Latest / The Birth Lounge Podcast / Ep. 455: How to shape your baby’s entire life in their first 24 months with Violeta Gordeljevic

Transcript

Ep. 455: How to shape your baby’s entire life in their first 24 months with Violeta Gordeljevic · The Birth Lounge Podcast

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I've seen plenty of really AI-created parenting accounts lately, you know, millions of followers sharing facts about babies and toddlers, which when I then look up those studies, I'm like, "Okay, there's no research here.
What are they talking about?" And then you look closer, and either it's a completely non-existent piece of research, or it's just like the conclusion that they, that they ended up with is wrong.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of The Birth Lounge Podcast.
You guys, every single week I get to hang out with you and I'm so excited.
Now, before we dive into the episode, I wanted to share an email that I got last week.
It was from someone who has been using The Birth Lounge app, and here's what she wrote: "Hi, HeHe.
Last week when I went to my 39-week appointment, my doctor really pressured me to put an induction on the calendar, citing that my pregnancy was likely not going to get started without medical intervention.
He also said, without following it with any evidence, that he rarely sees moms go into labor these days, and he thinks that it's just the stress level that women are under.
Thankfully, through all of the education that you provide within The Birth Lounge app, I knew that I didn't want an induction, so I kindly explained to him that I didn't feel comfortable with that, and that I preferred to wait for spontaneous labor.
He then proceeded to tell me that he didn't want my placenta to stop working and that he really urged me to get an induction on the calendar.
Sitting right there in the office, I pulled up the article about calcification of the placenta and going past your due date, and we had further discussion.
He really stuck to his guns about encouraging me to schedule a 39-week induction, and I held strong in my opinion that I wanted to wait for spontaneous labor.
I thought I had made myself clear, but when I got to the checkout desk, the front desk lady asked me if I was aware of the orders to put in a 39-week induction and asked me what date I wanted to come in to have my baby."
Because of The Birth Lounge app, I was able to confidently decline this even though she continued to pressure me.
I used your line that I found in the scripts for advocacy to say that they were welcome to put a date on the calendar, but that I wasn't going to come and I really preferred to wait for spontaneous labor.
Although she was a little stunned at my hesitancy to get a 39-week induction on the calendar, she did allow me to leave without making an appointment.
I'm so glad I had the data inside The Birth Lounge app to help me feel confident in this decision.
Otherwise, I can see how easy it is to be pressured into things that you don't want and I might not have known otherwise.
Oh my gosh, this makes me so happy.
I love, love, love hearing you guys take control of the decisions that are made in your pregnancy and birth.
I'm so sorry that you kind of had to face all of these roadblocks or might I say road bumps.
They weren't really blocks, but I can definitely hear how your hospital staff or your clinic staff really badgered you into trying to convince you to get a 39-week induction on the calendar Also inside The Birth Lounge app, you will find information on induction and C-sections and how those two things are connected.
Plus, those scripts for advocacy that you mentioned, not only is that one of our number one downloads, but it's also one of my favorite tools to keep in your back pocket, AKA the app in your back pocket, to keep you in control of the decisions that are made and helping you navigate these conversations when they feel a little sticky.
You know, if you follow me on Instagram, that I always encourage you to have collaborative discussion, one that is based in respect, but also holding firm to your boundaries if you feel confident in those.
The Birth Lounge app is not meant to be your childbirth education.
That's what The Birth Lounge membership is for.
However, the way that this mama used The Birth Lounge app is absolutely perfection.
Pull it up in your OB's office, sitting right there on the exam table, to show them the data and the science that back up the choices that you are making.
The other way I love to use it, well, there's actually two.
When you're sitting in the lobby waiting for your prenatal appointment, go in and find the week gestation that you are currently at, and not only will that tell you what's going on in your body and the development that your baby is at, but also it will tell you the questions about the hottest topics that are on your mind that you can ask your provider to do exactly what I talked about before, having that collaborative discussion.
And the second way is when you feel like scrolling social media, that, you know, typically kind of gives us anxiety, I recommend that you scroll The Birth Lounge.
Instead of scrolling to numb your mind, scroll to empower yourself, scroll to expand your brain power, scroll to get smarter so that you can have a better birth.
Download The Birth Lounge app by heading to your respective App Store, whether you're Android or iPhone.
Type in The Birth Lounge app and download it today.
I can't wait to see you there.
right, you guys, you know the episodes where I completely geek all the way out? Well, today is one of those episodes.
We are taking it back all the way to the foundation of my education, what my master's degree is in, human development, specifically the development of your baby in those first 12, 18, 24 months.
And I wanted to talk about attachment, temperament, attunement.
How do you actually clue into your baby to be appropriately responsive without being overly responsive, where you maybe create a child that is anxious or a child that, you know, can't do anything without you, or where you maybe become a helicopter parent? Because obviously, there is a fine line here.
There's a balance to strike, and I know that so many of us are coming to this parenting journey with no instruction manual.
We don't have anyone to teach us how to do this.
Babies don't come with directions.
We're just kind of waking up every day, and we're free-balling it, for lack of a better term.
We're just kind of doing the best that we can.
Well, I do want to tell you that by just showing up here today lets me know that you're doing way better than just the best that you can.
The fact that you tune in to this podcast every week, twice a week, tells me that you love your baby.
You're eager to learn more information.
You're willing to change, and you want the best for your baby and your family.
Well, with that, I feel the immense responsibility to bring you the experts that are going to help you achieve just that.
Today I'm so excited to be sitting down with Violeta, who as you may know her on Instagram, Violeta.parenting.science,
who is a science communicator and the founder of The Parenting Class.
Now, she started her work after realizing that a lot of the research on early childhood development simply isn't made accessible to parents, and that's kind of odd because the parents are the taxpayers that are funding this research.
And it's especially important in those first few years, you know, the years where we're sleep-deprived, we're running on fumes, and we barely have time to eat lunch, much less log on to the internet and scour the internet for articles, and then read those articles, and then synthesize those articles, and then make sure that they're high-quality articles, and then implement them in our life.
Does it sound familiar? Well, today's episode is going to be a complete game changer for you.
We're gonna talk about why the internet may not be the best place to get parenting advice, what's wrong with modern parenting advice today, something that all new parents need to know about the early years, and how does your child's temperament play into their personality, your attachment style, your responsiveness, and your relationship? We're also gonna talk about how do you actually build secure attachment.
Is that different whether you have a boy or a girl, and does it matter the age of your child? Next, I'm gonna have Violeta talk to us about what should we be doing in our wake windows with our children.
So many of us look at our child and we're like, "All right.
You're awake.
Now what?" Violeta is going to help us come up with a plan that when your child is awake, we have structured activities that not only are going to keep them entertained, but it's going to increase their language development, enhance their social development, and actually build their attention span.
And then at the end of the episode- As always, I'm gonna get a little controversial.
I wanna know Violeta's opinion and what the data says about daycare and sleep training.
This episode has got to be one of my all-time favorite episodes I have ever recorded in the history of the podcast, and that may sound a little dramatic, but just wait until you hear it.
You're gonna be like, "No, wait.
HeHe was not kidding at all.
She actually did geek out all the way into outer space."
All right.
Without further ado, Violeta, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me.
Of course.
Oh my gosh, you have no idea how excited I am for this conversation.
I have followed you for such a long time online, and I was so drawn to your Instagram because you talk about the things that I know to be true.
You talk about the things that are so ingrained in my background and my education, and they are things that I silently weave into the education that I give to women in their pregnancy preparation and their birth support and their postpartum support.
It's not something I talk about online so directly because I talk about pregnancy and birth, right? And so I think for a lot of people, these things may seem separate, but they are not.
They are so overlapping.
And so for that reason, I'm just really excited to dive in.
You're someone that I know I'm gonna be able to, like, nerd out with, and I can't do that with a lot of people, so I'm so excited to do this.
Before we nerd too far out, can you tell us how you got into this work? It was actually indeed because of pregnancy and birth that really got me into this because I realized the power of knowledge, to put it kind of quite simply.
Some things matter enormously, and other things barely matter at all.
And I think that when I was pregnant for the first time, um, that was now eight years ago, that's when I was really for the first time encountering this power of knowing actually about various issues relating to birth.
So I knew that, you know, what I put on my hospital bag, it wasn't gonna matter.
What is gonna matter is for me to learn about, you know, certain breathing techniques how to, you know, make birth less painful, knowledge about induction risks and C-sections, all of that stuff.
So it made a big difference for me to be prepared for birth and to be prepared throughout pregnancy.
And that's really when I kind of realized, okay, looking at the data, looking at research can make such a difference in how you approach these important events in life.
And even before birth, you know, I was looking into nutrition during pregnancy, and I came across tons of research, like really solid research on certain nutrients that are really beneficial to, to, to get into your body when you're pregnant, right? And this was information that doctors did not provide me with at that time.
I came across this, this bunch of research on choline, for example.
You know, it's usually in chicken eggs, and I talk about that a lot because I'm just so passionate about choline.
I think it's one of those nutrients, you know, that's just so crucial for baby's brain development, and no one told me, "Hey, look, you need to get this and this amount of it in when you're pregnant."
And so as I, as I uncovered some of these kind of insights, I kept digging more, I kept digging more, and by the end I felt that, okay, now I really know what the state of science is on what my baby needs during pregnancy.
And then it kind of was this natural path into, okay, now let's look at postpartum.
Let's look at the first months.
What does my baby need? How do babies, you know, build a secure attachment? What do they need to have their brains develop beautifully? Um, what about nutrition then? What about language? What about any other sort of things you can do with them in the first year and so on.
And so it was pregnancy that kind of set me off into looking at all the data.
And because I'm a science communicator for me, my main goal is to have people know about the data.
I think it's a shame that so much of, you know, taxpayer-funded research is not reaching people.
And if it's reaching them, then it's via social media, and that's a whole other discussion.
Uh, it's messy.
It's not accurate.
And so, yeah, I want people to be informed because I think it's only when you're informed that you can make informed choices, and I learned that myself, and that's what I wanna give to others.
Well, that's the end of the podcast, you guys.
That's, that's the whole message.
I could say so much more.
I love it so much.
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Violeta, in a perfect world- Mm-hmm taxpayer-funded research to the taxpayers.
How would you do that? Would it be an app? Would it be a newscast? Would it be an email? How would you prefer to get this information to people that actually are the ones that are funding it? I mean, this depends very on the topic we're talking about.
I think for parenting that's something that I'm trying to do in my work, is to really bundle it up for people to have some sort of perfect prep for the baby stage, so that you know before you enter the experience, before you actually are in the middle of it and you are sleep deprived and you can't think clearly.
To know, okay, I, I prepared by essentially going through this data, by having someone summarize it for me, simplify it for me, tell me what matters across certain domains.
That's what I'm personally doing with my courses and my materials.
I think that's, that's the case for parenting.
Now for other topics, you know, previously I've been working on like environmental health and air pollution and all of that, that's a different kind of area.
There of course, you know, you work closely with the media.
You need to make sure that the stuff people hear on TV, that they have communicated officially, that's highly accurate.
And there, you know, my work has been more about supplying policymakers with the data so that they can communicate it.
But yeah, when it comes to parents and parenting, I think it's really useful precisely because we have less time once the baby is there to really prepare for parenting.
I'm a big fan of this idea that we prepare for so much.
You know, we Google, we look things up.
We spend so much time picking the best stroller and, and I don't know, car seats, but then the baby's there and you're kind of like, "Wait, is this sleep normal? Is it okay that my baby cries a lot and my friend's doesn't? Like, what does this all, what does all this mean really?" And I think all of this doubt, all of this confusion can be greatly minimized if parents would upfront, you know, get the data, get the knowledge, know the most important bits and yeah, kind of prepare truly.
Yeah.
Oh my gosh.
So I do feel very lucky and grateful that my background is what it is and I have this knowledge going into parenthood.
I genuinely believe that it is partly why I am enjoying motherhood so much.
I believe partly it's my personality.
I am someone who, you know, even in the worst of situations, I'm the person who's like, "But this isn't that bad.
Like, it could always be worse," or like, "You know what? We have this little sliver of goodness."
You know, that is very much my personality.
So I am someone who makes the best out of any situation I am in.
However, I have realized at this point my son is, uh, between five and six months old, and it has taken me that long to realize that I think my confidence is partly personality, but in larger part it is because I went into motherhood knowing the things that I know.
And I have spent a lot of time online trying to model this for other parents.
And in the beginning I really struggled with like, why are people not able to replicate or copy or mimic what I'm doing.
They see me doing it so easily.
They see how I'm able to incorporate this into my day.
Why do they message me and say, "I can't do this," or, "This would never work for my family," or this or that? And it, I think for me, I finally have settled on this is new information, and so in order for them to feel confident in incorporating it into their day, they need a little bit more exposure.
It's not enough just to watch me do these things.
And so I don't know, I struggled with that in the beginning.
So I'm really excited for this conversation because I think that today we're gonna be able to really give people some tangible steps of how you can easily incorporate these things, even if you don't have the background like Violeta or I do.
Like it's still very easy to do these things.
It can be cheap.
A lot of it is very free.
It's just intentionality is really the main thing in parenting in these first few years.
Absolutely.
And just to add to what you said about why do people not implement what they see, and I think part of that is also, you know, when you go on social media nowadays, you get snippets of information, and obviously some of it is very contradictory, right? And also nowadays a lot of it is straight up false.
Um, I've seen plenty of really AI-created parenting accounts lately, you know, millions of followers sharing facts about babies and toddlers, which when I then look up those studies, I'm like, "Okay, there's no research here.
What are they talking about?" And then you look closer, and either it's a completely non-existent piece of research, or it's just like the conclusion that they, that they ended up with is wrong.
And I understand why, you know, when you're scrolling and you hear this from that person, this from the other person, this from there you simply don't know what to focus on.
You don't know what actually matters because everyone says something different.
And that's actually where for me, I found the-- I found science to be the solution in a sense that I don't care so much about people's opinions about how I should, you know, deal with my child's sleep or my child's day care.
Like I honestly don't care, right? From, from day one, it was like, thank you for your opinion, but I'm gonna look at the data first, and then I'll kind of go through it and I'll understand truly what it means.
And that's precisely the problem because scientific research is really inaccessible for people who don't have degrees in science in any sort of way.
It's hard to read, it's difficult to understand, and it's even harder to summarize accurately.
And I'm really trying so hard to bring at least some of it out there and to have people trust that the way I summarize it for them is accurate and nuanced and Because I don't want what you just explained, you know, where you feel like you hear something, you don't know if you can implement it.
No, no, I'm gonna give you the data, I'm gonna tell you how it's possible, and I'm also gonna give you the nuance of what it means for different temperaments and so on.
And that's a hard part, but yeah, I think we're both trying to make that happen.
Yeah.
You're like a mom doula.
You're like the doula for the parents.
I love it so much.
And that's exactly what I'm trying to do too.
You know, I take the, the data and a lot of mine is taking large amounts of data, so multiple studies, putting them together, synthesizing them, and then putting them in, you know, a form that people can consume easily and then implement easily.
But I think the one thing that, you know, I'm kind of shocked to hear you say that you have found articles that are completely made up or nonexistent.
I always link things because I want you, if you have questions about the data or you think that I've misinterpreted it, which I do absolutely make mistakes, I try really hard not to, but I want you to be able to refer back to that article.
I want, if your doctor says, "Well, where did you get this information?" You can print off that article and say, "This 2018 study said X, Y, and Z, and so this is what I'm basing my decision off of," or, "This is, you know, what prompted me to have this conversation with you."
And you know, much like you, I do follow this, this very, um, I'm not gonna call it rigid, but I don't care about other people's opinions because I feel so confident in my decisions in parenting that, you know, I say this not from a place of ego or a place of like, I'm better than you, but I just know what is right for my child.
I just do.
Um, I don't need other people's opinions.
And then when I do need other people's opinions, I am not shy to ask.
I will go to the people that are in my life that I trust, and I will say, "Hey, I am between these two decisions and I'm, I'm, I really don't know which one to choose," or, "I'm struggling with this choice and I don't know the best way to move forward with this.
What did you choose? What do you think? Help me think about, you know, the things that might come from each of these decisions."
And so, yeah, for me it's just, um I don't know.
I just, I love the data and it has made me so, so confident.
Okay, so I want to instill that confidence in our listeners.
So let's start with, I think the very basic question is why are the first 18 to 24 months so important? A lot of people think about babies as just these lumps.
They can't really do anything.
They can't walk, they can't talk, they can't really feed themselves.
Like, will they really even remember this? Well, I know they may not cognitively remember it, but their body, their nervous system, their memories, their stored memories, their lived experience, all of that, yes, they will absolutely remember this on a cellular level.
But why are those first two years so, so important for development? I think, think the best way to, to answer that or to look at it is to just use a few of those kind of-- a few examples of what it really, um, ends up impacting.
So if you, for example, look at attunement and responsiveness, right? So nothing is more important in the first, let's say two years, but we could, could even down to the first year especially, but then we can even go higher, than having attuned, responsive caregivers.
And there is decades of research which tell us why that is so important and how it impacts your child's nervous system development and stress, uh, regulation systems, which will, you know, last them for a lifetime.
We also know it impacts how they view relationships, how they-- not just whether you get along with them, but how they view what it means to have-- to rely on someone, to be-- to know that someone is responding when you're distressed and all of that.
So this is very much one of the things that forms in this in these early years.
Now, one of the, you know, strongest predictors of secure attachment, and there's a lot of talk about attachment online and all of that, but is to have, you're not, perfect parents, but to have sensitive responsiveness, what it's called in the literature, which means parents who are able to notice their baby's signals, to interpret them reasonably well, and to respond consistently to their babies.
Now, being responsive sounds easy.
It sounds like not a big deal.
But when you're tired, when you have a high needs baby, when you know situ- the situation isn't that easy, then being responsive over and over again might be really hard.
So understanding here how much is enough, how much does your baby really need, um, what can you relax about? What are the areas where you really do wanna jump in? All of this information is stuff we can learn beforehand, and it will shape how your baby perceives their place in the world and how they perceive their relationship to you.
So for me personally, just like to stick a bit with attunement because I think this is one of those things that, you know, after, after birth, it's kind of one of the first things you kind of pop into there.
You're, you're-- you have this newborn and you're trying to figure out what they need, right? And so for me, for example, to give you my personal experience, when my daughter was born, I was super attuned.
Like this was easy then, and that's what I'm gonna get to in a bit.
So there was like a home, a stay-at-home, smooth relationship.
I had a whole year of maternity leave.
There was nothing else on my mind essentially.
I was able to be fully present.
So I read her cues before they ever escalated.
I knew exactly, you know, she was a high needs baby, but I knew exactly how to keep her content and all of that.
And then fast-forward three and a half years later, my son was born I realized how quickly something as important and as sensitive as attunement can suffer.
Because already in the hospital, you know, I was there for like three days with him, and in my mind, you know, I was thinking is my daughter back home, is she okay? Did she miss me a lot? How was it for her sleeping all alone? How was she getting along with her grandmas who were visiting? You know, did she miss me terribly, and so on.
So there was already much more on my mind, and my mind would wander, right? So I noticed a difference in attunement and how I was there for my baby, and how I was able to get to know them essentially immediately.
Because back home, you know, I also had to start, uh, working again and all of that.
There was generally more stressors around, and he was crying more.
It was harder for me to sense whether was he really hungry.
He, certain cries would escalate quicker.
He would like cry in the middle of a feed, and I was wondering what's up with him? And then at some point after a number of weeks of all of this, it kind of clicked, and I was like, wait a minute, I'm just so in my head compared to the first time.
And so I started making some changes.
You know, I decided, okay, look, when I'm with him, the door's closed.
I kind of strip him down, little skin-on-skin contact.
I was really deciding to be present and to be, to be as attuned as possible, and things like switched within weeks.
And I could see my baby's behavior changing, and that's really a thing to realize that what you do, it's not just that we-- that our baby always influence us and we influence our babies, right? So how your baby behaves is greatly impacted by how attuned and responsive you are.
And but how attuned and responsive you can be depends a lot on the environment you are in and how much, how much headspace you have for it.
And so there's also, for example, just one more point on this.
There's pretty solid research on colic.
You know, colic is this excessive crying in babies, which is usually defined of like crying more than three hours every day for more than three days over at least three weeks.
And there is really interesting research out there that, that actually tells us that women who have emotionally supportive partners, so defined by partners who are, you know, there for you, who you can, um, confide in, but also who support you in the household, who are actually supportive.
That those moms had a fifty percent lower chance of having a baby suffer from colic.
So knowing this is interesting, right? Because you can have these convers-conversations up front with your partner.
You can talk about, you know, how can we make things easier postpartum? How can you support me? How can I support you? How can we create a home where attunement is possible, where responsiveness is possible, where we can get to know our baby and therefore parent fully attuned? And so Yeah, I, I think so.
Attunement is one of these, these areas which will shape your relationship to your baby and your experience so much.
And if you prepare for it, if you know about it, if you know what the data says it's very powerful.
Oh my gosh, so powerful.
And I also, I love that you bring up the support because, you know, you're not in the US, but the US is a really terrible place to have a baby, unfortunately.
Yeah.
I'm aware actually.
It's just, it's really hard here.
And unless you are an, on an individual level, very well-resourced and you know, harshly said, financially well off.
It is really hard to have a baby here.
We have no maternity leave.
We have no financial support to have a baby.
The, when I look around this country and I look at the men in our country these days, it makes me cringe.
It makes me disgusted to see how separated men are from their families, from their wives, from parenting their children.
And I do think that this new generation is doing a much better job, but for decades, women have done it pretty much on their own, even though they have partners at home.
I just feel so sad.
I mean, even down right to our workforce being so hostile to mothers, right? Like, you have to be back on this day, and even when you're on maternity leave, we're still sending you emails, and we expect that you're gonna be available.
And, you know, it's just, your job is not secure.
Legally by the law, it is, but every woman who's ever left corporate knows that when she goes back, she's on the chopping block after having a baby, right? I mean, it just sucks.
And so I'd love for you to talk about the support.
I also, one of the most controversial opinions that I have, and this is, you know, this is...
I'm glad to hear you talk about the data.
I don't believe that colic is a real diagnosis.
Colic itself is real.
The, the fact that babies can cry for hours and hours, absolutely real, for sure.
I don't believe that colic is the answer.
I believe that there is always something else going on under the surface.
And so for parents who have a diagnosis of colic, please, I'm begging you, look deeper for a root cause because colic is kind of a catchall.
Instead of pediatricians and, and doctors, OBGYNs, mental health counselors, any of them, helping those families dig deeper and saying, "Is this gastric upset in your baby? Is it the fact that mom is so stressed out that her cortisol is, you know, so high? Is it the fact that there are no supports in that family and mom is not able to be attuned? Is there something else going on that is causing this baby to do that?" But, you know, with that, uh, that's beside the point.
I don't want to get caught up in the colic, but I did want to share that controversial belief of mine, that colic is not a real diagnosis.
It is more of a catchall, and there typically is something else going on.
But, um, yeah, I would love for you to define attunement versus attachment, just for anyone who is maybe, you know, new to this conversation and doesn't quite have a good concept of how those are different.
Um, when I talk about attunements, I really mean The simple ability to know what your baby needs to basically, you know, you look at this little thing there and it's maybe making a certain sound and being highly attuned means you can fairly well interpret what they need in that moment.
So, you know, whether maybe, oh, they're getting hungry or maybe their diaper's full soon, or, oh, that's the sound they make before they're tired.
I think it's time now for their nap.
It's kind of contested with, you know, your baby's whining and you have no idea what's up, what they want, right? That's why they're not attuned.
And being very attuned simply means you get a feeling for what your baby is trying to communicate to you.
So it's really about these little micro interactions and cues.
When we talk about attachment that's a whole other, other thing.
Attachment is really about the relationship, the overall relationship between a parent and a child.
And in the literature, what is often discussed is whether a child is securely attached with you, which essentially means they know they can rely on you to be there when they're upset, to be there when they cry, to come and soothe them and so on.
And they also feel secure enough to venture out and explore the world.
And then there are like even different kinds of attachment styles and all of that, but attachment is built over a long time.
If you-- if a baby cries once and you don't pick them up in time, that's not gonna damage your attachment fundamentally.
That just means you missed the cue or maybe you were just busy.
Attachment is built over time.
Attachment can change over time, and attachment also differs per culture, but that's again, like another discussion.
So what we consider a secure child is sometimes also partly culturally, uh, defined, but essentially it means your kid feels safe with you.
They know they can rely on you, and they feel free to ex-explore the world.
Okay.
I love that so much.
So attunement is how clued into your baby you are, and attachment is whether they feel safe with you and can rely on you.
And it doesn't mean that if you don't have a secure attachment, they don't-- they feel like you're gonna harm them.
But there may be some hesitation on whether you're going to respond or respond appropriately or respond timely, things like that.
So one thing that came to my mind is I can see some listeners in the audience who heard that and immediately felt guilty and either had thoughts of, well, I had postpartum depression, I had postpartum anxiety.
I had no idea what to do in the beginning.
Did I ruin my child? What do you say to those parents? First of all, this whole conversation about guilt, I-- when I share data, when I tell you about the research, the last thing on my mind is to make anyone feel guilty.
The goal is that if you know what the information is just facts, right? The information is there.
It's a factual statement.
Now, why do we feel guilty about it? It's usually because we felt somewhere down the line we messed something up As you explained before, sometimes we are in countries and circumstances where we can only function a certain way.
So if you blame anyone, please let it be, I'm still pregnant with a third, let it be something other than yourself, okay? I know from every mom I have ever met that we are all trying to do our very best.
And in attachment specifically, again it's about thousands of interactions that you're having with your baby which will determine the attachment.
And you could say that a child who is maybe a bit more anxiously attached because the mom is maybe a bit more of an anxious mom in the sense that maybe you like to have the baby very close, you don't like to have them venture out and stuff like that, I mean, that's just part of the blueprint you give to them.
That doesn't mean they will forever be anxiously attached.
It doesn't mean they can't work on that later on.
It doesn't mean you can't work on that.
See this as like this process, okay? See it as a process.
If I can give you one thing to focus on here, it's that in that first year, as much as you possibly can, do focus on being attuned and responsive.
Later, when your baby's older, you know, even once they start crawling and definitely once they start walking, it's okay and it's even advisable to be somewhat less responsive, to let them, you know, explore the world a bit on their own, to let them wait a bit, to not rush immediately when they, when they cry.
But in that first year, accept that this is like a micro moment in the timeline of your life.
You won't be sleeping much, you won't.
You'll be stressed, you will be tired, but accept that this is the time where they really need your attunement and your responsiveness most.
So just plan for it and do so.
If you cannot for various reasons, try to get help so that your child at least has some other main caregiver which they can absolutely rely on, someone to soothe them.
It doesn't have to be the mom.
It can be the dad, it can be the grandma, it can be a babysitter, but there needs to be some adult that teaches them they're safe in the world.
There's someone taking care of me and Yeah, your baby needs an adult to be attached to.
Um, and, and it, it doesn't-- I love that you say it doesn't have to be the mom, especially if you feel like- Not always.
Yeah yes, exactly.
If you feel like that can't be you, or if maybe your circumstances doesn't allow for it to be you, or in some cases, you know, I have met people who have had babies, and then they realize, "I don't actually enjoy being a mom.
This is not what I thought it was going to be."
Um, and so if, if it's just not for you, you know, there are other people in your life hopefully that your baby can be attached to.
Um, okay, so I'd love to talk about the different types of motherly attunement.
You talk about this on your Instagram.
So share with us the types of attunement so that my listeners can kind of maybe see themselves in these different types.
So what I shared on Instagram was the historic research that was done where basically mothers were observed in interaction with their children.
There hasn't been much research specifically, you know, doing that where we can kind of pin to, uh, point to right now.
So this was an older piece of research that showed that, you know, some moms are, what I said before, very attuned.
They notice these little cues.
They are present with their baby all the time.
They talk with, to them.
There is this face-to-face interaction, and other moms might be more process-focused, which means you know it's feeding time.
You get the bottle.
You can roll your face and you can feed the baby, right? So you will, you will go through that process.
You will go through the steps.
You'll feed the baby, but you might simply not focus as much on this as an opportunity to bond with your child.
Some moms, you know, will take opportunities of bathing time or, or, um, diaper changes as an opportunity to talk and bond and interact and giggle.
Some others will simply use this as something that has to be done.
Now, it's not us to judge whether one is fundamentally better than the other.
There's some research, you know, which points to, you know, of course, there being huge benefits to talking more to your baby and to having these interactions, this back and forth, these serve and returns, but I'm very careful to tell moms, you know, there's one way you have to be attuned to your baby.
That doesn't make any sense.
It doesn't make any sense culturally historically.
Like, there are so many different ways to bond.
Even for us as adults, we all have different, you know, we all have languages, as people would say.
What is kind of true across the board is that you want to be responsive when they're distressed.
You want to be present when they're distressed.
You want to tell them, "I am here for you when you really need me."
Everything else you do, I, I'm, I'm really careful to not say like, you know, there's one optimal way.
And again, it depends so much on your child's temperament.
So I would love to talk more about temperament if you, if you actually wanna go into that, because that too determines how much you can actually attune to your child and be there for your child.
And the difference is sometimes between who we are as a person, as a mother, and maybe we have a baby that's fundamentally different than us.
There's even research on that.
It's called goodness of fit and temperament research.
So you're different biologically from your own child.
It's even harder to connect to your baby sometimes Oh my gosh, I just smiled so hard because you just brought up a term that I haven't heard for over a decade since I have been in school.
Okay, so let's talk about how temperament impacts attunement and attachment style, and I'll leave it to you, whatever you think is best.
But I do think at some point we should talk about the different attachment styles.
Maybe now or maybe afterwards.
It's totally up to you.
Okay, let's bring that in after maybe.
So temperament is really the one area that people always tell me changed-- So learning about temperament changed how they view their baby and how they parent it.
And so that's why I think it's really-- I think everyone should know about it.
I talk about it a lot in my materials.
But what is temperament? Temperament is basically inborn traits.
And a temperament isn't something you learn to be, it's really how some people are different from the start.
It's these innate tendencies that are mostly genetically defined.
And so you know how some babies-- Some people would say, "Oh, your baby is so shy," you know, "She never allows anyone to take her."
Or, "Your baby's so fussy.
Mine was always fussy.
It's probably because you carry her around so much."
These sort of sentences, those sort of claims are really nonsense scientifically speaking, because all of this comes down to temperament.
Temperament is one of the most researched areas.
Um, there's nine dimensions that are mostly identified.
It's about stuff like, you know, how sensitive is your child? How regular are they? Meaning, do they really prefer routines or are they kind of, you know, chill and don't mind so much if plans change? Are they sensitive to, to touch, to sound, to smell? How are their, their reactions? Are they very intense? Do they like cry intensely but do they also maybe laugh intensely when something, you know, makes them happy? Um, and there's like all these other dimensions which all kind of combined tell you how, who your baby is right from the start.
Now, this matters so much because if you have a very sensitive child, you will know to approach that child differently.
Like, I had one child that was very sensitive, so I knew exactly what clothes not to put on them because it would upset them.
I knew exactly not to wear any perfume around them because it would upset them.
And you can only know these things if you know that there is such a thing as temperament and if you are attuned to your kid.
So you know, okay, something's bothering them.
I notice they're more sensitive around issues than other babies.
It doesn't mean that you've done anything wrong.
It doesn't mean that you've spoiled them, carried them too much, cuddled them too much, whatever.
It simply means that they are born with a different innate preference for some things.
And even, you know, how babies respond to meeting a family member of yours, that's temperamental.
Some kids care, some kids don't care about novel situations as much.
Some kids need more time to warm up.
Generally, research classifies babies in three categories.
There are easy babies who, you know, easy, always happy, don't cry much, no strong reactions, uh, sleep well, maybe don't even wake that much.
There are slow-to-warm-up babies.
So those babies eventually do fine, but they need some more time in new settings and new situations, so you need to kind of prepare them, take it easy.
And then there are difficult babies in the literature.
That's how the literature calls them, not my term, but they're difficult babies.
And difficult babies are more sensitive.
They are more intense.
They get upset more easily.
And so when new moms feel like they're having a much harder time parenting their baby than some other mom whose kid always seems content, no, you're not imagining it.
It doesn't mean you're doing something wrong.
It means your baby is of a different temperament.
And so, yeah, it makes a diff- a huge difference in how you parent.
And it also then matters, for example, when we now link this to attachments, and there is a lot to say here, but if you have a very sensitive child They might simply not be very much exploring new environments.
They might be more sitting on your lap, more, have, have more separation anxiety, be more nervous leaving your side.
That doesn't fundamentally mean they're, like, anxiously attached right away.
But it does mean that knowing that this is their preference, their tendency, you will, over time, need to adapt your parenting to that.
Basically, you might need to give them a little nudge and to kind of push them to explore the world a little bit, because you know that they're just born more anxious and more sensitive.
If you have a child that's really outgoing, you will never experience that, right? So basically, it, it all influences each other, right? And that's why knowing about the temperamental traits, knowing about different, uh, attachment styles and parenting styles, it all kind of comes together in, in informing one another.
And just to now, uh, explain what you asked before with different attachment styles, the literature here is, is complex, I'm gonna say.
So there's some critique on traditional attachment literature as well, and, but we're not gonna go into that now.
I'm just gonna give you the standard sort of outcomes that are known.
Now, securely attached kids, right, there's this big study that was done.
I think everyone has heard of it by now.
The strange situation, where there's a mom and a baby in a room, and, uh, how does the baby react when mom leaves the room? How does the baby react when a stranger comes in? How does the baby react when mom comes back? And researchers are checking all of that.
They're monitoring it.
They're looking for all the little reactions, and they've identified that some kids, you know, who are securely attached, uh, they, they like their mom the most, but when the mom leaves, they're upset, but when mom comes back, they're calmed quite quickly.
So they're like, "You know, my, my secure base is gone.
I'm upset."
That's good.
"Now she's back.
I trust her.
I'm there.
Like, we are, we're reconnecting and calming down.
Everything is okay."
Very anxious children might not ever allow mom to leave.
They might freak out beyond, you know, a little cry.
They might feel completely abandoned if mom leaves all of a sudden.
And then we have, uh, avoidance, and that's another category that's often used.
Those kids might feel like they, they essentially don't connect to their mom, to their mom the same way the other babies do.
They might connect more to the stranger who actually comes in.
They might be too approaching to the stranger.
And when mom comes back, they might even ignore mom.
Um, there's various theories to why, you know, certain behaviors here happen.
And as I said, culturally, again, there's a huge, kind of, difference here sometimes also in how we teach kids to approach strangers and so on.
So all of that has an impact to play.
But fundamentally, it all comes down to what I said before.
You actually wanna be the secure base.
You wanna be the one that's attuned, that knows what they need, and that they can always rely on.
And then what about disorganized attachment? So those are-- this is the one that is the result of oftentimes severe neglect or other more harmful conditions of upbringing, right? So the average child that's living in a loving household, w- you won't have to worry about this in those cases, right? This is about children whose parents have been consistently not responsive or very, you know, ambivalent.
Maybe one day your mom was loving, the next day she was horrible.
Um, children who experience physical abuse might fall into this category because love and pain basically get interlinked.
Um, these kids might show all kinds of reactions during the strange, strange situation experiment, right? So they might actually get angry at their mom for coming back.
They might show way too much care to the stranger.
They might not care about anyone.
So it's-- there, there's a wide variety here of reactions.
But this is not something the average mom out there who, if you're listening to this, which already shows you, you know, you want to learn, you are prepared, you are loving, you wanna do your best, you don't have to worry about that.
Yeah.
Yeah, I don't worry about the people in this community because I do think that not only are we all trying to do our best, but this community is filled with moms who just love their babies so deeply and they, they do want to do the best and they're willing to change.
I think that's one of my favorite parts about the people in this community is that we're all willing to learn and then change what we do to be better once we know that there are other options out there.
And, um, I know that can't be said for everybody, but my community is-- oh my God, we're just-- they're just so special.
They are just-- we're just filled with amazing people.
Okay, so you had just mentioned about maybe nudging your baby.
I hear a lot from parents, "I want to push my baby.
I want them to, to do X, Y, and Z.
I'm afraid of traumatizing them.
I'm afraid of pushing them too far.
I have memories of being a small child and my parents did X, Y, and Z and it left me with a little bit of trauma or it left me scared and fearful and I don't want that for my child."
So how do parents challenge their children in a healthy way without traumatizing them, you know, in a way that's going to leave them needing therapy later as, as an adult? I mean, we are talking primarily about kind of the baby stage.
Now, in the baby stage, obviously there's only so much nudging you can do.
Now, if we go a bit beyond that, which I think is more what you're referring to, the sort of experiences that we also later on remember maybe as a toddler or preschooler I am a strong believer in what is in the literature called authoritative parenting.
So it's this idea that children need very responsive, warm caregivers, but they also need us to have equally high expectations and demands placed upon them because we want our kids to be well-functioning members of society.
We want them to trust in themselves, to be confident, to be resilient, and all of that.
And so we don't wanna shield kids too much.
We don't wanna accommodate kids too much.
We wanna make sure to find that fine line.
And I think in order to find that fine line it's really about knowing your child's temperament.
So knowing how much is too much potentially for them, knowing what-- where it's your own experience speaking versus really looking at your child, right? So there's a tendency nowadays where I feel we are very much invested in creating this emotionally safe environment for our kids where, you know, this whole job as a parenting class essentially is that.
It's about going from the extreme of very harsh authoritarian parenting to the other side where we focus so much on our children's mental health and emotional wellbeing and all of that.
And part of why we do that, because we've been somehow hurt along the way and we wanna make-- we wanna do better, and there's nothing wrong with that, of course.
But we need to be careful to not become permissive in the sense that we raise children who are never having to experience uncomfortable emotions, who never have to work through frustration, who never have to, you know, well, experience things that might hurt their emotions and be a little bit scared, but then they work through it and they come out on the other side, you know, feeling great.
It's a fine line to walk and I think understanding your child's temperament is definitely one thing and knowing that the literature greatly supports being highly demanding and having high expectations for your kids 'cause that's, that's how they can kind of rise up to them.
And if you ever mess up, if you ever feel you push your kids too much, we also know from the literature that the number one thing to do that brings us back to attachment is to repair the relationship, is to say, "Hey look, you know, I know you actually don't like dancing ballet.
I know I kind of pushed you to this performance.
It wasn't really great.
I kind of thought you would enjoy it, but I kinda see it was too much for you.
I'm really sorry.
You know, from now on I'll, I'll pay a bit more attention to what you're really interested in," whatever it is.
That goes a long way.
Kids need to learn that, you know, parents make mistakes, you apologize, you move on.
That's part of a healthy relationship whether in childhood or in adulthood, right? We all mess up.
The key is to know that you can repair and you can come back and you can, yeah keep, uh, keep, uh, uh, having new experiences together that are a bit more aligned with what the other one wants.
Um- So yeah, I forgot what you asked me.
No, that was, that was a perfect answer.
And I feel like that was such a healing moment for so many of us '90s babies.
Because if you grew up in a home like I did- Yeah there was very rarely any repair, right? Yeah.
You just moved on.
Yeah.
And, um, you know, I really never had my parents apologize to me.
My father was much better at it than my mom was.
Um- Mm but I think that so many of us grew up in a home, because it was just the time, it was just, it was the parenting style back then that- Yeah parents didn't come and actively repair in general.
You know, my husband grew up in a home where his parents are great at repair, um, even now that we're adults.
I mean, and they model it so beautifully for us, and I've gotten to really learn from his family and from other families, and even from clients, what does healthy repair look like.
Because, yes, I had this data going into it, and I, you know, I learned about it in school, but there was still this key point of, I don't know, it was missing because I had never had it modeled for me.
And so I feel really grateful that the people in my life were able to model that.
So you guys know that I've been on a multi-year journey of making intentional swaps in my life and in our home.
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To be honest, becoming a mom really made me look at my entire home completely differently.
I started paying attention to things that honestly I'd never really even thought twice about: materials, fabrics, chemicals, what we were bringing into our space, and at the end of the day in pregnancy, what my baby would be breathing in and surrounded by every single day.
Now, if you've gone down the same rabbit hole as I have trying to make more intentional choices for your home, then you already know that not only can it be really overwhelming, but finding curtains for your home that's not filled with polyester and harsh chemicals can feel nearly impossible.
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Okay, I do have a question about boys versus girls.
Are we/should we be parenting boys versus girls differently depending on Sex, gender, their attachment styles, societal expectations.
Does this go back to their individual temperament and it is completely, you know, aside the point of, of their gender? What do we need to know about boys versus girls? I mean, all of these questions could be a podcast in itself.
So then looking at this one, just to sort of to make it very short about boys versus girls, I think you should parent based on temperament.
Right.
It's-- There are some differences, absolutely.
There are differences that the literature kind of hints at, but there's also a lot of it that is probably kind of socially constructed of course, right, where you-- we can't kind of exclude that.
Parents do tend to parent boys and girls differently.
We tend to be a little bit harsher with boys at times.
We tend to be a bit softer with girls at times.
According to literature, we talk more to girls which then results in girls talking earlier.
There's been some interesting research on that because we simply communicate less with them before they can actually talk, right, so in the baby stage.
So we need to be aware, we need to be mindful of where it is kind of stereotypes that are impacting how we are behaving towards our kid.
But I would always bring it back to temperament.
There are sensitive boys around.
There are sensitive girls around.
There are very active girls around who also can't sit still, the thing we always attribute to boys, right? There's very much girls around like that too.
And I think instead of looking at it as a gender thing, let's just look at, okay, what is our child's temperament? Let's really think about the nine dimensions.
Let's really make ourselves aware what our individual kid needs, what they're strong in, what they're not so strong in, what they need support in, where they will need some nudging down the road, what the activities are that you wanna practice with them.
Are they super high activity? Can they never sit still? Whether a boy or girl, this means, okay, that's an area where we'll have to put a bit more extra parenting time in, practice that with them, become a bit more aware of it, and so on.
So I would really bring it back to that.
I love that so much.
Okay, now I wanna shift a little bit about, or, or to the, the conversation of how to actually build your child's first couple of years.
And I think the first thing that comes to a lot of people's minds are, well, what do I do with this baby? Like, what should I be filling our wake windows with? What kind of activities and toys build attention span? What kind of activities and toys are harming attention span? Should I be reading to my baby every day? Yeah.
Should I be, you know, narrating our days or what one of my good friends just called sportscasting, where you say like, "Okay, mommy's gonna open up the cabinet now.
I'm getting down a plate so that I can make our lunch, and I'm getting out some bread because I'm gonna make a sandwich."
You know, are we singing to our babies every day? Does it matter if it's a rhyming song? Does it matter if I'm just making up random songs like I do to my dog? What do we do with these little babies that, you know, they can't really tell us what they like and what they want, but we obviously know that we should be simulating them in some way without overstimulating them.
Absolutely.
There is so much, like what you said here.
Um, let's focus on language for a minute, because language is really one of those things that I urge parents to actively focus on in the first year or two, because language is really really the biggest driver of cognitive development that early on, and it's almost entirely relational, right? So developmental research often talks about serve and return, right? So whether a baby knows how to talk or not, if they say, "Bee, baa, boo," and you say, "Ba, baa, boo," back, that's a conversation.
Yeah.
So it's about imitating their sounds, responding to their sounds.
It's about making eye contact.
It's about imitating their facial expressions.
It's about imitating their movement.
It's about making them feel seen and responded to because that makes them realize what conversation is really about.
And it is so foundational for their social development and then of course also for their language, for their cognitive development.
Now, babies don't learn language from being surrounded by noise.
Now, it's not just about hearing words.
It's really about interaction.
It's about interacting with them.
So it's not about getting, you know, um, expensive toys where they press a button and it, and it tells them certain words.
It's really about conversation.
And babies already learn language before they can speak.
So it, it's not true that when your baby, you know, can't tell-- say anything back to you, you can kind of ignore them, so to speak.
You really wanna engage in those babbles.
You wanna engage in those babbles.
You wanna sing to them.
You wanna narrate to them what you just described if you can do that.
And we know that these conversational turns are one of the strongest predictors.
Now this is also where screen time, you know, comes always in when people talk about screen time.
That's actually what screen time-- wh-where screen time becomes a problem.
Just to kinda re-briefly bring that in.
The reason we don't want screen time, screen time for ages two and, and below isn't because looking at a screen is fundamentally and always horrible, but rather it's because it takes away those few wake windows they still have, especially in first year, where they so much rely on those interactions to build their cognition, to build their skills.
And so if they spend half of their wake time watching something, not interacting with someone, that leaves an impact.
And so that is one of the main reasons we don't want babies to have screen time.
And yeah, so it's this combination.
It's how much we talk with them, how much do we interact with them, how much we potentially read to them.
Because by age three, we know from the data that language gaps are already substantial.
So we can see big differences between children that have been talked to a lot and read to a lot, and children that have not.
I might say the number's wrong here, but I believe it was about something like if you never read to your kids, they hear on average only like five thousand words by the time they're four or five.
Because what it means is you talk about, you know, the normal everyday things.
You have the same vocabulary more or less repeating itself.
Now, if you bring books into the mix, if you bring books into the mix about sea animals, about vehicles, about space, about this, about that, you are mathematically expanding their vocabulary, expanding the range of, of grammar that you even hear.
And I think it was one book a day was something of like three hundred thousand words read by the age of five.
Now, it just makes a big difference.
And I know that sometimes, you know, you meet parents who are not naturally inclined to just chitchat with the baby.
Not everyone likes narrating what they're doing, right? They're mostly intense.
They want to perform, uh, idle chatter.
You probably a talker.
A lot of people are not.
Now, if you're not a talker, that's actually where books are just amazing, you know? Grab those five books, make it a habit to sit down with your baby every single day before lunch, after lunch, whenever you have time, and make that such a strict part of your routine.
Like, this is just as important as eating.
We're gonna sit down, we're gonna read these five books, or we're gonna sit down and we're gonna babble a bit for twenty minutes.
It's really those little things that you need to bring into your routine that will help build strong foundation for your baby's cognitive skills.
A second point about focus and attention, I think which you, which you also asked.
Reading builds focus and attention.
Talking to your baby builds focus and attention.
Playing with certain toys, and here it's mostly block play, so playing with wooden blocks or other blocks that has been extensively studied builds focus and attention.
I love to say to people, it's kind of a one-- I think I even have like a whole module in my course about that, where I say, "Do not interrupt your baby."
Whenever you see a little baby looking through a book, sometimes we're inclined to be like, "She's reading a book.
I'm just, I'm gonna be back like this in an hour," and you're like, "Shall I help you?" Don't.
Like, when you see them focusing, and trust me, like, your future self will thank you because this is how they learn to play independently as well.
Do not interrupt your baby.
When they're focused, let them stay focused.
I would literally postpone getting out of the house when I saw my baby being focused on something, because I was like, "I'm just gonna wait here.
I'm just gonna wait until they...
until that focus wears off naturally."
That's the way to build cognitive skills, to build attention.
And then later, you know, when they're getting older, it's about expecting them.
Again, high expectations.
Expecting them to use language, expecting them to say, "Mama, more," instead of whining for more.
Expecting them to say "One more minute," instead of whining for one more minute, and so on.
So this is, this is the stuff that I teach when kids are a bit older, of course.
But it all comes down to having high expectations, using language as a key driver for, for cognition, and also w- planning this in into your routine with your baby.
And just one, one last point on that, sorry.
All this will pay off because building your child's focus and attention and communication skills in the first two years will mean you will have easier toddler years.
You know? Terrible twos, I hate that term.
Because of course, you know, some toddlers are more difficult than others.
Again, temperament.
But everything you experience aged two and a half, three, and so on is already shaped in those first years, right? And so that's why I don't want people to think like, "Oh, you know, now they're still a baby.
Well, we'll see how it turns out later."
No, no, no.
You're now shaping how well they're able to listen to you.
Yeah.
But again, this, this could be...
and I could go on about this for a long time.
Oh my gosh.
Okay.
Me too.
I'm just, like, literally nerding out so hard, and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, these are the conversations that I really, really, really want parents to hear."
I mean, I'm just thinking right now, like, I'm about to download this.
I'm gonna send it to my husband.
I'm gonna send it to my mother-in-law.
I'm gonna send it to my mom.
I'm gonna send it to my sister, my sister-in-law.
I'm gonna send it to everybody that comes in contact with my baby and, and any of my future children.
I just think this is such an important conversation.
I love, love, love to hear you say, "Don't interrupt your baby."
It is something that I have been I don't wanna say training, 'cause I don't like to think about training other humans, but educating the people in my life on about Saggy.
Just when you see him engaged with something, I know that it's so cute and to go up and to say like, "Oh my gosh, you're playing with your little cow."
Wait until he's done, and now he's looking around for some human engagement, and then go up to him and say, "I saw you playing with your cow."
Perfect.
"Saggy, did you love playing with your cow? Your cow is so fuzzy.
Your cow lives on a farm.
That is so fun."
Don't interrupt them.
Oh my gosh, I love it so much.
Absolutely.
So what is your opinion on Toys that have constant lights and sounds and movements because this is something that I have been very strict about.
I don't allow them in our house and everyone in our life that gifts Saggy something, they know not to give us something that has-- We have no lights and if it's music, it needs to be able to be turned off and it needs to be something that is not really, um, like crazy erratic designed- Yeah to keep their temperament.
I'm okay with music that has a purpose, like you press a button and it has a little fifteen-second, you know, jingle to it, but nothing that is designed to keep Saggy's focus.
Yeah.
I essentially agree with that.
At this, at the age of about two, you really wanna focus on, y- you wanna incorporate some cause and effect toys and those are usually the kind of toys where you do press a button and they see something happen, or they put a ball in a hole and they see it coming down somewhere.
So these toys are great and nowadays of course there's a lot of those that come with sounds and music.
I have more nuanced there, like I think sometimes they can be good.
There are some nice tools there, but I do overall also prefer to have the version that is less stimulating because again, it's looking at something we've talked through once again, if a child, if you have a very sensitive child, even those sounds for ten, fifteen minutes might set them off, might make them feel a little more whiny and, and, and cranky.
So I prefer kind of calmer play and learning.
They usually don't need those things and once you start introducing these highly interactive, engaging toys, colorful toys, loud toys, it's kind of hard to go back.
So, um, generally don't introduce them too early.
Uh, you can keep it very simple.
And as I said, always have some blocks at hand when they're a bit older.
While they're still young, have some rattles, have some simple instruments, kind of baby instruments at home that show them that, you know what, if I shake this, there's a sound.
That's really kind of cause and effect thinking they're practicing early on.
Have something they can grab.
Have something they can push.
Yeah, you can keep with the music and if you want some music, as you said, keep it very simple.
Make sure you can turn it off.
And don't get them hooked on it probably basically.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Good.
Good.
I mean, that's perfect.
That's what we've done in our home and I feel like it is just such an easy way to kind of prolong the introduction of things that might be overstimulating because like you said, once you've introduced it, it's very hard to kind of backtrack.
Um, okay, I have one last question about all of this, and then I have two very controversial questions that I'd like to end the episode on.
My last question about this section is, you know, you talked about challenging your children, nudging them, having high expectations.
At what age, and it, it's gonna be different for, for different expectations, so maybe you have an example for different ages.
I know, I-- the, the question is stemmed from, you know, my child is between five and six months old, and I have had a couple of people say to me, "Just let him cry," or, "Just let him sit there for a minute and be upset."
And for me, it's like, no, that's age-inappropriate for a five-month-old.
He's only been on earth for five months.
If that was a two-year-old, yes, I would finish making the sandwich, and I would say, "Give mommy one minute.
I'm gonna finish making my sandwich, and then I can come help you rebuild your blocks."
But when my five-month-old starts to fuss, I'm going to put down the knife, I'm gonna, you know, put down my-- the, the turkey, and I'm gonna go pick him up, and then I can resume making my sandwich.
Help us understand at what age is it appropriate to start having these high expectations and actually challenging our children to, you know, essentially wait.
Yeah.
So this is absolutely age-dependent.
So we have very strong research, again, as I said, on high responsiveness, high expectations, and there's research into there.
I won't go really deep into that because I really want to understand what it actually means.
And there, too, we see that you, you-- So to be clear, when your child is very young, you wanna be extremely high on your responsiveness, but your demand side is quite low.
You don't expect anything from a baby, okay? So from a baby, zero expectations.
You are there, they cry, you pick them up.
They're not manipulating you, you're not spoiling them.
Carry that damn baby, no matter how often they cry.
I can promise you they will cry less if you carry them and if you show them early on that you're responsive, and so on.
So no demands.
As your child gets into the movement stage, where they start to crawl, and definitely when they start to walk, that's when I advise people to bring in some first expectations, and those are usually expectations around sleeping.
So there are certain things you're absolutely not allowed to do whether that's, you know, grab from play balls or pull the tail of a dog off, whatever that is.
You introduce the first set of rules.
You also introduce the first set of kind of social rules in regards to, you know, don't hitting people, no biting people.
Those will happen, but you start introducing the first demands.
It's of course absolutely okay if you make a sandwich and your kid whines a bit around, they're not gonna get hurt immediately.
They're not gonna be traumatized by that.
But you, you do wanna pick up very young children who are especially showing sincere distress.
They, they're sincere-- There's a difference between being sincerely distressed and between being a bit whiny, right? That's again, where being attuned comes in.
You need to know if this is a serious cry or if this is just your kid being a little bit bored.
In either of those, you will decide differently.
So you do need to trust yourself here a little bit in, in reading your child's, uh, true upset.
As your child grows older, after the age of two, I'm becoming a really big fan of increasing expectations.
So for me, at least in my household, this is where things come in, such as, you know, you play with a toy, you wanna go to another toy.
First, you tidy up the first toy.
Always the same rule.
There is no more hitting, there is no more biting after age two around here, because I think that at that point, we know that cognitively they're very well able to understand that certain behaviors have certain consequences, that people don't like certain behaviors, and that they can hold themselves back to some degree.
Again, it depends so much on what they will encounter, but you-- it's really okay to start having clear rules once your child enters kind of early toddlerhood.
And over time, that's what will happen.
And over time, you know, late toddlerhood, preschool age, you will naturally increase expectations.
You still stay responsive, but you can increase your expectations because that's how you build a child who ends up being capable and trusts in themselves and knows how to do stuff and be a good member of your family.
Yeah.
I love that so much.
Okay, great.
All right, my two controversial questions.
Let's start with the first one.
Oh gosh.
Okay.
Number one, daycare.
And you're not the first guest who has talked about this.
I love to just kind of have this conversation with a lot of people.
Do you think daycare is ruining children, is harming attachment to parents? And do you think that quality time over quantity of time matters with your parent? Okay, first I'm gonna say, I'm not gonna tell you what I think.
I'm gonna tell you what the data says.
Okay.
Because that's all I am about.
I'm all about communicating the research.
I just brought a guide out of this a few weeks ago, so it's still very fresh in my mind.
The conversation is more nuanced than that.
I believe from the data, looking at the data, this is what informs my beliefs.
I believe that daycare too young, too long, let's say putting a one-year-old in a daycare setting all day long, can absolutely be detrimental.
It can be harmful.
There is actually no doubt about that.
But it will depend on the quality of care they receive.
Mm.
And that's what, in a nutshell, that's what the research shows you.
There is a benefit of keeping your kid at home longer in the first two years simply because of everything we talked about before.
They need so much attunement.
They need so much responsive care, and it's really, really hard to find a daycare setting where you have that ratio of enough caretakers to children, where every child will feel fully responded to, seen, and heard, bring some, you know, figure out their cues and respond to what they need.
It's very hard to find that level of quality.
If you can't find that level of quality, then maybe it speaks against your child being in a different setting with people who also care and potentially, you know, love them deeply and, and make sure they're okay, which often happens in really high-quality daycare settings.
But there's few of those around.
Many daycare settings are those where children will be left to cry a lot in distress because they can't, you know, people can't keep up.
Caretakers can't necessarily keep up with all of their needs.
And so people-- parents need to evaluate, rather than saying, "How old is my child? Should I send them to daycare?" I want parents to look at, "Okay, what is the quality of daycare I want? What is on the table? Is this a place where my child's needs can be responded to, where they can be, you know, where someone really cares about how they're feeling, where someone planned it tonight, where someone has the actual time to pick them up, right? Rather than having to take care of ten other kids."
And to use those quality concerns I put a lot of that research too, um, in, into, into account so we know what to look out for because you can't fundamentally say that daycare is bad or it's good.
After a certain age and up to age three, daycare can become extremely beneficial.
It gives your child an opportunity to connect socially with others, to learn social skills beyond the home.
Many parents, and that's absolutely true in each way, can't necessarily provide the stimulating environment that children age three or four need at home.
You know, a child age three needs a lot to practice their social skills and their ability to problem solve and to be creative and to do this and that.
And let's say you're a mom or a dad and you work from home or whatever, you might not have the capacity to do that.
So then finding a decent daycare is a really good solution for both you and the child.
But if they're very, very young, you really need to make sure the quality is extremely high because yes, as you said, you can't, you can't fill their language bucket and their attunement bucket and their responsiveness bucket uh, with-- if you don't have caregivers who have time to do all of that.
I love that so much.
Okay, you guys, I wanna give you a quick list.
When I was pregnant, Mr.
HeHe and I toured a couple of childcare centers.
Um, I felt very confident that we weren't going to put Saggy Boy in daycare.
But I also wanted to explore what was around our home for a couple of reasons.
I wanted to make sure that what I felt was in fact correct, and I was confident in that choice.
And I also wanted to get my feelers out for when it was appropriate to put him into daycare.
And when I was walking through these facilities, here are the things that were first and foremost on my mind.
I always asked about the education level of the teachers.
I wanted to make sure that they were not hiring just random caregivers.
I wanted to ensure that the caregivers in that place were actually educated on child development and actually built a curriculum.
I also looked at the class size.
The smaller the class size, the better it ranked in my mind.
I wanted to know about how they were basically attuned to children.
How did they handle the emotional development? I also looked very intently about the toys in the room.
Were there a lot of the light-ups, the big sounds, the bright colors, or were the toys more manipulation toys? Were they you know, wooden? Were they made of natural materials? Were they toys that required a child to interact with them and use their imagination in order to play with them, or were they something that they could press a button and it would light up and sing to them for the next 90 seconds, and then they just press another button? You can obviously see.
And then the very last thing, and here's a little story.
We toured a facility.
I loved the facility The director answered all the questions perfectly.
We walked out to the car.
Mr.
HeHe said, "I love this place.
This would be a perfect place."
And I said, "We will never send our children here."
And he said, "Why? She answered all of the questions correctly."
And I said, "Did you notice that in every single room we went into, teachers were on their phone?" Oh.
And he said, "I didn't even notice."
And I said, "I could not get out of that building fast enough.
I was crawling out of my skin.
It was so- Oh, gosh I mean, I was just, like, beside myself watching us go from room to room.
And do you know that these teachers didn't even put up their cell phones when they knew somebody was watching? Yeah.
I was just, I was beside myself.
And so- I, I, I have so many horror stories about that.
Like, I could, yeah.
But absolutely, that was a very good, very good thing you noticed there, 'cause that's, of course, you can't be responsive.
You can say as much as you want if someone interviews you, but if you're seeing literally people not being, paying attention to the children in the room, that's not possible.
It's- So yeah.
You know, you're paying attention to your cell phone, and you're not paying attention to my child.
Yeah.
And that is not what I'm paying you for.
So there's my short list.
That was certainly not a comprehensive list.
Those were just the things that I was really kind of aware of when I, when I went through these facilities.
There are certainly other things you should, you should ask about.
Yeah.
But for me, those were the things.
Okay.
Violeta, our very last question, maybe the most controversial of the whole episode.
Oh, dear.
Let's talk about sleep training.
How does traditional sleep training impact children and their development and their attachment? And I wanna give a disclaimer here, you guys.
For anyone who is listening and you chose to sleep train, I do not want you to hear this and then feel guilty.
I want you to know that you chose the best for your family at the time with the resources that you had and the information and the education that you had at that time, okay? So I don't want you to hear Violeta's opinion or the data or what I believe about sleep training and then feel bad about the choices that you've made in the past.
Know that you made that because you were doing what you felt was best at the time, and I trust that.
I trust that you made the best decision for your baby in that moment Yes, I agree with all of that.
I think it's, it's important to say that, you know, sleep training means a lot of things.
But what you are referring to, I assume right now, is probably the more harsher methods where children are left to cry to sleep because officially sleep training encompasses everything we do to help a child sleep better.
So that's-- it's quite important to pin that down because otherwise I think people feel that, you know, "But I didn't do this, I didn't do that."
So the data here is this.
I come from a public health background, so my lens of everything is the lens of prevention and the lens of minimizing harm.
I always wanna make sure that whatever we do, we take the lowest risk basically possible, and we optimize development.
We don't wanna take unnecessary risks.
When we look at sleep training data, two questions parents should ask themselves are basically, do children who are sleep-trained sleep better? And second question, is it in any way harmful to do, you know, cry it out sleep training methods? If you really look at the data, if you look at the research that has been done, which is not perfect, very hard field to study for various reasons.
I can go into that in other, in other areas.
But we see that babies who are sleep-trained using a crying-based method do on average not sleep much better than children who are not.
Now, some people will say, "Oh, no, no, no, that can't be true.
My baby absolutely slept better after I sleep-trained them harshly using a crying-based method."
I wanna say harshly because that's the harsh way to sleep train, okay? Using crying-based methods What our data tells us is that there are some studies which really, you know, they put, they put little monitors on babies.
They really wanted to find out how often did these babies actually wake.
What we found is that babies who are sleep trained, they will cry less at night for you.
They will call out less for you.
They can still wake up almost as often as babies who are not sleep trained.
So your baby does not suddenly have this full beautiful stretch of ten hours sleep.
They simply wake, but they have been taught through this method that crying won't bring them anything because no one is gonna come to help them, so they simply don't cry about it.
And then the second question is, well, is it harmful to do that? Because on the one hand, you could say, "Well, it's all kind of cool, right? Because I get to sleep better.
My baby isn't crying out for me.
They put themselves back to sleep."
Well, is it potentially harmful? And this is where studies-- You know, there are some studies who clearly show that babies who are sleep trained us-using crying-based methods have higher levels of, of stress in their bodies.
They experience higher levels of stress, of cortisol in their bodies.
We know that that's not healthy for babies.
We know that you want to keep certain hormones low, stress hormones anyway, because it impacts overall development.
And as I said before, the question of attachment comes in here, right? What does a baby learn who is left to cry at night when no one comes to sort of help them? It's very hard to study this, and that's why I'm trying to-- We cannot tell you, you know, data says it's inherently harmful because I, we don't have that data to prove to you that every baby who has been sleep trained using a crying-based method will end up having some massive problem down the line.
But we do have data that tells us stress hormones are high.
We do have data that tells us that some kids who are sleep trained tend to be a bit more afraid of the dark down the road, and you do have a lot of anecdotal evidence of people who say they've been sleep trained and have experienced some issues down the line with regards to feeling safe at night and so on.
Now, it's up to parents to decide what do you make of this? I personally, because I have this public lens to also try to focus, for me, it's not worth that risk because I don't know what all of this will do potentially to my kid.
There is no data that tells us for certain that it's not harmful, and that for me is enough to not want to go about it that way.
Evolutionarily, that's a lens I really enjoy also taking here.
Evolutionarily speaking, babies would n-never learn to sleep alone, not in, in human societies, not in any kind of mammalian societies.
Babies are always in the presence of caregivers because they could literally be attacked in the middle of the night by some predator and die.
So we are used to sleep close to us.
They're used to hear our potentially even our heartbeats and our, our, our, our scent, smell us for the first months of their life, and that's how they stay safe.
That's how they feel safe in the world.
And I always love to think about this.
You know, if your baby is crying for twenty minutes in the middle of the day you wouldn't leave them locked up in a room and not go inside.
So I personally think why would you do that at night? And that's my personal opinion.
That's my personal little bit here.
And that's why everyone needs to weigh this evidence.
I know, as you said, sometimes people, you know, you must wake up in the morning, you need to go to work, you need to function your eight hours a day, and you feel this is the best way.
And I also trust that families will make the decision that works for them.
But also know, please, that there are many methods of sleep training that do not involve crying, letting babies cry out, but that can improve your baby's sleep.
So before you go to the most extreme one, where no, there is no evidence to tell you that it's absolutely safe.
So it's not, no matter what you hear out there, no one can tell you that it's absolutely safe.
We simply don't have that data.
Before you go there, try the 18 steps before that.
You know? There's so many other things you can do, from simple routines which are shown to improve it.
And you know what's interesting is one last fact here.
There's, there's been a lot of interesting studies that show that just teaching parents about normal baby sleep, so just teaching parents that babies wake up at night, that it's normal that they, you know, want to nurse at night or whatever, or that they wanna, you know, they whine a bit when they wake up, or that it's hard for them to get two sleep cycles and so on.
Just teaching parents that makes parents rate their baby's sleep as better.
So parents think my baby sleeps better simply because someone explains to them how normal that stuff is.
And that in itself, in the literature, is considered sleep training in some studies.
So know that there's so much more you can do, and only consider that as kind of the last resort if you absolutely have to.
Because I would personally not recommend it from a optimal developmental perspective.
Yeah.
Ugh.
I know that co-sleeping is not for everybody.
I, I'm, and I'm not going to tell you that co-sleeping should absolutely be what you choose.
But I do think that co-sleeping, when done safely can be a great option for a lot of families who might otherwise not explore that option because of the fear-based education that's here in America.
Um, there are safe ways to co-sleep, and I will tell you guys a little secret.
We co-sleep with Saggy.
He is in our bed every single night.
Um, and we didn't start off that way.
He was in a bassinet for the first little bit until he had proper sleep skills.
Um, he was in a bassinet until I felt like he was big enough to be safely in our bed.
He was in a bassinet for the first few months of his life until I felt like I had recovered enough to safely bring him into our bed.
And I will tell you this, when we started to co-sleep, both my husband and I started to get more sleep.
Saggy, of course, he's been sleeping since the beginning.
He, he started sleeping-- he was sleeping five hours at three weeks old, and then he started to do nine-hour stretches at five weeks old.
So he's been a great sleeper.
His sleep didn't change when he moved into the bed with us.
But for us, it improved our sleep tremendously.
And I just feel for us it was the right choice.
Okay, I do have one last question.
For parents who did choose to cry it out and now they have learned maybe that wasn't the right choice, or maybe they have just feelings about their choices in the past, is there something that they can do now to repair that? Obviously, you're not gonna go to your child and say, "I'm so sorry that I made you cry it out," or, "I'm so sorry that I chose something."
But what can we do going forward if they feel like, you know, maybe this did damage their child's attachment to them in a way? I mean, there might, I think some people do that, who do go back to their kids and tell them that is something they regret because they feel they need to let that out and to need to let their kids know.
There is no, no magic formula, uh, for that I've ever come across.
I don't know what, you know, the average, uh, psychologist would recommend here or what, what plan would be recommended generally.
But I personally think what you can do is essentially then going forward, just ensure that you become the responsive caregiver that you wish you were during that time, that you make sure that your child feels truly responded to in their distress, um, to repair whatever there might be left in terms of, you know, damage.
Again, it doesn't have to be, right? Because this is too-- it's it's temperamental.
Some ki- kids might have been left to cry for 10 minutes and truly be fine.
Others, more sensitive souls, might have been left to cry for 45 and really did struggle with that.
So you know your kid best.
You know if it's necessary to repair something there, and in any case, show them via being available, being responsive now, that they can continue to rely on you.
Oh my gosh, I love it.
That's the thing, you guys.
You can't do what you don't know, but once you know better, you can do better.
And that is-- that's the beauty of it, is that we as parents, as moms, are able to evolve.
We're able to change.
We are able to learn and do differently going forward or with future children.
And I just want to recognize all of you listening.
I know that's who you are as a mom.
I know that's who you want to be as a parent because that's who's in this community.
You're always learning.
You're always evolving.
You're always doing the absolute best for your child.
And I just want to say that I see you working so hard.
Being a mom is such selfless and thankless work.
And so, I just wanna recognize you.
Like you are, you're showing up so well for your family, and I think the love that you show for your kids, they, they know that.
They can feel it, they recognize it, and they do feel your love so deeply.
Oh my gosh.
Okay.
Violeta, I wish our time was not up because I could just talk to you for hours.
Um- That is really true.
I'm switching the recording easily.
Yeah.
This has been so good.
But for the people who have more questions, want to take your courses, want to learn from you- Yeah have heard something that made them say like, "Ooh, I should dig into that further," where can people connect with you, learn from you, get your courses, follow you on Instagram? How can people connect with you? So you can find me on Instagram under violeta.parenting.science,
which is where I share kind of snippets.
I share some historic videos, parenting science research, and so on, which, uh, is really interesting to learn about, you know, experiments that people have been doing in the past.
And I also share a bit about my day-to-day and how I approach my kids the authoritative way.
Um, you can also visit my website, which is, uh, The Parenting Class, and there you can find my ultimate really parenting prep course.
So I made one course that covers 13 topics of importance for the first two years, so from sleep to breastfeeding, to brain development, nutrition, parenting styles, parent involvement, all of that is covered, and it's really intended for parents to be, and new parents who want to be prepared and who want to have data on their side.
That's also where you'll find my daycare guides and a bunch of other materials for kids above the age of two, where I focus more on kind of brain building, executive function building activities and this idea of, you know, building smart and capable kids.
So all of that is on my website, all my social media, and, Yeah, I'm happy to give your listeners an extra 10% off if you want to join one of my courses and ex- explore this for yourself and see how scientific parenting, as I call it, can enrich your life and make parenting a more calmer and more confident for you.
Oh my gosh, thank you so much.
Thank you for that discount code.
Thank you for your resources.
Thank you for your wisdom today, and just thank you for being here on the show.
Thank you so much.
Really appreciate it.
It was really great talking to you.
Oh my gosh, of course.
You guys, this was, like, such a good walk down memory lane for me.
It felt really good to hear that, you know, the things that I'm doing right are, you know, I'm doing them really right.
And then I learned today that there were some things that I could obviously do better, and I'm sure we're all in this camp.
So I want to hear from you.
If after listening today you heard things that you were doing really right, share those with me.
Send me an email, write on my Instagram, drop in my DMs, and if you learned anything new and you're going to start implementing it, I want to hear that, too.
You guys, we're all in this parenting journey together.
Nobody knows what they're doing, and I know that our whole goal is we don't want to mess up our kids.
We don't want them to have lifelong therapy like so many of us do, and we just want them to feel loved.
And I do think that so many of us are doing a much better job than we probably realize.
All right, you guys, thank you so much for being here.
I will see you in the next episode.
Be sure to follow Violeta on social media, and you can find me at TranquilitybyHeHe and at the.birth.lounge.
Until next time, head to your app store and download The Birth Lounge app for evidence-based childbirth education and data-driven postpartum support delivered straight to your phone.
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