The special thing about this book is that it has excerpts from real moms who documented how they were feeling week by week as their baby was growing. They would also document what their babies were doing as the weeks were going by as well. Again, for me, this was reassurance to know that each baby has different temperaments and is going to grow differently.

Miles at 5 weeks.

Here’s an example: I remember when Miles hit the 5 week mark. He was very fussy and it was very hard to get him to sleep. He would put up the greatest fight to go down and sometime he never made it down. He just cried the whole time until his next feeding.

This is when I picked up The Wonder Weeks and started reading as fast as I could! Well, wouldn’t you know, 5 weeks is when babies have their first fussy time, which leads into a ‘magical leap forward’.

After we made it through the 5^th week, both my husband and I realized that Miles was actually responding to music and he was starting to notice and play with his hands! He had started showing off his new skills that he was processing through during his fussy time.  What a pleasure to be able to watch and participate in his learning.  We were able to enjoy this because we knew what to expect.

Another thing that has been helpful about  The Wonder Weeks, is that there is a graph in the beginning of the book that charts out predicted fussy times. I’m a visual person, so this is very nice. I can quickly flip to this chart and see where Miles fits age-wise and see if he is in a sunny period (his personality is shining through) or a stormy period (more fussy than normal).

Here is one last example: Miles has been really cranky lately. I’ve stopped telling people how many weeks he is because I just can’t keep track. So, when people ask how old he is I’ll say 3 ½ months instead of weeks. But because he has been so cranky lately, I decided to count the weeks and check the chart in this book. Sure enough, Miles is in a stormy period and things are changing.

Miles has been very testy when it comes to sleeping. He has been having a really hard time going down and we can’t figure it out. He also doesn’t like my husband putting him down. He will cry and cry and cry with Casey, but then I’ll take him and he’ll quiet right down. This process has been really rough for both Casey and I because Casey feels rejected and I feel like I don’t get a break.

Miles at 17 weeks.

After counting how many weeks old Miles is, 17 weeks, he falls smack in the middle of a fussy time. I should’ve known! So, I just opened the book to refresh my memory about some of the changes that are going to be happening to Miles and about every description in the book is exactly what Miles is going through. Trouble sleeping, being cranky, shyness of strangers, entertaining him while he is awake; all of these things are written in this book and documented by the Moms who participated in journaling what their child was doing during this time. Talk about not feeling alone!

I am so grateful for this book, The Wonder Weeks. It has helped me a lot with being patient with my baby and myself. It will be a go-to book for me as Miles grows and gets older.

-posted by Miss Anna, who will be recommending this book to every Mom that she knows, and thinks that if you get the chance, you should check it out.

People have recommended books galore for us to read, Baby Wise, The Baby Whisperer, Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, Happiest Baby On The Block and the list goes on.  Being the new mom that I am, I figured that I should start reading up on some of these so I can know what I’m doing, right?

Newborn Miles (before the fussies start)

Well, I remember my second day alone with Miles and my mom had said she was headed over to help and hang out. As soon as she opened the door to our apartment, I burst into tears! It had been an awful day the day before and a really tough night. I was so ready for some reinforcements by the dawn’s early light!

While being able to process out loud some of my thoughts, I realized that I was carrying a ton of weight on my shoulders about how Miles should conduct his days and nights. All of these books were telling me how to do things and I was thought that I was gleaning from all of them. I would read a book and then try to put into practice what they had ‘suggested’.

Finally, I realized that my sweet baby boy did not fit into any book! He is his own little person and he has to figure out a schedule of his own. His tummy will tell him when he is hungry and his eyes will tell him when he is tired.  And as for being a mom, I had to trust my instincts and listen to my baby.  So, I returned all the books to the various friends and libraries and set out on my own to figure this new thing out!

With all of this new information being thrown my way, I did retain some. One book, however, I pick up and read as Miles grows. This book is called The Wonder Weeks. I have to say, this book is such a lifesaver to me! If anything, this book gives me peace of mind that whenever I couldn’t and can’t figure out what is going on with my new little one, he is more than likely growing. And with that, comes a whole bunch of changes in behavioral patterns.

This book covers the 10 fussiest phases in a baby’s first year and a half. Through these fussy phases come wonderful leaps forward in a baby’s development. He learns new skills through these fussy times and is proud to show them when they are through the storm.

If anything, this book taught me to let go of having control. To know that if Miles is in a proven ‘fussy time’, that his normal day to day patterns might be a little off. So if he wants to eat every 2 hours and sleep for 4, it’s ok. If he is staying awake for 3 hours at a time, it’s ok. If he is crying and clinging to me, it’s ok (even if I’m totally annoyed with this!).

-posted by Miss Anna, who will tell you the rest of the story (aka “magical leaps forward”) tomorrow.

In Spring and Summer, the outside world is chock full of colors, smells, tastes, sounds, and things to touch. By this time of year, socks and shoes are back on, mittens cover little fingers, and hats muffle noises.

Did you know that together, hands and feet have over 40,000 touch receptors? Pull off those socks and mittens and take advantage of those 40,000 learning possibilities! Here are some ideas:

Note: All of these work equally well for hands or feet. A tablecloth/oilcloth on the floor or bathtub work well for the feet activities, and a highchair tray or wax paper on a table is a perfect place to contain the mess made by experimenting little hands. Be sure to talk about what your little one is “feeling” (slippery, soft, rough, smooth, scratchy, bumpy).

• Squirt shaving cream or whipped cream onto feet, or in little mounds on a high chair tray for exploration.
• Put dried beans or breakfast cereal in a box or plastic tub. Place packing peanuts or crumpled paper in the other box. Let your little one stomp and jump and kick away. (With your help, a non-walker can do this, too.)
•  Make a box of ribbon and fabric scraps of various textures (satin, grosgrain, fleece, burlap, vinyl) for exploration.
• Take those ribbons and scraps of fabric, add some cotton balls, and put them on floor for your little one to crawl or walk across.
• Cook noodles, oatmeal, rice or jello. Name the different textures as you play with them.
• Mix cornstarch and water until you get a goop about the consistency of glue.  Add food coloring if you wish. This is a non-toxic mixture, so no worries if a little bit gets eaten.

This is not the time to try and contain the mess! Frequently, the messier the experience, the more is learned. Think about it – the more touch receptors (and other senses) that are involved, the stronger and more permanent the learning will be.

-posted by Miss Analiisa, whose favourite sensory activity involves sand between her toes.

Brain Rules for Baby

This Seattleite and UW professor opens his book by debunking a few of the parenting myths we have come to believe.  Taking on these preconceptions and misconceptions, Dr. Medina uses the latest in research (only peer-reviewed and successfully replicated) to fill the next nearly 300 pages with specific strategies towards raising a smart and happy child.

One thought-provoking and foundational insight having particular application to our Kindermusik classes is Medina’s proposition that the fundamental job of the baby’s brain is not to learn, but to survive!  “We do not survive so that we can learn.  We learn so that we can survive.”

Hence, our fundamental job as parents and teachers is not so much to provide a steady stream of baby educational dvds, flashcards or early childhood French lessons, as it is to provide an environment of safety where learning can happen. When the brain feels safe its busy neurons are free to complete the thousands of connections needed to fully wire the brain….but not until! 

So what are some of the things that affect the safety level of our children?

*Attachment – From the birth canal babies are looking for attachments, their brains acutely attentive to the care being received.  If essential needs are being met and healthy bonding (lots of touch and “face” time!) is occurring there is a positive outcome, if not, there is another outcome.

*Stress levels – A stressful environment (angry or emotionally violent, exhibiting relational/marital conflict) signals to baby a lack of safety. Dr Medina does a fantastic job of pinpointing and addressing particularly prenatal stress and marital conflict.  He provides solid insights to bring about change to both areas.

In our Kindermusik classes our first and primary goal is to signal “this is a safe environment” to all children.  From the welcome song where one discovers he or she not only “belongs” to this community, but is recognized as a valued individual, to the snuggle time where we turn back to receive the gentle care of a loved one, we sing and dance and snuggle our way to a place where learning can thrive and happy neurons connect at an alarming rate!

Take a moment for this online parenting quiz and discover what parenting myths you may be holding dear!

-posted by Miss Colleen, who suddenly realizes how grateful she is to have been born into a nearly television free world….Ah, the benefits of age!

This final chapter in Medina’s book is on the innate exploratory nature of human beings. It starts at birth.  Babies are little scientists, he explains.  Their behavior from the womb is driven by their curiosity.  He describes how he did an experiment with his newborn, discovering that this little baby would imitate his dad when he stuck out his tongue—at 30 minutes old.  Mirror neurons residing in the brain are “cells whose activity reflects their surroundings.” In other words, our brains have cells that allow us to quickly imitate a behavior we have seen for the first time. That’s some fast track learning.

But according to Medina, our brains are meant to continue to explore for a lifetime. “Researchers have shown that some regions of the adult brain stay as malleable as a baby’s brain, so we can grow new connections, strengthen exiting connections and even create new neurons, allowing all of us to be lifelong learners.” Most of us know some of these amazing senior citizens whose brains can run circles around their juniors.  My aunt was one of those. Curious until her body failed, she was a classic addicted-to-learning person. And she was so fun to be around because she was so alive.  She asked questions and made interesting observations and had great sense of humor too.  Her brain was making new neural connections until it quit.  I’m convinced of it.

The fuel for all learning is curiosity.  Medina points us back to children. They are inherently curious. They are constant learners. During most of their early years, they are “little scientists,” Medina explains. They are asking questions, forming hypothesis, conducting experiments, noting the results and repeating them.  For example: What will happen if I push my bowl of spaghetti off the edge of the tray?  There it goes!  That was fun. I got a lot of attention and I liked how the sound and the way the stuff flew. I wonder what will happen if I do that again?

A sense of wonder or curiosity is the final subject of Medina’s book. He believes it is the most important brain rule of all!  As a research scientist and educator, his passion is learning.  He was encouraged by his mother to stoke the fuel of his curiosity, and he has. And he wants us to as well, in how we raise our children, run our businesses and develop our education system. If we follow the science of brain rules, we’ll find joy, he concludes.

“For little ones, discovery brings joy. Like an addictive drug, exploration increases the need for more discovery so that more joy can be experienced. It’s a straight up reward system that, if allowed to flourish, will continue into the school years. As children get older, they find that learning not only brings them joy, but it also brings them mastery. Expertise in specific subjects breeds the confidence to take intellectual risks. If these kids don’t end up in the emergency room, they may end up with a Nobel Prize.”

Thanks for a great book, John. I learned a lot!

-posted by Donna Detweiler, who finds homeschooling is a sneaky way to keep on learning as an adult.

Here are a few ideas to stimulate our thinking about finding music events outside-the-home in our communities.

Kindermusik classes are outstanding once-a-week classes that provide your child with a musical experience with “home-work” (really, “home-play”) and resources (CD’s, musical instruments, books and activity guides) to keep music a focus of your child’s life all week long.

Libraries usually provides a few concerts for kids throughout the year.  In addition, the library has the information about what other concerts and music events are happening in the area. Asking questions will get us plugged into the resources for our music quest.

Public schools perform throughout the year.  The high school concerts can be good enough quality and the musical selections are most often classics. Another benefit is that kids get to see kids performing, giving them a vision for their own musical involvement.

Community colleges also have concerts open to the public that are free or low cost, usually with an increase in quality as the students are older.

Churches have been a harbinger of great music for centuries. Today many churches are still active music venues.  Not only do they often have their own semi-professional choirs or bands, but they often invite other performers in for special concerts.  Around the holidays, churches are the best place to find free musical events to attend or to be involved in. Special Christmas choirs welcome children.  Some churches offer free or low cost musical lessons.  The internet can help us search for these opportunities locally.

Local symphonies commonly offer student ticket rates or special children’s events.  These folks know that their survival depends on the next generation falling in love with classical music.  As a community organization, their goal is to get their music out to the public, not be exclusive. So ask for a discount or scholarship if needed!

Bookstores like Third Place Books and Barnes and Nobles offer free musical events all year long.  During long winter days, these concerts can save the day.  Their schedules are often posted or printed for busy parents to take along, or available on the internet.

Summer concert series are just about done for the season.  In most communities, we can find a free outdoor concert at least one day of the week, if not more.  My friend’s community combined their concerts with the farmers markets.  Any place people gather in the summer, people are likely to include music.

With a little planning, our kids can have a rich musical experience.  Such a variety is available whether we’re investing big money, or living on a shoestring in a down economy. Our children’s lives can be enriched as we dish up a good serving of music daily, whether at home or outside.

-posted by Donna Detweiler, who is encouraged that a child’s musical diet doesn’t need to be skimpy even in lean economic times!

When I heard about this messy movement, it captured my attention.  Are my standards too high I wondered?  Am I bowing to the gods of neatness when my time could be better spent elsewhere?  Mind you, we’re not talking about dishes left in the sink for days, or filthy bathrooms. We’re talking about how picked up and beautiful we feel our house should look all the time.  You know that fleeting ideal– how the house looks when there are no people in it.  When the cleaning lady (me) has finished and no one is home yet, or before the guests arrive for our child’s birthday party with its festive table setting.

When I heard of the messy movement, I immediately thought of a few friends who I’ve always admired for their toleration of mess—no kidding! There’s Caroline (name changed just in case she doesn’t yet see being messy as an admirable trait.) When you enter her house, you notice that her main living room has a large pop-up princess fort and one of those crawling tunnels.  The Little Tykes kitchen is in the corner with the cookware and fake food strewn around.  Living in a chilly, rainy climate, these toys provide an indoor large motor play place for her children.  Because the living room has the most space, they use it for what their family needs most in this phase of life. On the occasions that grown-ups are over, the stuff gets moved, but on a daily basis, the living room is play central. That practical attitude gets a messy award!

Another friend of mine has a messy art table by their front door (which I blogged about earlier this year).  No hiding away this messy space in shame.  Art projects are not interrupted prematurely by a need to clean. Once in a while pens and paint jars are capped, but not before some have dried to a crust.  Piles of paper grace the floor and scissors, crayons and glue cover the table top.  A true messy haven for a budding artist, who paints and draws for hours each day I’m told.

The point of the messy movement, I would guess, is not mess for its own sake.  It’s a reaction to a perfectionistic mentality. When we have an unhealthy ideal of what our home should look like, we can be so driven to achieve this unrealistic goal that we drive ourselves and our families crazy.  We aren’t having any fun and neither is anybody else as we chase this illusion of a perfect home.

Parents, I have a proclamation for us:  Family life is messy.  Seems to me the messy movement is all about bringing balance to our lives.  There’s a time to clean and a time to be messy.  When our children are young, it is the time to be messy.  Celebrating messy is part of celebrating kids.  So let’s spend a bit less time restacking the Tupperware they’ve thrown into the cupboard (or whatever our neatness obsession is), and more time taking our kids out to the garden to play.  Afterwards we can cut some beautiful flowers to put in a vase for the kitchen table. We can clear a space for it in the middle.

-posted by Donna Detweiler who hears there’s plenty of time to have a clean house (and be lonely and wish it were messy again) after the kids are gone. 

So the goal today is to get us thinking about how to up our kids’ consumption of good music on a daily basis.  Note:  I’m not talking about adding Musak to life but asking how can we thoughtfully include music in our children’s lives which will enrich their lives and, as research shows, their brain development.

Here are a few ideas to get us thinking about how to tune in to more music throughout a typical day.

Morning:  How about teaching our kids to start their day with music? If our children don’t already have their own music machine, it’s never too early. Little hands love to make music happen all by themselves. For toddlers, a cassette player or a low end CD player is perfect. Fisher Price makes a classic cassette player that can even survive a bouncing solo trip down a flight of stairs. We know. At a favorite thrift store we can find old music machines that are perfect for children to use without parental oversight.  When they break, we’re usually out less that $10!

V-Tech and Fisher Price make varieties of button pushing, music making balls, caterpillars, keyboards etc.  It’s wise to look for musical toys that have tunes that we like too:  Some have classical fare.  Others a variety of classic folk tunes.  Most of us avoid the toys with repetitive ditties that stick annoyingly in our heads for days to come.

For morning listening, an accessible basket or book shelf can contain a selection of music they can pop in first thing. We have picked these out together at the library, music store or from the family collection. Depending on our families’ taste and tolerance for morning noise, we can choose Kindermusik CDs, wake up music like John Phillips Souza marches, mellow or peppy praise songs, or story songs.  The choices are endless.  The point is to make the choices versus letting the radio DJ’s choose; though that’s not bad if we have a station that chooses the songs we love.

Older kids may have an IPod which can be loaded with selections, however because listening with ear buds cuts our child off from the family community, I wouldn’t encourage the habit of using them unless travelling or in a situation where individualized entertainment is happening.  An IPod docking station with good speakers works great for sharing music as a family.

Mid-morning Snack/Music breaks:  Consider adding a music selection to snack time as a part of the routine for preschoolers.  They love to listen together or with a parent, and will likely clap or sing along. Having musical instruments of their own available increases the fun.

Lunch time: We are more likely to sit with our preschoolers at lunch time, so it can be an opportunity to share music that we love. We can chat about the kind of songs, the instruments, musical patterns, or simply tell the story of why we love them.  Choosing new music from the library can make a fun, listening memory with our kids. Do we like the new CD or not? Why?  Can we hear the tuba, or the piccolo? Can we hear a repeated line of music?  Does it make us want to march, dance, cry or take a rest?

Afternoon rest time:  Surprisingly, I vividly recall my own preschool nap time with affection.  My teacher would play Disney recordings as we lay quietly on our mats.  Cinderella was my favorite. Today there are so many delightful story/song recordings available. Now that I have school age children, listening to radio drama has often been a highlight of our homeschool day.

Dinner time:  When my son was newborn, my husband would come home from work, put on a CD and recline in the chair with our son on his chest. They enjoyed hours of music together in this manner.  By the time our boy was a toddler, he would flap and wave his arms gleefully when one of their favorite CDs was played.  Those two share a close relationship.  I suspect the shared music helped create their bond.  Listening to music as a family at dinner time can create lifelong memories for kids. The winding down time right before or after dinner is also a good time listening to story or music recordings.

Bedtime:  Bedtime routine lends itself naturally to music. Many kids like to fall asleep to a beloved lullaby CD.  The calming effect of music is legendary.  From Brahms lullabies to Jim Brickman piano solos, the options are endless. The challenge is to try some new ones now and then.  Kids can fall in love with more than one bedtime CD.

Kids can never get enough of the sweet stuff of life, which includes music.  So, how about giving them some more…please.

-posted by Donna Detweiler, whose musical taste is quite varied, but she has a sweet spot of bluegrass.

I love how Wikipedia defines art: “Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions and intellect.”

That definition totally fits with what we know about brain development from birth to 7. During this period, the brain’s entire job is to organize information (deliberately arrange items) it receives from all the senses (sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, vestibular, proprioceptive), and then learn what to do with that info.

Every time a child has a sensory experience and the brain processes (organizes) the input, neural networks are formed. Your child chooses to engage in the arts during play because he or she instinctively knows the arts are the best way to develop the brain.

As a side note, these networks are largely completed by the age of 5, and after the age of 8, neural pathways that aren’t well traveled are pruned away. (Which is why children who learn a second language during the preschool years speak like natives, and most of us who didn’t take Spanish until high school will always sound like, well…embarrassing.)

Okay. Back to the arts. Arts, especially music, help wire the brain for the kind of learning that occurs in school after the age of seven.

The Encyclopedia Britannica says that art is “the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others.” Sharing the arts (group dances, playing instruments in ensemble, working together on a painting) enhances social skills.

The arts also develop essential thinking tools such as perception, attention, symbolic thinking, self-regulation, pattern recognition, reasoning, intuition, memory, differentiation, manipulation, encoding and decoding. Lots of big concepts, but what does this all translate to?

Your child’s painting and dancing and sculpting and especially music making in the preschool years, is the best thing you can do now to help your child later become an avid reader, a lover of math, a self-confident teenager, a curious chemist, a successful entrepreneur, and, of course, an accomplished musician.

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who suggests taking inventory of your art baskets and music making and creating supplies this summer, and making sure they well stocked.  

In order to parent well, it is critical to figure out how to get regular refreshment!  But how can we do it? One deterrent is that many of us believe that the only people who can give our child safe good care is a parent or relative.  And many of us don’t have any relatives living nearby. With this line of thinking comes over-protection and burnout. In reality, when we think this way, we may end up limiting our child’s experiences because exposure to safe others will enrich his life more than we can alone! Even as an infant, our child can benefit from experiencing loving interaction from a variety of people.

I can hear many of your saying, “I’d love to take time for myself, but I just don’t know anyone to help.”  Because I lived far away from my family, I experienced this acutely.  While it takes time to develop trusted friendships when you don’t have family around, developing a network of close friends is essential for family health.

Getting out and being an initiator is key.  One of my friends set the pace for this by organizing a babysitting co-op among the moms she knew and trusted from church and play activities she attended. She worked as an engineer before staying home with her children, and she found that she needed to get out more to be fulfilled at home and be a better parent, but she didn’t have a lot of family in the area.

She took action and started a babysitting co-op.  Members of the babysitting co-op each received a number of “baby bucks.”  Each buck was worth an hour of sitting.  We’d call each other up and arrange sitting for doctor’s appointments, date nights, grocery shopping, whatever! When someone ran low on baby bucks they would invite other moms to drop off their kids to earn more bucks, especially if they had a theater night or dinner party, or other outing coming up.

Getting refreshed regularly is SO important for a parent.  Find out what refreshes you and do it.  Enlist the help of friends if needed.  Take the initiative! A babysitting co-op is a great idea.

The exhausted new mom I spent time with at the wedding was doing such a great job.  However I know she’ll need to take some time for herself again if she wants to maintain a healthy balance—which is critical to parenting at her best.

Posted by Donna Detweiler who would like to thank babysitting co-op creator Liana for her honesty, courage and initiative!