Do 'developmental leaps' really exist?
Babies are wonderful. Wonderful and exhausting. Just as you think you might have (kind of) got it all figured out, something changes, and it can feel like you’re back at square one.
When we compare a tiny, curled-up newborn to a walking, talking toddler, it seems obvious that children go through a phenomenal amount of development and growth in the first couple of years of life, but it can feel bewildering when you are experiencing it, especially through the fog of fatigue. As a parent, this development can sometimes feel slow, then very fast, and it can be confusing. What made your baby happy one week might not work the next, and sometimes they can seem to enter fussy periods completely out of the blue.
A quick online search might not help with the confusion that much – there are so many voices with opinions out there, not all of them based on the latest science and research.
What is a ‘leap’?
You might have come across developmental ‘leaps’, which claim to explain fussy periods. These ‘leaps’ tend to start as a day or two when your baby is tiny, but progress to longer periods of several weeks as they grow.
The problem is, the idea that there are developmental leaps that happen right on schedule for every baby, everywhere, just doesn’t stack up with what we know to be true about child development. The research findings behind these ‘leaps’ are debated and not fully proven.1
At their worst, the idea that your child is about to go through a ‘leap’ can lead to parental anxiety and worry. The internet is full of stories of parents dreading the next leap in their child’s development, with some even cancelling events or holidays in anticipation of the difficulty!
Embracing your unique child
Above all, the most important thing is that what is true of another child might not be true of your child. This is why My First Five Years is so passionate about helping track your unique child’s development, rather than comparing outwards to others, because while it is true that there is a range of months where you might expect your child to walk, for example, the range is so broad that it might not mean much to your life with your child, who is on their own path to get there, right now.
Just because someone else’s child masters a skill at five months, doesn’t mean yours should, nor that there’s anything wrong with them mastering the same skill at six months. And, importantly, the more information you have about the seemingly tiny moments that actually make up your child’s development (because we know, for example, that there are so many stepping stones between lying down and walking), the more confidence you have as a parent because you can see that they are well on their way to that skill.
It is that insight, that breaking down of the arc of their development into tiny steps, that helps to reassure rather than worry, and this is just as true of cognitive or brain development as it is of physical development. It can feel more difficult to spot this cognitive development unless you know what you’re looking for, but the My First Five Years app helps you to see it for yourself.
As a parent, I remember the anxiety I felt, especially in the first year or two. I remember friends’ babies who rolled early, babies at music class who seemed to suddenly start talking overnight in full sentences, and really wishing I knew someone else whose baby had discovered sitting up and felt compelled to do it all night, every night, without knowing how to lie back down again (the baby and I were both very, very tired after a couple of nights of that).
But the thing that is harder to find when we are googling our worries at bedtime is that just as your baby develops at their own pace, in their own way, they also have good days and bad days just like us, for a whole range of reasons, none of which are necessarily predictable or easy to control.
How to support your child
That doesn’t mean that there is nothing you can do to help your child. The My First Five Years app helps you to respond to your baby as they are in that moment. It’s packed with ideas for comforting, playing and enjoying time together, as well as all the information you need to help you understand your child’s development so that you can feel confident in how to help.
Not only does this knowledge help your child, it also helps you enjoy parenting more, as you remove the unnecessary pressure parents feel all too often. And once that pressure is gone, you can relax into enjoying the perfectly unique child you have in front of you.
“If the day ever came when we were able to accept ourselves and our children exactly as we and they are, then, I believe, we would have come very close to an ultimate understanding of what 'good' parenting means.”
Fred Rogers
1 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/parenting/baby/sleep-regression.html
