We’re at the age where grandchildren are being produced in bunches. Every single couple makes use of a tummy time kit of some kind. I see no downside and in fact see tons of upsides.
As for the color issue: I was more interested in showing many nuanced shades would somehow give toddlers and small kids a more…hmmm…nuanced understanding of color. Almost all small kids are exposed to coloring/ fingerpaints/ watercolors and so on. The palettes are pretty meager.
And no, I wasn’t advocating buying a Pantone® Book. Yikes.
If you got hours and hours. There’s just so so many colors and variations of variations. But, yeah. Why not?
I’m reminded of a lady at my oldest kids preschool who regaled us with tales of using some Phonetics thing since her kids were phone. “So they would read early”
Didn’t work. Don’t think any graduated.
Maybe she was doing it wrong or maybe they were dyslexic or something.
The point of tummy time is that now that babies are put to sleep on their backs they otherwise wouldn’t spend much time face down, which is the direction where they can actually interact with the world. (Push with arms and legs, taste the carpet, etc.) It used to be standard to put babies down on their bellies, so they didn’t need explicit “tummy time”, most of their time was tummy time. But then we learned that most SIDS is literally babies suffocating because they can’t lift their heads*, so unsupervised babies are supposed to be on their backs until they learn to roll over. And thus we created a need for supervised tummy time.
As for the solid colors? They told me that when my kids were infants, and i ignored it. I think the theory is just that those solid colored shapes are easier for babies to understand, so they like looking at them. But I’m certain kids learn to see without that help.
(* SIDS rates plummeted when parents were advised to put their babies to sleep on their backs. There’s tons of evidence for this.)
My kid learned to read by being read to every night since he was born. He is still read to every night. Then he reads on his own before he falls asleep. Now there is definitely some innate talent there, he is hyperlexic (as was his mother.) But I know it made a difference to just read to him.
However, if you’ve got a kid learning to read, it’s hard to go wrong with phonics. I am under the impression that most kids learn phonetically. My son did not, which means if he encounters a new word he doesn’t really know where to start.
That makes a lot of sense. I didn’t doubt the science behind it, I just didn’t understand what changed between then and now.
Just listened to a great RadioLab episode ( now as Podcasts, they go back years. Yay ! ) that discussed SIDS and the blind alleys that medical science went down lacking better methods of examining the babies who had died from it.
And yes-- watching your kid as they slowly work on raising their head in their own time to look at shapes and stuff seems all the rage now. And I love it !! One cannot force an infant to progress and build muscles. It just happens as they explore their world.
That sounds really interesting. I’ve wondered how that podcast held up.
FTR I had to do a lot of things that weren’t recommended and I’m still sore about it. I had to formula feed, I had to keep my kid in a crib in another room very shortly after he was born because I was so sleep-deprived I was losing touch with reality. They say having the crib in your bedroom is a protective factor for SIDS but I couldn’t do it. I was just going through the motions the first six months. I felt terribly guilty about all the “supposed to” stuff I wasn’t doing, made worse by the Maternal Suffering Olympics on Reddit threads. If you are willing to put your crying child down long enough to take a shower, are you even really a Mom? Oh, yeah, and people are in hysterics over sleep training and how evil it is. If you let your baby cry for any length of time you are damaging them for life.
I did the tummy time, but I did it grudgingly. One thing I had a really hard time with was talking to my son. You’re supposed to talk about everything as if they understand. I felt so awkward. So instead I sang to him.
I didn’t really fall for my son until between seven and eight months. But man did I fall hard.
Thank you for posting this, I’ve no memory of this. Then again, my retention is largely shot these years. Falling in love with your kid(s) can’t be forced or arrive on someone else’s timetable. That’s utter crap. And the hard truth is that some parents simply never fall in love that way with their kids.
It’s a big world. We don’t judge. I don’t. Sounds like you suffered mightily.
I didn’t have a DX because I refused to discuss it with anyone, but probably postpartum psychosis and OCD. I believed things that weren’t in any way aligned with reality and had violent, highly distressing intrusive thoughts. I was suicidal but I don’t think it was depression. It is one of the worst things I ever experienced, but it was mercifully brief, brought on by extreme sleep deprivation, and went away after 5-7 days when I finally got some sleep.
Then I settled into a nice six month stretch of moderate depression and anxiety, but I could handle that. I’m no stranger to those things. I could even handle that I wasn’t feeling overjoyed right away because I was prepared for that possibility. A lot of parents need time to build up that bond.
My biggest issue that year (besides the total isolation of COVID) was I felt like I was terrible at being a Mom. My husband just seemed like such the obviously superior parent. I got over it eventually. Probably fully a year before I felt like myself again. The more practice I got, the more competent I felt. I feel pretty good about my parenting now.
I was never destined to be great with infants, I had no experience with them prior to my son and I don’t particularly care for babies. But that’s just one year. I’ve heard people say before that they don’t want to be a parent because they don’t like babies. I respect anyone’s decision to procreate or not, but like, you realize the baby is only a baby for a fraction of your child’s life, right? It’s a long year, granted, but there are a lot of other years! You pay your dues and then you reap the rewards. Besides, my baby was super cute. Even on my worst days I couldn’t deny that.
And, from what I gather he is super interesting to be around.
That’s one hard year. No doubt. Then I went and had another. That baby made 4 under 6.
I overloaded my plate of course. But I knew I’d never have another if I didn’t do it quickly. It forced me to get my ducks in a row and extensive planning. I lived by a calender and lists. Just on the cusp of being computerized around these parts.
But like you say it got easier into toddlerhood.
I cried when I bought the last box of diapers.
Forgot they grow up and have their own kids. I’ve definitely bought diapers since, on occasion.
But hey, don’t go by me. I enjoyed my teenagers too.
We have a cousin in that exact situation. At a minimum, three of those girls have ADHD and they are wild. “Well, it took four hours after installation for them to break the child lock. The twins locked me in the bathroom again. The eldest smeared honey all over her sister. Twin A eloped and it took me twenty minutes to find her.”
I think y’all exist to remind me it could be worse.
I always said, when one was tummy timing, one was on the potty chair, one was in time out, one was having a snack…if I just had one more it really would be a handful.
