No interaction? I hope you're talking to your baby, staring into their eyes, playing with their hands... you don't just plop a baby down and wait for it to grow. You are teaching the baby right now. They are taking in way more than you realize. When I didn't know what to say I would just sing the alphabet song or walk around the room pointing out colors or names of different objects. I swear by teaching babies sign language for the basics. Mine was signing milk at just a few months old, cuts down on crying when they can communicate exactly what they want. And everyone says it but it's true, these early baby days fly by and you should try to appreciate every stage, good or bad.
this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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Oh yeah, we read to her, sit with her all the time, talk and interact at her, there's just little in the way of response. It's just grunts and squirms. She can't even see us yet.
We're enjoying when she's awake and content because we can watch her "look" around and learn her body. It's adorable. Just the past couple days, I've been noticing a bit more reaction to stimuli in a way that shows some curiosity.
I am with you. I have two older kids now, but I found infancy super boring. I liked when they were able to get around pretty good on their own, around 2 to 5 yrs was my favorite time. Also, don’t feel like having those thoughts are wrong. A lot of parents will say you’re going to miss those times, maybe, maybe not, every child and parent is different. I’m 7 years past that now and I don’t miss infancy at all. Just do your best, work on building a bond, you’ll be fine.
I have a toddler (28 months) and an infant (4 months). I do love having conversations with my toddler, seeing her laugh, seeing her play, and watching her grow into a real human.
However, the infant stage, in my opinion, is a million times easier. In between the awesome toddler moments are tantrums, battles to get dressed, refusals to get into the car, etc. I love my toddler more than words. But man, do I just want her take longer naps sometimes!
My experience is completely anecdotal, so may not apply. Your toddler is like 2.5 years. I found it hard around that age, but after calmly setting boundaries, explaining why and being open to negotiation, at around 3 it became super easy.
Tantrums for my kid are 99% of the time just because he's hungry. I just explain this to him during and after the tantrum. Like "so you were really sad before, but after eating you're happy now right? Do you think that would help next time you are sad?" Now he will sometimes tell me he's just super hungry when he's upset.
Other than playing with him which I enjoy, he's like 70% in auto pilot.
We were lucky: our daughter was a super well-behaved toddler. I don’t think that she threw more than three tantrums, although she always cried when it was time to leave something, especially if she made a new friend. She was just curious and inquisitive and very empathetic—which she still is as an eleven-year-old. I do agree, I also wished she’d taken longer naps, but whatev. In contrast, she was extremely difficult as an infant, being colicky to the point that we’d have to drive around for hours at a time so she’d go to sleep and the fits came way too often.
There's tons of interaction happening. You're teaching her the world right now. You're teaching her what safety and comfort feel like. What it feels like to be unconditionally loved. What it feels like to have new experiences, which she's having at a rate that would leave an adult human's brain lying in a puddle.
Don't mistake her inability to communicate in a way that's familiar to you as a lack of communication. It's your job to interpret her communications. Every arm and leg wiggle, every eye blink, every coo and fart and startle.
Hopefully you and your wife are taking turns interacting with her when she's awake (while the other works or rests). The more you talk to her, touch her, hold her, move her arms and legs around, etc., the more her brain will grow and make connections and reinforce and prune and become your daughter to be.
As for my favorite time? It's this time. Tomorrow it will be that time. Hopefully without sounding too judgy, looking back and calling some prior time with your kids as "better" does a disservice to the kids in front of us today who need us to do our best work for them today.
Some of this yes. Some of this no.
Every arm and leg wiggle, every eye blink, every coo and fart and startle.
This is the no. First of all, at this phase the child is a synesthete. The arm and leg wiggles are not communication but stimulus response. Espying the color red may be why the leg wiggled. While delightful to a parent, don't make more of it than it is.
Also, they cannot coo at this stage. You may have confused the social smiling/cooing phase for what the OP is commenting on. The OP is referring to far earlier in development.
The startles are reflexive. The Morrow reflex. It is also not communication. It is just an instinct hardwired in to a primate brain to prevent newborn death by putting the primate newborn in a position to grab on to an adult's body fur and thus prevent falling to their death.
I find this phase personally delightful because you get to see the human BIOS on which their person operating system is shortly to be installed, but it is absolutely okay for people not to, just like some computer enthusiasts love a BIOS and others don't. So long as one isn't neglectful, it is okay to not be enthralled.
This sounds incredibly judgy, the whole thing. Garbage like this is what causes parental anxiety and guilt. It's okay to not cherish every moment, it's okay to not enjoy whatever developmental stage your child is experiencing. Not enjoying things does not mean you're not showing up and doing your "best work" for you children.
Six months is when I remember starting to "enjoy" my first kid. That's when hints of their personality started showing to me. They giggle a little and like to play around a little bit. They also hit lots of little milestones that you wouldn't normally think about.
Yeah, infants are cute and I loved my kid when he was that age, but I unequivocally prefer the toddler stage. He's a person now. I think the 6- to 8-month range was when he started to get more interesting. All of our friends who are parents seem to have similar feelings. That said, there are a ton of special "firsts" that you can look forward to, and they're pretty enjoyable.
Our daughter is five months old now, and slowly being able to actually play with her and getting her to laugh is so much more fun than the loaf of bread that just stares, poops, cries and drinks milk that she was in the first two or three months. I think the age that I'm looking forward to the most is around 4 years, when I'll be able to explain stuff to her, visit the zoo and whatnot. I read once that nobody is as big of a fan of you as your four year old.
Cherish this short lived time of boredom, it gets more fun, but you’ll never get that little squishy helpless adorable human again. My little one is nearly 2, it’s so much fun, but obviously comes with challenges
I love how cute she is. She's started chunking up and it's adorable.
I'll be taking each stage's challenges in stride and cherishing the novelty.
I really disliked having a baby. Toddlers are cool, but babies are really demanding, boring, loud, and deprive you of sleep for months on end. I have no idea why women like babies so much.
I have an almost 3 year old. I love this age. He has such a personality. I love playing with him and reading to him and just generally spending time together. Infancy was awful. I don’t think he slept more than 2 hours for the first 6 months.
Congrats on the baby!
I don't miss the baby stage either. I would have a lot of kids if they came out at 18 months development stage.
Three year old is pretty awesome stage. They have a decent vocabulary, learning new stuff everyday, they can be complete ass hats but also cute and just utterly wonderful beings.
It gets so much better when they can smile. And then laugh. And then babble! We're at 7 months right now, and it's so much better than the angry potato stage. Newborns are adorable and snugly. Older babies start actually being fun.
Ha, "angry potato stage," that's hilarious.
I'm going to melt when my daughter starts laughing, I don't think I'll ever get tired of it.
Yes. Sleep and personal time is fantastic as well. 3.5 was where I got my sanity back.
She is amazing and I love her so much, but she’s boring! ... How do you feel?
You aren't wrong. And so many people will come for you with pitchforks and torches for having said so. But you aren't wrong. Before ~ 6 weeks when they get social smiling, they really are potatoes that you care for. They have lots of amazing development going on inside, but on the outside you water, fertilize, give sunlight, and weed your potato and your potato ... sits there.
I actually call this The Grub Phase because they remind me of grubs: eating, eliminating waste, growing, leaking fluids in weird ways (not that this stops, mind you, a common statement exiting my lips at the toddler stage is, "Why are you sticky?"), and wriggling/writhing but mostly not going anywhere.
What’s your favorite stage of child development?
I love the lying phase which occurs between 5 and 7 on average. It is also the boundary testing phase. I love seeing what children think might be possible. They sometimes have the freedom of unconstrained creativity to come up with some solutions that are possible and while inelegant are a fresh new approach to problems. Of course, the payment for all of this delight is dealing with all of their sassy pushback on everything and sometimes undetectable lies due to their plausability, but it is worth it IMHO.