7 Everyday Habits That Interfere With How Your Toddler Learns Ep 165

Do you jump in the second your baby struggles? Wipe her face after every bite? Keep the TV or a podcast running because the house feels too quiet?

These are ordinary, loving habits — but sometimes our instinct to help, clean, entertain, or keep things moving can quietly take away the very experiences our babies and toddlers need to grow.

In this episode, Erin Hyer, speech-language pathologist and early child development specialist, walks through 7 loving habits that can slow your child’s development — and explains what is happening underneath each one.

You’ll learn why it matters to:

• give your child time to struggle and problem-solve
• prioritize floor time over too much container time
• protect quiet so language can develop
• let babies explore food without constant wiping and interruption
• give toddlers enough time to process and respond
• allow boredom and child-led play
• follow your child’s attention instead of constantly redirecting it

This is not about guilt or doing everything perfectly.

It’s about noticing the small patterns that fill your child’s day — and knowing when to step in, when to wait, and when a few extra seconds of space may be exactly what development needs.

Sometimes slowing down is exactly what gives your child enough room to do the growing.

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Educational and coaching information only. This episode is not a substitute for an individual speech-language, developmental, behavioral, or medical evaluation.

Because the little years are the big years.

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Erin 0:01

Do you wipe your toddler's face several times during a meal? Maybe you turn on the TV because the house feels too quiet, or perhaps you just jump in the second he begins to struggle. Those are three of seven completely ordinary, loving habits that can quietly interfere with healthy development. You don't have to be doing all seven. Maybe there's just one that you haven't thought about before. But by the end of this episode, you'll understand what's happening inside each of these everyday moments and the small shift that gives your child more room to grow. Imagine this: Your daughter reaches for a toy that's just outside of her grasp. She stretches, she grunts a little bit, she starts to fuss. So what do you do? You slide it right next to her hand and she grabs it. Problem solved. Now, think of this: Your son smears yogurt across his tray, and before he can reach back in to get a real taste, you catch that mess and wipe it all up. Or maybe your toddler is outside and crouched over a leaf, completely absorbed. You think it's adorable, so you kneel down beside her and say, "Look at mommy. Smile." Now, don't get me wrong. None of these are meant to get in the way. They come from love. We want to help and clean. We want to teach and engage. But sometimes, without realizing it, we step into a moment our child actually needed to experience all by themselves. I'm Erin Hyer, an early child development specialist and speech-language pathologist, and I have spent nearly 40 years working with babies, toddlers, and their beautiful families raising them. And here is something I have seen over and over again. The habits that can get in the way of healthy development usually don't come from parents who aren't paying attention. They come from parents who are paying very close attention, parents who care so much that it's hard to watch your toddler struggle or to leave a mess alone or to allow a quiet moment to stay quiet. So today, we're going to look at seven of those very common habits, not so you'll feel guilty about them, just so you can begin to recognize in the moment and know when your child actually needs your help and when a better choice is to give him or her a little more room. So let's begin by slowing down and taking notice, not to actually look at it from a fear perspective, and certainly not to chase perfection, just to notice. As babies become more mobile and messy and verbal, and certainly opinionated, we naturally start expecting more from them. "Ah, she's just being difficult." Or you would say, "Hmm, he knows better." But they are still profoundly new to this whole world, still learning what their bodies can do, what textures feel like, how to communicate effectively, how to wait, and how to trust. and most of that learning happens in moments that look insignificant to you and me. They're reaching for that toy. They're squishing that yogurt. They're waiting just a bit after you actually say something to them. Maybe they are just studying that leaf. That's where development truly lives, in the rhythm of everyday ordinary life. Your child doesn't need you to manufacture her development. She needs you to create the conditions where it can unfold naturally, to create safety and comfort, connection, movement, participation, and time. So we're going to look at these seven ordinary habits, not mistakes, but opportunity. For each one, I'll show you what's happening developmentally and then one small shift you can make starting today. So, so you don't really have to stop and think too heavy, I have put all seven on a simple one-page guide with one action step for each. It's free, and I'll tell you where to get the link at the end. So let's begin with the one that may be the hardest for loving parents. It's knowing when to help and knowing when to wait. That's a tricky one. I think a lot of us are helping too quickly, especially in this early stage of that early toddler, that, that 12 and 16 and 18 and 20-month-old. So let's go back to, to the example I gave. Your baby is reaching for a toy that's just beyond her fingertips, and like I said, she stretches, she shifts her body. There's some grunting going on. She reaches again. And sh- some fussing can really occur, and y- that's what you respond to. Because you love her and because it's hard to watch her struggle, you move the toy closer, and it's simple. Problem is solved. She's happy, and you're relieved. and of course, handing your baby a toy every so often will not technically interfere with her development, but if we keep stepping in too quickly before your child actually has time to work on it, you may be taking away hundreds of tiny opportunities to notice, to attempt, to adjust, and then to try again. That small struggle is not empty time for her. Your baby is calculating the distance with her eyes and her body. She's doing a lot of judgment. She's learning how to shift her weight, coordinating her muscles, her upper motor neurons, right, her arms and her legs, her lower motor neurons. So if your child's a little bit older and beyond the early crawling stage, maybe the challenge would be crawling over a cushion or beginning to fit a shape into a container. Perhaps he's learning how to pull off a lid or stacking two blocks together, finding that balance. These are early experiences with motor planning naturally built in, attention, persistence, and problem-solving. Researchers studying this age group sometimes call it autonomy-supportive caregiving, and it simply means that you stay close without taking the task away. You're available, and you're ready to help as needed, but you let your child do as much of the work as she or he can. And I assure you, after decades of watching parents and children together, I can tell you that loving parents often step in before their child actually asked for help. We mistake the effort for distress. So we hear a grunt or we see some frustration start to percolate and we think they're saying, that, that, that behavior is saying, "Please do this for me." But concentration often is noisy. And think about it from your child's perspective. They're new to this world. They're starting to move about and gaining some independence. And you notice something that you want that looks interesting, so your body is working out, "How do I reach that? How do I get me here to over there?" And say you're working through it and you're almost there and you are grunting and a little frustrated, and then a big, giant hand, enters the scene, finishes the job, hand you the item, and done. Now, does that matter if you do that once in a while? Of course not. But what if it becomes a pattern? Your child gets the object, but misses opportunity after opportunity to actually build the skill to coordinate herself, to make that judgment and correct in real time. So think of it this way. The goal is not to leave your baby frustrated and alone. That's not the goal. And babies need s- responsive adults. I talk about that all the time. And certainly toddlers need help when the challenge becomes too much. So we're talking about the space between effortless and being overwhelmed. There's a big gray area there that we have to learn how to live in. So before you reach in and help, just pause. Watch for a second or two. And there are many, many times in my therapy career that I've literally had to put my hand out to a parent and say, "Wait a- are her eyes still on the goal? Is sh- is her body still trying to work through it? Is she experimenting trying it this way and maybe that way? Now, can you make the challenge just a little bit easier without actually completing it? That's always an option as well. Maybe you move the toy just one inch closer instead of handing it to her. Maybe you hold the container steady while she pulls and tugs the lid off. Maybe you simply say, "You're working hard. That's tricky. Almost there." Helping does not always mean doing, Sometimes helping means staying close enough to provide safety and a sense of confidence while leaving enough space for your child to discover, "Hey, my effort actually changed something. I achieved something that I was working toward." Because long before your child solves problems with words, she or he, they're solving problems with their bodies. They're organizing that whole thought process physically in this three-dimensional world. So that brings me to habit number two, and I often refer to this as container captivity. Is your child spending too much time in containers? And so I want to be careful here. It's- I am not saying that every stroller or high chair or car seat or bouncer is harmful. They're not. You know, let's take a look. The, the car seat protects your baby in the car. That's a no-brainer, right? The high chair provides a stable place to eat. Again, no- no brainer. The stroller lets your whole family get outside for extended periods, and the bouncer may actually give you those 10 precious moments to take a shower. That's a true blessing. So the problem isn't using containers. It's when they become quietly your baby's main environment. So I want you to just take a couple of seconds here and I want you to think through an ordinary morning. You put the baby in the bouncer while you get dressed. You place him in the high chair for breakfast, and then you put him in a stroller for your morning walk. And then you put him in the car seat because you have a few errands. Maybe an activity center, you know, you have to keep him stimulated, right? And then back into the car seat. Each piece of time seems reasonable in and of itself, but added together, your baby may spend much of his or her waking day positioned, supported, and restrained, And the floor, the place where they actually discover what their body can do, gets whatever time is left over. On the floor, think of it, your baby kicks. They turn their head. They track people moving about the room. They reach across their body. They begin to roll. They push up to their arms. They rock back and forth. They fall over. She shifts her weight. They get stuck, right? They, they crawl sideways, and then they reorganize. They fall down. Try it again. That is not random movement. her balance system and body awareness system are learning to work together. She's learning where her body is in the space, how much force is needed to move something, right? How to recover when she does lose her balance, and how one movement actually changes what happens next. That's the foundation beneath sitting, and crawling, and walking, and climbing, and talking, and thinking, and all of it. So you don't have to memorize all of this science and neurological terms. You simply need to understand in a container, the equipment is organizing her body and actually restraining her from g- giving her the opportunity to move. But on the floor, your baby must organize his own body. That is the work. That is the learning. And I don't often quote the World Health Organization, but their guidance here is actually worth noting. they encourage frequent floor-based activity for babies and toddlers, and strongly discourage long periods of restraint. since we're on the topic of, of containers, I want to just take a side note here about baby walkers, because I still see it, and I'm a little surprised. But mobile baby walkers do not teach babies to walk sooner, period. There is no established developmental advantage. However, there is a very real injury risk. And when I was preparing for this episode, I found that since 1997, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, the CPSC, has actually issued more than 30 separate recalls and safety warnings involving sit-in mobile baby walkers. And on top of that, the American Academy of Pediatrics, with the CPSC, have both advised against using mobile infant walkers because babies can move quickly toward the stairs, hot surfaces, pools, and other hazards before an adult can ever reach them. And I know what some of you are thinking. "Hey, we don't use the rolling kind. We use the stationary version." Okay. That certainly is safer from all of these major fall hazards that are associated with the mobile ones, but it is still equipment that holds your baby's posture and restrains your baby's movement. And what truly matters is when it begins taking time away from the unrestricted movement that your baby and toddlers need to practice on the floor, right? Stationary activity centers can be useful for a short period, but They should never be a substitute for the floor, Your baby still needs long stretches where she or he can move freely, shift his own weight, work against gravity, fall, recover, try again. So I'm not asking you to throw away every piece of baby equipment. I am asking you to notice how the minutes add up. Just do a simple container inventory, not through guilt, but with curiosity. How much of your baby's waking time is spent supported or restrained? And could 10 or 15 minutes move from the bouncer to the floor? Could some time in the activity center become crawling or rolling or reaching, right? Pushing against you playfully. Use the container when it serves a real purpose. Remember that shower. Then return your baby to movement, because movement is not something babies do after learning is finished. Movement is how your babies learn So while we're looking at the whole physical environment, I also want to look at another part of the environment we often don't recognize or notice, and that's sound. So that brings us to habit number three, background noise. So let's imagine this, right? Your baby is playing peacefully on the floor. You're, you're doing what I suggested in habit number two. Put him on the floor, give him some free open space. And his back is actually turned toward the television, so he's not even really looking at it. It's not like you put a children's show on for him. You simply turned on a show for yourself, right? Maybe it's the news or a podcast or a familiar show because the house felt too quiet. And I understand this. Being at home with babies and toddlers can really feel repetitive and very isolating, especially if you're used to adult conversation and that this is a new rhythm, right? You're used to a faster pace, and raising young children is very different. So a- again, I'm not looking at an occasional show that your child might listen or hear in the background. What I'm concerned about is when that becomes the actual atmosphere of your home, that that's just your go-to, your default, The television or a podcast. even the phone or a smart speaker. Videos are running in the background all day long and you're just living your life. Because I want you to understand that adults are fairly good at pushing irrelevant sound into the background, There's not a necessarily competition for you and me, We have an auditory, or we have a mature auditory system that can separate that background from the foreground. But your child isn't there yet. They're still underdeveloped. Her brain is still learning which sounds matter She's pre-wired to pull out h- the human voice, but if there's a lot of noise competing with it, so your voice may be competing with the television dialogue, music, commercials, even the dishwasher or the dog, right? Everything else around her is competing with your voice. So one way researchers talk about this is i- identifying it as signal-to-noise ratio. How clearly can the important sounds, right, your voice, stand out from everything that's competing with it? And remember what your baby is trying to do during these first three years, She's learning how to listen, how to understand spoken language, how to build tolerance for turn-taking and waiting, and eventually learn how to talk with you. That's an enormous developmental job. And here's the part that matters most. Background television doesn't just add noise. It can change the interaction between you, the parent, and your child. When background television is on, studies have found that parents tend to talk less with their children, And the quality of the interactions become shorter and more fragmented. The television may be playing for you to fill in that, that quiet, but it still changes what happens between you and your child. Think about it through your child's ears, Your voice matters because it belongs to you. They're building a relationship with you, and it connects directly with what's happening in real time. So you begin to notice things. "Oh, your sock came off," right? "Oh, you found the ball. Ooh, that water is cold." Those words mean something because they belong to the moment that you're sharing together. Your baby doesn't need more words floating in the air and they're just pulling it out, She needs relevant words that are attached to shared experiences. That's how language develops. So with this habit consideration, protect some of the quiet, When you go down on the floor, make that without television, The first part of your morning without a podcast. And most importantly, I think, share your meals together without anything playing in the background, that you're truly in it with your child. So you don't need to live in absolute silence. I'm not suggesting that. But again, be mindful and strategic. We do need to stop treating background noise as neutral Because it's anything but. I encourage you to be brave and be unconventional. Turn it off. and it might be a little awkward for you in the very beginning, but you'll get acclimated, I am sure. So just listen, right? You might hear them babbling more. True words are popping out. You might notice what your child is actually interested in or curious about. And at the end of the day, you might actually say fewer words. However, they're more meaningful because there's less distraction for you, and you're attaching them to real things in real time. our next habit also comes from wanting to take care of something quickly, So it's really centered around mealtime, So parents will often tend to clean up the tray, the face, and the hands numerous times during a meal. So let's say your baby just started solids, Or you have been in it for six or eight months and they still haven't quite got the table manners down, right? So you're sitting there and there's yogurt all over the tray or maybe avocado between her fingers, something's in her hair, and you're standing nearby with a, a wet wipe ready to clean it up, right? So you swipe her hand, you wipe off her cheek, you clean the tray, give her fresh food, Take another bite, honey. But then there's another wipe, another clean. You're not trying to create any problems. I understand that. You're trying to take care of your child, feed them and, and really keep the mess to a minimum. you're trying to keep the food on the tray instead of all over the kitchen. But repeated cleaning can literally bump up against the two things that your baby is working very hard to build right now, and that's sensory tolerance and participation. I want you to think about eating as a sensory and motor experience long before it becomes a tidy social skill. Your baby and early toddler is learning through her whole body, The yogurt has to be felt through her hands and her lips, Avocado on the cheek. Something lumpy in their mouth. Something cool versus something sticky. Something slippery, Her sensory system is still learning how to receive all of these textures and temperature, how to organize that, how to get comfortable with all of this information Think about it. Sticky is information. It's different than lumpy. Wet is information. That's different from dry. Every comfortable experience actually helps your baby and toddler build her nervous system. And so she begins to say, in effect, "Oh, I've felt this before. I've tasted this before. I know what this is. I can handle it. This is good." And there's another piece happening all at the same time. She's also learning whether unfamiliar foods or textures are actually safe enough to explore, Children who are especially sensitive to touch and texture are much more likely to reject certain foods. And over time, that can lead to a much narrower range of accepted textures and a very limited food list. And you don't want to go there. You don't want to unintentionally create a picky eater. But here's the good news. That safe and comfortable exposure builds her familiarity, builds their ability to tolerate newness. Your child gets acclimated because she has had chances to see the food, and touch the food, and smell the food, and taste the food, and squish the food, and then come back to it all on her own terms. So in all of the feeding work that I've studied and applied over the last 20 years, we often talk about how a new food actually needs up to 15 or more exposures before a young child will really, truly accept it and, and think of it as comfortable or familiar. And sometimes I h- joke with parents because I can say, "It's okay. She can push this new broccoli dish away 14 times and then decide on the 15th time, 'Ah, this isn't so bad. I love broccoli.'" But here's the funny thing: 15 is not a magical number. The point here is early rejection does not mean permanent rejection, and I think a lot of parents get confused here. Familiarity takes experience, takes exposure. And that brings us back to the face wiping and the hands wiping, and whether it's with a cloth or a wet wipe or even a spoon. The concern isn't, an occasional wiping of the face. It's what happens when we keep interrupting that sensory experience because your child needs enough time to explore it. She's touching the yogurt. She's smearing it, maybe bringing some of it to her mouth. And then suddenly a cloth or a spoon appears, so she turns away, right? But you follow her. Sometimes we hold their head to wipe them. We, you and I, will experience that as, oh, just cleaning up. she's experiencing it as interruption. And the truth is it can be quite jarring at times. The result can easily make them associate meals with stress. If that becomes the rhythm of mealtimes, wiping, scraping, redirecting, spooning in yourself, then cleaning up again, we're controlling an experience her sensory system and her curiosity are supposed to be participating in. So I want you to consider this as a practical shift. Save the full cleanup for the end Let her touch, let her explore, let her bring safe foods on her own to her mouth. And yes, of course, we want to teach them how to use a spoon. Give her a spoon when she's able, right? Help her by pr- preloading it and directing her at the elbow so she still has control. But help without taking over is the key here, If something really needs cleaning, then involve her. You say, "Hey, you have yogurt all over your ear." Right? "Let's wipe it off. Here's the cloth. Help mama do it." And then you can actually model on your own face. She'll understand what's happening. Because getting messy, of course, is not the goal here. Learning is the goal. The mess is simply evidence that your child is participating in the learning experience. And this is where I want you to notice something bigger. Parenting babies and toddlers can often feel awkward because we're so unsure of when do I help? When do I wait? How do I clean this up? Right? Do I say something? Right? Do I step in? And when we're unsure, many of us default to the same thing. We begin to rush through the experience. We rush the eating. We rush the cleaning up of the mess. We rush through the struggle. Let's be done with it. We rush through the waiting. We can actually rush through right past a few seconds where your child may have needed to finish the experience all by herself. Not because you're impatient parents, I'm not suggesting that, but it's often because we're trying so hard to be helpful. And that same tendency to rush shows up when we're waiting for your child to actually respond to a directive or a prompt. Giving them that wait time, that grace, is very challenging for a lot of us. So habit number five is rushing through that processing, A- a- and let's start with talking, because talking to our babies is, you know, one of the first things that we, we teach you all, Talking does support connection and language and learning, of course. But many loving, engaged parents actually talk too much. Your toddler is holding a ball, and you see them and you say, "Hey, honey, throw the ball to mommy." And you wait one second. "Come on, throw it." You wait the second second. "The ball right there, honey. Pick it up. Throw the red ball to mommy." Then you point. You can even demonstrate, right? Ask again. Maybe you reach over and do it yourself 'cause you want to show her, you want to model. So the problem isn't that you used a lot of words. It's not even that you stepped in and modeled. The problem is that your child never had time to finish processing the very first directive. Your toddler heard, "Can you throw the ball to mommy?" Now, his brain has to do all of the, the workload, right, the processing, grab ahold of the whole sentence, decode it, figure out what the words mean, connect it to what is in their immediate environment, find the ball, right? Work out, "What does she want me to do with it?" And then turn that understanding into an actual action. That takes time for a young, new language learner, right? That 16-month-old or 20-month-old. But before he finishes that f- processing of the very first sentence, you give him another sentence, and then another. Now, from our perspective, we're just trying to clarify. Maybe he didn't understand. Maybe he, you know, doesn't get it. But from his perspective, more information keeps arriving, and he's having to try to process it. And this is where I think parents can unknowingly make communication harder while trying very hard to help, and I've seen this hundreds and hundreds time in my clinic. There is no magical rule that every toddler requires exactly 10 seconds of processing time before they can generate a response, Some responses are immediate. Some take longer. It depends on your child, his age, the language level, Attention in the moment, what you actually said, how far away were you. All of these variables are happening and needs to be pro- it needs to be calculated on your end. So context matters remarkably. But clinically, one of the simplest things I ask parents to do is this: say less, and then wait Five seconds, sometimes 10. Not because, you know, there's a stopwatch that can really help speed this language processing up, but because silence creates an opening, and what happens inside that opening really matters. There's a lot of things happening. You say something, your child looks. Maybe he begins to reach or point. Maybe he begins to utter some sounds, moves toward the ball, eventually says a word. That's his turn, all of it, and then you respond back to him. That's the communication, verbal and non-verbal. Researchers studying early language consistently find that that back and forth, that serve and return, matters tremendously It's not simply the number of words that your child hears or can regurgitate. It's the exchange in the moment. You, your child, you again, that serve and return I talk a lot about here. And your child's turn does not have to be verbal all the time, right? Could be a glance, a shrug, right? A gesture, a reach counts. A close approximation of speech counts. And what I want you to, to be mindful of, respond to all of it. "Ah, you found it. You want me to roll it again? Whoa, that surprised you." when adults routinely answer, repeat, prompt, or finish before your child gets a turn, another message can quietly creep into the interaction subconsciously. It could be there's not enough room for me here to try. Why bother trying? She's going to just fill in the blank anyway. She's going to do it for me. And that's where I see a lot of families who come to me and say they understand everything. They just simply won't talk. Maybe we've been filling in the white space, the quiet too much. And I, I know that's not what any parent intends. But if we fill every pause, your child can begin to wait for us instead of initiating And like I said, unfortunately it happens more than we actually want to admit. So try something very simple. Move close, right? And say, "Hmm, the ball rolled." Then wait. Actually wait. But here's the key: look interested, not urgent, so you don't have a sense of urgency like, "Say something now. It's your turn." Right? And this is really where my first P, present, truly lives, Your face and body are saying, "I trust you. Take your time. I believe you have something to contribute." That pause with that sense of confidence in them may feel very long to you and a little bit uncomfortable, but tremendous communication can be born inside that silence, I assure you Because it isn't really empty silence. Your child is still reading your face, getting in sync with your posture and your, your tone your attention There is nonverbal message laying underneath that waiting, Saying through my body language, "You've got this, and I, I, I'm here with you." And once we get comfortable not filling every pause with words, we also have to get comfortable not filling every quiet moment with an activity. So that brings us to habit number six, and I look at it as entertaining our children during every waking moment. So let, let's think about this. Your baby's awake, fed, they're clean, they're comfortable, they're safe. Maybe you even place them on the floor. But they're just sitting there, right? She looks around like, "Huh," So what do you do? You step in and start making some noises, You start playfully engaging with her. Maybe she begins to fuss, so you think, "Oh, I have to do something," Otherwise, she's gonna break down. So you bring out a musical toy. You start singing, Shaking the rattle, demonstrating, the wheels on the bus go round and round. Anything to get her engaged, You're redirecting her to you, and then you're performing. Now, I think we've created a strange, modern pressure to entertain our children during every waking moment. I, I see it no matter wh- where the parent or the family dynamics are, it, it's across ages and stages. But I also think along with feeling like we have to entertain our kids, we have this fear or this high resistance toward boredom, And of course, I'm not saying that playing joyfully with your baby can be problematic, Babies need our faces. They need our voices. I, I teach that all day, every day. They thrive with songs and games and routines and laughter, right? Shared delight. You're building that connection. But when the adult supplies every idea and fills every open moment, when does your child actually practice generating one on their own? When does she discover what actually catches her attention? When does he decide what to do next What we grownups often call boredom may sometimes be nothing more than that brief space before curiosity actually organizes itself, right? Play supports language and problem-solving, self-regulation, relationships, attention, and that famous executive function. And child-driven play matters because your child is doing something very different from following your demonstration. She initiates. She is choosing. He is trying something on his own and then repeating, maybe change course, come back to something they did a few minutes ago. And this doesn't stop with babies, I assure you. Toddlers and preschoolers need this too. A cardboard box, a few blocks, a wooden spoon, some water and dirt, right, sticks, dress-up clothes. Simple materials can become something completely different when your child gets to decide what happens next. He builds the idea. He changes the idea. He follows his own curiosity. and that kind of child-led play is where imagination lives. Problem-solving, persistence, and independence, all of that starts to grow inside And I think there's a simple developmental question worth asking. If the adult always creates the next experience, how does your child actually learn to generate all on their own? You don't have to be the, your child's cruise director. You can be available without actually performing in that learning experience. I want you to picture this. Your child is sitting on the floor with some wooden spoons, She starts to flip them over, maybe starts tapping them a few times on the floor. Maybe pushes up against a, a book, But before she can actually try again, you introduce a flashing toy and begin demonstrating three different ways that we can use it. Your idea just replaced hers. So begin with small stretches of open time. You can sit by, be present in the moment, and just place two or three safe, simple objects. They could be toy-based or just a household, like wooden spoons. Then don't immediately show her what to do. Let her look. Let her choose and repeat. Drop something. Pick it up. Abandon it. Return to it. And you can, of course, occasionally comment, "Oh, you're tapping. You flipped it over." But resist becoming the activity director, right? If your child is accustomed to constant stimulation, she may protest initially, Especially if the pace slows down. It's gonna be uncomfortable for you and her. But that doesn't necessarily mean something's wrong. It means that you guys are getting adjusted. and it may simply mean that quiet play feels just unfamiliar. So stay nearby. Give her a little time. Let her borrow your confidence. Like, "You've got this. You have good curiosity." And then watch what emerges, because when we stop supplying every idea, we begin to see what naturally captures your child's individual attention. And that's exactly where our seventh habit begins. If we redirect our kids too quickly, it can interfere with their development. So let me set the stage here. Say you're outside and your toddler is looking at an ant, Or maybe they're studying a leaf. Maybe they're just watching water disappear into the dirt, into the soil, a little mud puddle. She's completely absorbed in whatever little outdoor thing caught her attention. So what do you do? You pull out your phone because you think it's adorable. "Sarah, look at mommy. Sweetie, look over here. Say cheese." So she looks up, and you get that photograph, And no, I'm not saying that calling your child's name once in a while will truly interrupt her ability to build attention and focus. I'm not saying that because sometimes we do need to redirect their behavior. Sometimes we need to call them out, uh, because of safety concerns. Sometimes we really do just need that picture. I get that. But I want you to notice how often you or other adults in her life pull them away from what interests them and toward what we want them to notice, We want eye contact and connection. We want to be doing it with them. We, we want them to answer our questions and we want those photographs. We want them to practice new words and to learn new vocabulary words. But joint attention does not mean that your child constantly is engaged with you and answers your questions. It means that two people are sharing awareness of the same thing. Sometimes your child follows your attention, but just as importantly, you can follow hers. Babies who become good at shared attention with a variety of carekeepers tend to develop stronger communication and language later on. And the length of those shared moments matters, So that ant on the sidewalk isn't just cute. Your toddler studying it while you quietly join her is a meaningful developmental interaction. And here's the part many parents get backwards. It isn't simply more words that build language. It's meaningful words landing on what your child is already paying attention to So I want you to think about maybe just making a simple comment on the ant, and then the word ant has somewhere to actually land and has purpose. but if we talk about something across the yard that she hasn't even noticed yet but we're interested in And there's no real context. That just falls in empty air And across nearly 40 years as a speech-language therapist, I still believe this is one of the most misunderstood parts of early development. Parents are told, "Engage with your child. Talk with them." So you think engagement means, "Look at me. Look at mama. Listen to me. Follow my words. Answer my questions. Do what I'm showing you." But some of the richest engagement begins when you become interested in what your child already sees. So I want you to just look at it through your toddler's eyes. That leaf is not ordinary yet. The ant is not an interruption from the lesson. The ant is the lesson. So don't immediately call her away. Move closer. Look at the ant, too. "Oh, wow, that ant is tiny." And then pause. "Wow, it went under the leaf." Now your words are attached to something your child already cares about. You haven't seized her attention. You've joined it. And underneath that attention is the powerful message, "I see what you see. Your interest matters." I want to understand what your world is. Those are the messages underneath all of that presence This is where all three of my Ps come together, right? To be present in your child's interest. Be purposeful with just a few simple relevant words. And be playful enough to share the wonder without turning the moment into a test. We don't need to say, "What color is the leaf? How many ants do you see? Honey, can you say ant?" You don't have to turn every beautiful moment into a performance. Sometimes the most developmentally powerful thing you can do is simply share it, Follow them before you lead. Connect with them before you direct. and trust that curiosity is already doing a great deal of the teaching So when we put all seven habits together, I think the pattern becomes much easier to see. We rush to remove the struggle. We rush to position the body. We rush to fill the silence. We rush to clean the mess. We rush to supply a response. We rush to create the next activity. And we rush to redirect attention toward what we want our child to notice. The intention in all these situations is only love, but the pattern is often adult urgency. And babies and toddlers develop within a much slower rhythm. They pause, they repeat, they stare, they make a mess. They attempt something inefficiently, and then they try again and again. And to us, it can look like nothing is really happening. But inside your child's developing brain and body, almost everything is happening. So the question is not, have I ever done one of these things? Of course you have. I have. Every loving parent has and will. But the real question is, what patterns fill your day? And where might one small intentional pause or adjustment create more room for your child to actually participate? So here's your action step for this week. Not all seven, just one. Pick the habit that stung a little more than the others. That's probably the one worth noticing first. Don't try to completely change it all tomorrow. Just catch yourself in the moment throughout your day. Say your hand starts moving toward the toy, right? Helping them with that struggle. Just pause You want to wipe their hands and their face during mealtime. Pause. You're about to ask the question again. Pause. You see your child quietly studying something and you feel the urge to redirect her. Pause. Just give her a few more seconds and watch what he does with them. That's where this becomes real. That's true parenting and true connection. And so you don't have to hold all of these seven ideas in your head and, I actually made a simple one-page guide, all seven habits plus one next step for each. It's free. It's down below in my description. Print it out. Put it somewhere where you can actually see it and use it. Share it with your partner and any other caretakers. Put it on the refrigerator, on your phone, in the diaper bag. Slowing down is not falling behind. Sometimes slowing down is exactly what gives your child enough room to do the most growth. And if this idea of following your child's attention stood out to you, you can watch the joint attention episode that I'll place here on the screen for you. Because inside that episode, I show you exactly what this looks like and why it matters so much in early development. I'll see you in the next video. God bless and enjoy each and every moment