Latest / Baby's First 100 Days with Dr. Roma Franzia / Before You Panic About Your Baby’s Milestones, Watch This

Transcript

Before You Panic About Your Baby’s Milestones, Watch This · Baby's First 100 Days with Dr. Roma Franzia

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Your baby can miss a milestone by months and still be completely fine.
0:05
SPEAKER_00: One of my daughters started walking at nine months, the other one 17 months.
0:11
SPEAKER_00: Same house, same parents, eight months apart was the difference of their milestones being met.
0:17
SPEAKER_00: And today you cannot pick out which was which.
0:21
SPEAKER_00: Now I'm a pediatrician, so I felt pretty comfortable letting that play out.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: But parents today have apps that start screaming at them the second something looks off schedule.
0:33
SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about milestones.
0:35
SPEAKER_00: Which ones really matter?
0:37
SPEAKER_00: What to do if your baby misses one, two, or even ten of them, and how to stop turning every little delay into a reason to panic.
0:47
SPEAKER_00: You've got all of the milestone dates, right?
0:51
SPEAKER_00: Rolling by this month, reaching for a toy by that one, laughing here, and look, it isn't just the apps, it's an app plus the forum plus whatever came up when you went searching at 11 o'clock at night.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: So you see what happens?
1:07
SPEAKER_00: You get handed hundreds of opinions about your baby before you've really had any chance to get to know your baby.
1:18
SPEAKER_00: And then you walk into my office having read all of it, sitting there certain that something is wrong because your baby has not yet done the thing that they were supposed to do at the milestone date by this age.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: After more than 30 years in pediatric practice, I've learned that babies do not develop according to the neat little calendar they've created for them.
1:48
SPEAKER_00: There is a range, a pretty big range, actually.
1:52
SPEAKER_00: I think of it as a bell curve.
1:55
SPEAKER_00: And my own daughters are a perfect example.
1:59
SPEAKER_00: One walked at nine months, the other one at 17 months.
2:04
SPEAKER_00: But here's the important part that doesn't mean you can ignore every delay.
2:09
SPEAKER_00: So how do I look at a baby who hasn't hit the milestone yet and decided whether I'm perfectly comfortable waiting or whether I want to look more closely?
2:20
SPEAKER_00: This is where the chart of the child alone stops being very useful.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: Milestones are a range, not a deadline.
2:29
SPEAKER_00: Let's go back to walking.
2:30
SPEAKER_00: Because my own children are probably the easiest example I can give you.
2:36
SPEAKER_00: One of my daughters walked at nine months, the other walked at 17 months.
2:42
SPEAKER_00: If you're a first-time parent and your friend's baby is walking at nine months while yours is getting closer to 17 with an eight-month difference, that can feel enormous.
2:53
SPEAKER_00: You're not thinking, oh, there's something on different points of a bell curve.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: You're thinking, why isn't my baby doing that?
3:01
SPEAKER_00: And then you look it up, and now you have a milestone date, and then you're finding a discussion group somewhere, somebody else's child did it earlier.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: Then somebody tells you what their pediatrician said, and pretty soon you're not watching your baby anymore.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: You're comparing your baby to 20 other babies you've never met.
3:22
SPEAKER_00: That is where I think parents get into trouble.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: Because development doesn't happen on one universal little schedule.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: Children have ranges.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: Some do things early, some do things later.
3:37
SPEAKER_00: Most are somewhere in the middle.
3:39
SPEAKER_00: And my two daughters are a perfect example because they walked literally eight months apart of their developmental milestone for walking.
3:49
SPEAKER_00: But there wasn't any eight-month difference in who they eventually became.
3:54
SPEAKER_00: So yes, I want to know when your baby is doing things, but a date by itself still doesn't tell me whether something is wrong.
4:02
SPEAKER_00: Which brings us to the most important question.
4:05
SPEAKER_00: If I'm not judging your baby by that one milestone date, what am I looking at?
4:11
SPEAKER_00: I want the whole child.
4:14
SPEAKER_00: So when you bring your baby into my office, I'm not looking at one little square on a milestone chart and making a decision from there.
4:24
SPEAKER_00: I'm looking at your child.
4:26
SPEAKER_00: How are they growing?
4:27
SPEAKER_00: How are they eating?
4:29
SPEAKER_00: What is their energy like?
4:30
SPEAKER_00: How are they interacting with you?
4:32
SPEAKER_00: Are they interested in what's around them?
4:36
SPEAKER_00: What new things have they been doing since I saw them last?
4:40
SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to understand the pattern and what is very different from asking whether one thing happened on this exact month and app predicted it would.
4:51
SPEAKER_00: This is also why I think all of the tracking parents do now can become a mixed blessing.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: Some of it is useful, of course it is, but I have parents come into my office who can tell me exactly how many ounces the baby ate, how long they slept, and what the poop looked like, and what milestone the app says is coming next.
5:12
SPEAKER_00: They have an enormous amount of information, and sometimes what I really need them to do is just put the phone down for a minute and tell me what's your baby like?
5:23
SPEAKER_00: What are they interested in?
5:25
SPEAKER_00: What makes them laugh?
5:27
SPEAKER_00: How do they move?
5:29
SPEAKER_00: What have you noticed changing?
5:31
SPEAKER_00: Because that's information too, and in many cases it's better information than whether an app says your child is a week early or three weeks late.
5:41
SPEAKER_00: But now we get to the part parents really want to know.
5:44
SPEAKER_00: Because if I'm telling you there could be a wide range of normal, how do you know when late is no longer something to worry about?
5:55
SPEAKER_00: If you're a new parent and this is helping you feel a little less anxious about every milestone date and notification, subscribe.
6:03
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to keep sharing the same practical things I teach families in my practice because the more you understand what you're actually looking at, the easier it becomes to know what deserves your attention and what doesn't.
6:18
SPEAKER_00: There is something that gets my attention much faster than one milestone happening later than expected.
6:25
SPEAKER_00: A change.
6:26
SPEAKER_00: And especially when a parent tells me something about my child is different.
6:30
SPEAKER_00: Maybe your child was doing something and now they don't seem to be doing it anymore.
6:36
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the way they interact with you has changed or their energy feels different.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you're seeing something in their development that doesn't fit the child you've been watching every day.
6:48
SPEAKER_00: This is a very different conversation from my baby hasn't walked yet and my friend's baby has, because now we have a pattern that may have changed.
6:58
SPEAKER_00: And the interesting thing is parents often notice that before anybody else does, of course you do.
7:05
SPEAKER_00: I see your child periodically.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: You see your child every morning when they wake up.
7:10
SPEAKER_00: You know how they look at you.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: You know how they play.
7:14
SPEAKER_00: You know the sounds they make and the things that they get excited about.
7:19
SPEAKER_00: So when you tell me, Dr.
7:21
SPEAKER_00: Roma, I know this sounds strange, but something feels different.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: I'm not automatically dismissing that because the milestone chart looks fine.
7:33
SPEAKER_00: I want to know more.
7:34
SPEAKER_00: I want to know what changed.
7:36
SPEAKER_00: When did you first notice it?
7:38
SPEAKER_00: What were they doing before?
7:40
SPEAKER_00: What are they doing now?
7:42
SPEAKER_00: Now you're giving me something useful to work with.
7:45
SPEAKER_00: And this is why I don't want the milestone chart to replace your own observation of your child.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: The milestone apps know the average, but you know your baby.
7:58
SPEAKER_00: I think this is really the bigger problem.
8:01
SPEAKER_00: New parents are given so much information now that they start believing good parenting means getting every little thing exactly right.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: Feed at the right time, sleep at the right time, roll at the right time, walk at the right time, and if anything falls outside of that line, the immediate feeling is what did I do wrong?
8:25
SPEAKER_00: But children don't develop that way.
8:27
SPEAKER_00: And parenting doesn't work that way either.
8:30
SPEAKER_00: I want you to use the information.
8:33
SPEAKER_00: I want you to know the milestones.
8:35
SPEAKER_00: I want you to come into your visits and ask me questions when something worries you, but I also want you to learn your own child because eventually something starts happening.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: You stop checking every little thing against everybody else's baby's patterns.
8:54
SPEAKER_00: You know what is normal for them.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: And because you know what is normal for them, you become much better at recognizing when something actually is not.
9:06
SPEAKER_00: That's the confidence I'm trying to build in parents.
9:09
SPEAKER_00: Not confidence because you memorized every milestone.
9:14
SPEAKER_00: Confidence because you're actually paying attention to your child.
9:19
SPEAKER_00: So what do you do if your baby seems behind?
9:24
SPEAKER_00: First, don't panic because one milestone didn't happen on an exact milestone date you expected.
9:31
SPEAKER_00: Bring it up to your pediatrician.
9:33
SPEAKER_00: Talk about it at your children's visit.
9:35
SPEAKER_00: Give me the context.
9:37
SPEAKER_00: What is your baby doing now?
9:39
SPEAKER_00: What else have you learned?
9:41
SPEAKER_00: What are you seeing at home?
9:43
SPEAKER_00: Has development been moving forward, even if it's happening differently than you expected?
9:50
SPEAKER_00: And most importantly, tell me if something changed.
9:53
SPEAKER_00: Because that's where the conversation becomes much more interesting to me.
9:58
SPEAKER_00: A child who is steadily learning and developing on their own timeline is one picture.
10:06
SPEAKER_00: A child whose pattern has changed or who was doing something and no longer is is another.
10:14
SPEAKER_00: That's why one notification on your phone can never answer the question you're actually asking.
10:21
SPEAKER_00: Is my baby okay?
10:23
SPEAKER_00: For that, I need more than a milestone date.
10:27
SPEAKER_00: I need the child.
10:28
SPEAKER_00: So go back to my two daughters.
10:31
SPEAKER_00: Nine months, seventeen months.
10:34
SPEAKER_00: If I had spent those eight months staring at somebody else's timeline, I could have convinced myself there was a problem that wasn't there.
10:43
SPEAKER_00: Today you would never know who walked first.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: And that's what I want you to remember.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: The next time an app tells you your baby's milestone is quote late.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: The chart can tell you what usually happens.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: It cannot tell you the whole story of your baby.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: And if your baby is doing something that worries you and you're not sure whether it's normal or whether needing something from you, watch my video next on the five point checklist I use to figure out why a baby is crying and what to do next.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: Because once you know what to look for, those scary little newborn moments get a lot easier to read.