Explore key parenting strategies for building attachment, encouraging self-regulation, managing mealtimes, improving sleep, and fostering development with your baby.
Key Concepts: Attachment
- Think of brain development being built like a house… from the bottom up. The brainstem is the most developed and controls basic functioning, and the prefrontal cortex (which is responsible for decision-making, impulse control, rule-following, and so much more) is not developed. While the prefrontal cortex doesn’t fully develop until the mid-20s, we promise that your baby is working hard on this.
- Co-regulation is one of the ways that you can build attachment with your baby. This is the process of you helping your child to regulate themselves by letting them borrow your calm. This is important now, and will continue to be an important tool for you to practice with your child through life.
What to Try: Attachment
- When your little one is upset or reacting to something, it’s most important that you keep your cool. Because they don’t have the ability to regulate, they are dependent on your ability to stay calm. Your calm calms them. Powerful stuff!
Key Concepts: Feeding
- At this age, your baby is in charge of deciding how much they want to eat. The days of The Clean Plate Club are gone. Research has shown that the Clean Plate Club (like how many of us were raised) is no longer the ideal way to promote self regulation and a healthy relationship with food.
- Power struggles around food are very common since so much of the process can be frustrating to parents. Avoid fights over food and meals…yes, even if the meal ends up on the floor.
What to Try: Feeding
- Limit distractions during mealtime, as this can take your little one’s attention away from eating and especially because distractions interrupt your baby’s ability to learn when they are full. TVs, phones, toys and books should be away too.
- Keep meals short and sweet. 10-15 minutes is all your baby has in them right now. Avoid a hangry baby by offering meals at a consistent time and before extreme hunger hits.
- Is your baby showing you hunger cues? Pointing to food, opening their mouth, or showing excitement when food is nearby are all signs that they’re ready to chow down.
- If they close their mouth when food comes close, turn their head away, or push food away, time to get the message that they are DONE.
Key Concepts: Sleep
- By 9 months, most babies are ready to sleep through the night without a nighttime feed.
- What’s that you hear? Chatting coming from their crib? At this age, babies often become quite chatty when they’re left to their own devices in their crib. This is them working on their language skills and it’s self-entertainment. Let them do this!
What to Try: Sleep
- If you feel ready to cut out a nighttime feed, you’ll follow similar sleep learning strategies that you did at your baby’s 7pm bedtime.
- If your baby is spending significant time talking themselves to sleep and it’s starting to impact how much sleep they’re getting, put them to bed a little earlier to allow more time to fall asleep. Avoid going in since it is an important way to practice a new skill and allows them to soothe themselves to sleep.
Key Concepts: Development
- If you’re interested in sign language and haven’t introduced it yet, now may be a good time to start. There are two types of signs that we talk about. Iconic signs - signs that you can figure out what they mean simply based on the gesture. Arbitrary signs - when the sign doesn’t give away the meaning of the word. At this point in your baby’s development, iconic signs are easier.
- Research tells us that movement helps to promote speech. When your child moves, there is increased oxygen flow to the brain which enhances your child’s brain performance. It’s not surprising to see new motor skills emerge with improvements in language too.
What to Try: Development
For baby sign language, pick a sign like “more” that you can use frequently throughout the day. Continue to show your baby this sign multiple times each day. During floortime, provide plenty of toys of different sizes, colors, and textures for your baby to explore. Seeing, reaching, carrying, and pointing to objects is hard work for them! Your job is to label and describe objects that they show interest in.
Key Concepts: Relationships
- There are two types of mindsets that we talk about (for ALL humans). Fixed mindset - you believe that your qualities are unchangeable and growth mindset - you view your qualities as things that are malleable and can be cultivated through effort.
- How we praise our children can impact their mindset.
- Having a consistent routine does not mean that your baby is rigid. With strong routines, you can deviate from the plan once in a while (hello illness, vacation, visitors, etc.) and then get back on track shortly after.
What to Try: Relationships
- Aim to keep your praise directed towards your baby’s effort, which supports the development of a growth mindset. For example, “Look at how hard you’re trying to reach your stuffie! You’ve got it.” This is a lot different than “Wow! You’re so good at finding stuffed animals.”
- Notice how your child handles disruptions to their routine. For some highly sensitive children, a disruption in routine can lead to challenging behaviors. If this is your child, then you’ll work with them to accommodate their preferences through the inevitable challenges and disruptions that come your way.