$Unique_ID{PAR00215} $Pretitle{} $Title{6 Months to 1 Year: On Being a Parent} $Subtitle{} $Author{ Editors of Consumer Guide Mendelson, Robert A Mendelson, Lottie M Meyerhoff, Michael K Ames, Louise Bates} $Subject{6 Months to 1 Year Parent Parents Parenting teach teaching crawl crawling stand standing walk walking climb climbing encourage encouraging encouragement restrict restrictive restricted practice practicing struggle struggles struggling frustration supervision supervising learn learning educate safe accessible home playpen education explore explores exploration explorations talk talks hear hearing hazard hazardous discipline disciplining spoil spoiling separations separation day care bored boredom trapped child-rearing HEALTHY SELFISHNESS} $Log{} The New Parents' Question & Answer Book 6 Months to 1 Year: On Being a Parent Will it be necessary for me to teach my baby to crawl, pull to stand, walk, climb, etc.? Not at all. Once her body is ready for it, your baby will begin to do these things without any prompting or instruction of any kind. However, she will need ample opportunities to develop and practice these skills, and she will appreciate your encouragement and praise as she achieves them. If she is kept too restricted or in any other way is prevented from attempting and practicing these things on a regular basis, she won't learn how to do them. And if she routinely senses disapproval or even just disinterest from you, she won't be inclined to do them. In other words, there really is nothing you can do to induce your baby to crawl, walk, climb, etc. before she is ready, but once she is ready, you certainly can obstruct and possibly even prevent her progress. If my baby is struggling to achieve some new skill, like climbing onto the sofa, should I help her or just leave her alone? This is somewhat of a judgment call. Clearly, if your baby's struggle has reached the point where frustration is setting in and she's becoming upset, it probably is a good idea to lend her a helping hand. However, stepping in before she's had ample opportunity to test the full extent of her own resources may impede her from making progress. After all, you can't learn to succeed if you never have opportunities to try. Unfortunately, first-time parents in particular tend to be overly anxious and often empathize inappropriately with what they too quickly perceive to be a distressing situation for their baby. As a result, they come to her aid too soon in many cases. Therefore, although it's never easy to watch your baby struggling with anything, try to err on the side of restraint and allow her to give it her best shot. By the way, when it comes to self-help skills, such as learning how to hold a spoon or drink from a cup, many parents step in too quickly not out of concern for the baby but rather for the purposes of their own convenience and busy schedule. Instead of allowing the baby to get food all over her clothing, her face, and her hair as she attempts to feed herself with a spoon, the harried parents take the spoon away from her and feed her themselves. Again, this is understandable, but the potential for problems demands that parents try to control themselves and give the baby a fair chance to learn how to fend for herself. Won't I have to provide constant supervision for my baby's early attempts at potentially dangerous things like stair climbing? In the beginning, it probably will be a good idea for you to be around as much as you can. First of all, babies learn to climb up things like stairs generally a couple of months before they learn to climb down, so your baby may need your help until she becomes adept at all aspects of a given activity. In addition, babies thrive on parental encouragement and praise as they pursue these things, so your baby may appreciate your providing her with a boost in the figurative sense as well as the literal sense. However, providing constant supervision on an ongoing basis is likely to be not only impossible, but inappropriate as well. As your baby becomes more active, it will be increasingly difficult to keep up with her. As she becomes capable of generating self-pride, it will be less necessary for you to applaud her every move. So plan on making sure that your baby's environment allows her ample opportunities to pursue and practice new skills in ways that won't put her in serious jeopardy, even when you can't be right there with her. Once she can get around on her own, what is the best way to help my baby learn about her world? The easiest and most effective way to "educate" your baby at this point is to make as much of your home as possible safe and accessible for her. Then, simply set her free to explore at will and on her own. Keep in mind that your baby will be both incredibly curious and incredibly naive. Consequently, making your home safe involves removing, replacing, or fixing anything and everything that she might damage or that might cause her harm (see the Safety and Health section in this age group for advice). By doing so, you will be providing your baby with an enormous environment containing countless items that she can use to gain experience. You will also be establishing an atmosphere that enables and encourages her to take maximum advantage of the opportunities made possible by her increasing skills. Should I be sure to provide a lot of special items for my baby to explore and investigate? By making a large portion of your home safe and accessible for your baby, you have already provided her with a wealth of "special" items for her explorations and investigations. Keep in mind that almost everything your baby encounters will be brand new and extremely exciting to her. We are thoroughly familiar with and take for granted things like wastepaper baskets, the knobs on the television set, stacks of folded laundry, flights of stairs, etc. However, these things are being experienced by your baby for the very first time. They present all sorts of interesting challenges to her growing abilities. In general, you may want to see to it that, whenever possible, safe and suitable items that ordinarily are out of your baby's reach get moved down to her level. Other than that, you really don't have to worry about making any special efforts in this regard. Instead of trying to make my home safe for my baby, can't I keep her in a playpen and just give her a lot of stuff? On the surface, it seems as if this strategy might work. But research has repeatedly demonstrated that it doesn't. No matter how many items you place in the playpen, sooner or later your baby will become bored. Without ample opportunities to actively pursue her interests and to exercise her abilities according to her own inclinations and schedules, her curiosity eventually will begin to dwindle. It has been shown repeatedly that from this point on, extensive use of playpens and other restrictive devices is routinely associated with poor physical and mental development. Even springing your baby for periodic supervised sessions won't make much of a difference. Evidently, no playpen in the world can hold anywhere near as many learning opportunities as a typical, safety-proofed household. And, no amount of supervised educational activities can compensate for the progress and pleasure a baby experiences when she does a lot of learning on her own. Does this mean I should never put my baby in a playpen? Of course not. There inevitably will be times when putting your baby in a playpen will be absolutely necessary, or at least appropriate. For example, if you are scrubbing the kitchen floor with a corrosive cleanser or fixing an appliance using an open tool box containing sharp instruments, you may be able to do so while your baby is exploring freely in another room. But if the phone or doorbell rings and you are going to be distracted for a while, it will be a good idea to restrict your baby until you can return to prevent her from wandering into the hazardous area. In addition, there may be times when you have something important to do for yourself, such as paying bills or even taking a nap, and you would prefer not to be disturbed by your baby for a while. In such cases, placing her in a playpen and providing some favorite or novel items probably will keep her entertained long enough for you to get the break you need. In other words, as long as it is not used to routinely restrict your baby for long periods day after day, a playpen is indeed a very important and appropriate piece of equipment to have around. Other than setting up an appropriate environment, how can I play a role in my baby's education at this point? In addition to designing a rich world for your baby to explore and investigate, you can add to her educational experiences in three important ways. First, you can help expand your baby's mind by occasionally alerting her to additional information and interesting associations that she may have missed as she was exploring and investigating. Second, you can help her develop superb language skills by providing her with plentiful models of proper and appropriate speech. And third, you can start teaching her how to get along with other people by establishing and enforcing reasonable limits on her explorations and investigations (for specific examples of how to do these things, see the following questions). Keep in mind, though, that good teaching requires a highly motivated student. Therefore, your input--particularly in the first two cases--should be geared to the interests and abilities your baby is exhibiting at the moment; it should not be guided by some set of subjects that you think you should be teaching her. In other words, the easiest and most effective way to be an excellent teacher is to serve as a "consultant" rather than as an "instructor" to your baby. How do I go about serving as a "consultant" to my baby? In the course of her explorations and investigations, your baby will return to you routinely in the course of the day to obtain comfort, receive assistance, or share her excitement over some new discovery. When she does, her attention will be focused intensely. She will be highly motivated to learn as much as she can about whatever it is that has her attention at the moment. As you go about providing your baby with whatever she wants or needs, you can supply additional input into her experience. You can talk to her about whatever it is, stretching the subject just a little and throwing in a related idea or two. For example, if your baby comes to you thrilled about the candy wrapper she's just discovered behind the desk, you might say something like, "Oh, yes, that's a pretty candy wrapper! It's red and yellow, just like your shirt is red and this bowl is yellow. Do you hear the crinkly sound it makes? We can make that sound with this piece of paper, too." After a minute or so, your baby will be eager to get back to what she was doing, and you can let her go. Believe it or not, during the 25 to 50 such episodes that will occur each day, you will be supplying your baby with far more meaningful input than if you sat down with her for several hours of formal "lessons" each day. How can I teach my baby to talk? You can't. Probably since prehistoric times, parents have tried anything and everything to prod their babies to start speaking. No one has ever come up with an effective method. When your baby is ready, she will begin to talk. There is nothing you can do to coax her first words out of her. On the other hand, if you don't do a couple of important things, her progress in this area may be impeded. First, you need to talk to your baby a lot. Babies who do not listen much to language usually don't use much language. Second, you need to make sure she can hear clearly. As early as four months of age, you can use the whisper test (see "Safety And Health" in the Birth To 6 Months section) to screen for hearing loss. Once she begins understanding words at about six to eight months of age, you can monitor her ability to understand words to ensure she's making steady progress. As long as your baby can hear properly and you have made a point to provide a lot of language for her to listen to, the best thing to do is relax and let nature take its course. I can see how making the whole house safe for (and from) my baby is a good idea, but shouldn't I leave out a few items so she can learn the meaning of "no"? While this idea seems sensible in principle, it actually is quite unnecessary and rather ill-advised in reality. No matter how good you are at safety proofing your home, chances are that every day your baby will find another thing that you've missed--an open safety pin in a shag rug, a loose shirt button in the corner of a closet, a broken handle on a tool chest, the unraveling fringe of a floor-length drape. Such inevitable oversights will provide plenty of opportunities to teach your baby the meaning of the word "no." Of course, for your own convenience, you may wish to leave out a few items that you would prefer that your baby didn't touch, or even make a few whole areas "off limits" to your baby--and you are certainly entitled to do so. However, keep in mind that the more forbidden items and areas there are in her environment, the more danger there will be to your baby and the more aggravation you are likely to have in trying to keep her out of trouble. You will also run the risk of saying "no" so often that it becomes meaningless to your baby or begins to discourage her from indulging her curiosity by exploring and learning about her world. Save "no" for very hazardous or life-threatening situations whenever possible. Once I'm sure that my baby understands the meaning of the word "no," can I ease up on some of the supervision and safety proofing? This is something you may not want to do for a couple of years yet. First, at this point, your baby probably is still too young to have even such a strong concept stick in her mind reliably for a very long time. If you're not always there to reinforce prior admonitions, there could be trouble on occasion. More importantly, if you ease up on safety proofing and consequently have to say "no" over and over again throughout the course of the day, there is a good chance that the word will start to lose its impact because of overuse. A sharp "no" or "stop" uttered now and then will have a more lasting effect than a constant, nagging "no, no, no, no." And most important of all is the fact that if you have to use "no" too often, you run the risk of your baby associating the act of exploring with the displeasure and disapproval of the people who mean the most to her. Especially during this period, you want to be sure that the overwhelming message your baby receives in this regard is one of encouragement and praise. My baby is in full-time day care. As long as most of her waking hours are spent in that safety-proofed environment, wouldn't it be okay to keep her relatively restricted at home? This is inadvisable for at least two major reasons. First, to the extent that you restrict your baby unnecessarily for any length of time, you are depriving her of learning opportunities. Babies do not keep schedules--studying in school and relaxing while at home. They are learning all the time, so it is inappropriate to set up a sharp distinction between what she can do during the day and what she can do in the evening. Second, keep in mind your greater emotional power as compared to that of your baby's teachers. No matter how much encouragement and praise they give to her explorations during the day, if she senses displeasure from you when she engages in such activities at home, there is a good chance your influence will win out. As a result, your baby may end up with diminished curiosity under all circumstances. Is saying "no" or "stop" sufficient, or will I have to do more to "discipline" my baby at this point? By the end of this period, it is almost certain that your baby will understand the words "no" and "stop." However, she is still very much within the sensorimotor stage, so messages are more likely to sink in if they are accompanied by physical action. Therefore, whenever your baby ventures into an off-limits area or engages in an undesirable activity, use a firm "no" or "stop," physically remove her from the offending situation, and channel her into a more appropriate direction. If she discovers a cigarette lighter and starts sucking on it, you can say "No, that's not a good thing to suck on," take it away from her, and give her something like a teething ring instead. Because her memory and attention span are short, she will soon forget about the lighter. And through your actions more than through your words, you will have taught her that there are limits to what she can do, and those limits will be enforced by you. Lately, even though she's not hurt, hungry, or soiled, my baby has been waking up and crying in the middle of the night. How can I comfort her without spoiling her? This is a very common phenomenon, especially at around eight to ten months of age. On any given night that your baby cries, it is recommended that you go into her room the first time to make sure that there really isn't anything wrong. If her crying stops and a smile lights up her face as soon as you enter and the light goes on, that is a good indication that your baby has awakened to find herself a little lonely and bored, and she's crying simply in order to get some company. If that is indeed the case, it is recommended that you say to her, "I love you, but nighttime is for sleeping, and I'll see you in the morning." Then leave the room and don't return no matter how much she wails after that. Your baby probably won't understand anything you say, but through your actions, you will be teaching her that the major needs of the family (for a good night's sleep) will sometimes have to take precedence over her minor desires (for some nighttime company). In addition, you can use a low-wattage night-light in her room to help her feel more secure when she does wake up at night. Within a week to ten days, you can expect that she will once again be sleeping through the night. My eight month old cries whenever I leave. What can I do to make these separations easier on both of us? When you are out of sight and out of earshot, your baby may fear that she has been abandoned. She doesn't understand your being away. She also wants you when she wants you. So, she cries. At this point, you want the baby to be or become as flexible as possible. You will need time away from her, and you want her to get more accustomed to being without you for short periods of time. Some babies at this age develop a separation anxiety and/or a fear of strangers. A familiar loving sitter can help the situation. When you leave, the sitter can be holding the baby or playing with her. Before you go out the door, cheerfully and firmly say goodbye to the baby and leave promptly. If taking her to you for hugs and goodbyes starts her crying, then skip it and just wave bye-bye. Try to go about your business matter-of-factly and expect the baby to do fine. When you return, if she is awake, pick her up and give her hugs and kisses. Eventually, she will learn that while you may leave, you will come back to her again. My baby spends more time in day care than at home. Does this mean she will be more attached to her teachers than she will to me? It's possible, but it's not very likely. Keep in mind that day-care personnel are usually responsible for several babies at a time, so they don't have the same advantages you do when it comes to giving your baby undivided attention. Furthermore, no matter how competent, concerned, and loving these people may be, because she is not their child, it is almost impossible for them to convey the same sort of excitement, enthusiasm, and concern toward your baby that you can. Research has shown that although babies who spend a lot of time in day care do become attached to their teachers to a certain extent, the parents remain their primary targets in this regard. However, it is important to note that, during this period, your baby is still operating on very fundamental levels and in the here and now for the most part. Therefore, the quality of the time you spend with your baby won't completely compensate for a severe lack of quantity in interaction time. If your baby hardly ever gets to see you, she will have no choice but to try to form an attachment to someone who is a more significant part of her daily experience. What can I do to make my baby feel good about herself at this point? During this period, your baby will spend a lot of time struggling to achieve a variety of new physical skills--crawling, climbing, walking. When she finally manages to attain a new level, she will actually feel a sense of physical relief, which is the basis for a sense of self-satisfaction. Therefore, the first step in nurturing the roots of your baby's self-esteem is to make sure that she has plenty of opportunities to attempt and practice these skills. More importantly, your reaction to her accomplishments will become internalized and form the foundations for a healthy pride in achievement. Consequently, it is important for you to be around when she succeeds and to provide an appropriate emotional reaction. That's easy to do--just let out all the natural feelings of joy, excitement, and enthusiasm that arise whenever your baby shows signs of developmental progress. When she pulls to stand or walks for the first time, you can bet that it will be the most important event in your day--maybe even in that week or month. To the extent that you let your baby know how thrilled you are, she will learn to become thrilled with herself. I've decided to stay home full-time with my baby, but lately I'm beginning to feel bored and trapped. Is something wrong with me? Having primary responsibility for taking care of a baby 24 hours a day, seven days a week, is enough to make most normal people crazy after a while. Despite all the pleasures and rewards that come with helping your baby to achieve a great start in life, the inevitable stress, drudgery, and isolation are bound to get you down after a while. Consequently, it is recommended that, especially after your baby has passed the six-month mark, you consider some kind of part-time substitute care for your baby. This can be a formal day-care arrangement or something as simple as a twice-a-week play group or an every-once-in-a-while cooperative baby-sitting deal. The important thing is that you take a few hours a week to pamper yourself, relax, pursue some other interest, engage in adult conversations, and/or do anything else that will help you maintain your sanity and return to your child-rearing responsibilities feeling refreshed. THE CONCEPT OF "LEARNING TO LEARN" As they watch their babies go about their explorations, many parents worry that their children may be "wasting" a lot of time that could be better spent on more focused "educational" activities. They are concerned that instead of playing with pots and pans, their babies should be receiving direct instruction in specific subjects so they can learn shapes, colors, numbers, and all sorts of other things they will need to know later on. While these thoughts are understandable, they are badly misguided. The most important lessons that babies learn at this point are in the area of "learning how to learn." That is, through their explorations and investigations, they learn how to observe, analyze, adjust, and adapt to their environment. These skills will stand them in good stead no matter how their environment changes as time goes by. On the other hand, babies who are restricted and have their attention channeled into narrow avenues of experience may appear to make some impressive progress on the surface. When they are forced outside those avenues in the future, however, they may lack the ability to accommodate, much less take advantage of the new circumstances. Therefore, if you are tempted to step in and start introducing specific subjects into your baby's educational experiences at this point, keep in mind that the world you want to prepare her for is an ever-changing one. The particular pieces of knowledge she picks up may be beneficial things to have for quite some time. However, given the rate at which the world is changing these days, chances are that a lot of them will become obsolete before too long. If she never learns how to learn on her own, she'll have trouble picking up and adapting to the alterations, and as a result, may be at a serious disadvantage in the long run. INDULGING IN HEALTHY SELFISHNESS Parents of a baby in this age group, especially if it is their first child, often have a tendency to feel guilty if they do not respond immediately to every need of their child. They also have a tendency to feel like tyrants if they do not allow her to do whatever she wants. They typically are willing to make any sacrifice, endure any inconvenience, and in general do whatever it takes to ensure that their baby will never experience anything other than complete contentment. This is normal and natural, but it also can be dangerous for two major reasons. First, sooner or later, resentment will start to build in the parents. Second, the baby will receive the impression that the world revolves around her alone. Consequently, it is recommended that parents make an effort to practice "healthy selfishness," particularly at this point in their child's development. If you are tempted to rush to your baby the second she cries, even though you realize she's only asking for attention; to make excuses for your baby's behavior, even though you know that introducing some discipline would be appropriate; or to stay with your baby constantly, even though you are in desperate need of a break, you probably ought to make a serious attempt to restrain yourself. It is important that your baby learn that she is a dearly beloved, very special, and cherished member of your family, but also that everyone else in the family is dearly beloved, very special, and cherished, too. And it is critical that your baby learn that she has the right to explore and investigate her world freely, but also that her rights do not extend to the point where her activities unfairly interfere with the rights of other people. In other words, as paradoxical as it may seem, keep in mind that doing what's best for baby often means doing what's best for yourself.