home with a tiny dictator.

I’d like to introduce you today to a series of parents and caregivers who have grown to feel supported and reassured – even as first-time parents, even if they weren’t raised with siblings, and even if they didn’t have much contact with babies most of their lives.

They’ve learned how to watch, observe, and discover their children – as well as what was happening to them – as they move through these first years of parenthood.

The first person I’d like to introduce you to is Gwen, who lived in the same part of London as I did when we first became moms.

Here’s how she describes journey into motherhood:

“I was a first-time parent. I’m an only child. In fact, myself, I didn’t grow up with siblings, I hadn’t had much contact with babies most of my life.And so I came to motherhood with this being, feeling like a complete amateur, and, that’s a bit, I know I shouldn’t feel so critical of myself, but I felt, you know, a bit isolated and a little bit lost.” 

Rachel, a speech-language pathologist who works primarily with adults, describes it in a different way:

“I felt really comfortable in the mom role. I’d been waiting to be a mom for a really long time…”<br /...