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I want you to think of milestones as a guide, not a deadline. And I think that's important. They're markers that help guide us through one developmental phase to another. So let's begin with the basics. Hello and welcome to Talking Toddlers, where I share more than just tips and tricks on how to reduce tantrums or build your toddler's vocabulary. We're going to cover all of that, but here our goal is to develop clarity, because in this modern world, it's truly overwhelming. This podcast is about empowering moms to know the difference between fact and fiction. To never give up, to tap into everyday activities so your child stays on track. He's not falling behind. He's thriving. Through your guidance, we know that true learning starts at home. So let's get started. Is my baby's development normal? It's one of the most googled parenting questions out there. And in this episode of Talking Toddlers, I'm breaking down what milestones really mean and why progress matters more than hitting that perfect date. And how you can be the key to your child's healthy growth. I'll show you how everyday moments can shape your baby' brain, body, and behavior. This is for any mama who wants clarity, confidence, and real life tools to help your baby, your toddler, thrive. So don't panic. Get informed. That's how I like to say it. Be informed. So the title of this is what's Normal Anyway? And I get it. You're searching, scrolling, even stressing. I totally understand. You're new at this. You've never done it before. They don't come with a manual. I'm sure you're asking these questions, when should my baby be talking? Is it normal that she's not crawling yet? Should he be walking? Now, these are the questions that keep you up late at night. And it's not just because of the milestone itself, but it's because what they represent, what they mean underneath, you're wondering, is something off? So let me say this loud and clear. You're not alone. Every single parent has asked these questions, and I think the right thing to do is to ask these questions. Today's episode is really peeling back the meaning behind milestones and how they serve you, how you can use them. I want you to think of milestones as a guide, not a deadline. And I think that's important. They're markers that help guide us through one developmental phase to another. So let's begin with the basics. I always talk about fundamentals here, and I think if we keep it simple, Keep it concrete. Then it'll start to really sink in. Developmental milestones should not be looked at as a rigid checklist. Oh, he did this. He rolled over, he stood up. He's eating solid foods. Boom, boom, boom. They're actually reference points. And the guide that I talk about is designed to start conversations. See, here's the truth. Pediatricians and educators in general, they don't know a lot of the nuanced. They know pretty much what you mama and you dad know. They get an outline or they get a checklist, and they're just checking them off. A plus or a minus. But the purpose that these guidelines started with was to start a conversation, not create panic or judgment or. Or pass fail criteria. It's really to ask, are they rolling over yet? Oh, great, that's good. Are they pushing up to trying to crawl? Oh, no. Okay, well, tell me more. It's supposed to be the start of a conversation, so I want you to think about it as perhaps a growth chart. That is if your baby is measured out and isn't exactly 25 inches tall by 6 months of age, because that's the average. You don't panic. You just keep an eye on the trend, keep an eye on the growth. You know what's average if it's in the 40th percentile or the 70th percentile. Right. So milestones work the same way. It's not about hitting a skill right on the dot, but it's about making steady progress toward this marker. I've seen over and over again in my 35 plus years of early intervention and working on the floor with kids day in and day out. Children who reach milestones a little late but are definitely and clearly moving forward, that's okay. Children who stop progressing, that's what we call plateauing or who lose skills. Now, that's where we have to pause and we have to look deeper and we have to look across the board of what could be going on. But let's even dig deeper and say, what does typical even mean? And we do have this range and we talk a lot about it, but I think our society or our communities at large have kind of twisted some of those meanings too. There's a range because there's so much going on, and there's no way that any little baby or any little toddler can do everything evenly. It's not a straight line. There's so much going on that progress needs to be moving forward, though. There's a lot of wiggle room, and that's the key here. Is that the range means that there's wiggle room, but we still have to be moving forward. And it doesn't happen just in one area too. If you look at any developmental chart, there are multiple domains that we look at. Motor, right? Gross motor, which are their big muscles, and fine motor, which are the fine muscles, including speech. We look at overall communication skills, verbal and nonverbal communication. We look at social emotional development, how well they're learning to engage with others and tolerate different contexts. We look at the cognition too. Cognition means how well are they beginning to understand how their days unfold and different relationships with different people because they all work together. And that's the key here. That's why you see progress moving forward. But there are dips and valleys, and sometimes one area will surge ahead while another one actually may take a back seat. But the key here is that happens temporarily. And I've always explained to parents that you can look at it as a certain bandwidth of your little baby and your little toddler. Let me give you an examp that's very, very common. A toddler who's learning how to use the toilet might suddenly begin to stumble or get garbled speech. And many parents will start to panic and say, their speech, it doesn't sound like it used to. And some people might even look at that. A lot of school people will jump the gun and say, oh, he's stuttering. And it can look like stuttering. There could be long pauses. He could repeat whole words. It's a developmental tug war that's going on in their brain, in their wiring system. So the brain perhaps is saying, hey, I'm juggling a lot right now. You want me to learn how to regulate my toilet skills at the same time, you want me to press on with higher order thinking and move from 2, 3 word utterances to who conversations. That's a lot of bandwidth and I can't handle it right now. So speech and language will often take a backseat. But the important thing is that it only happens for a couple of weeks, not a couple of months. And that's the key here. It should not linger that that switch. And it should be better some days and a little more trying other days, because there's a lot of fine tuning going on. And that's perfect time for you to really stop and say, okay, where's progress happening in other areas? Especially if it lingers beyond just a couple of weeks or you don't see a lot of change or growth. That's kind of where you hang your hat or Stop, pause, right. And really look at the big picture, what's happening developmentally across the board. So that's another big thing. I think that a lot of specialists, pediatricians, school based people, don't really understand what a plateau is. And I think it's really important that you and I, we don't normalize that, that progress is essential. There's so much going on and we'll talk about what this sheet here is, but there's so much going on across the board that a child shouldn't really be plateauing at all. Some things do take a backseat, like I said, once in a while, but that's not typical. Your child is old, always communicating something, and it's either through his or her actions or inactions. If things start to linger, that's telling you something. If something has stalled in growth and progress, then he's telling you, he's giving you a message that things aren't wiring up. And that's really important that we understand and we don't want to panic. It doesn't mean that you all of a sudden start calling people and panicking, thinking the worst. No, what it means is that you take a moment, right, and get curious and say, what's going on? And you can ask these questions because this is what I've always asked families. The first thing they typically call. We spend a good hour or more on the phone consulting, where are you now? And these are the first questions that I start to ask. Has anything changed at home? Do you have a new job? Is dad traveling more? Did you move into a new house? Did they move from sharing your sleeping quarters to a big boy's bed? Perhaps Grandma used to be around for a long time and she moved away or now she's in the house. And I have these two women figures and I don't know who's boss. Those are all changes within his daily life and his home environment that he can't express to you, but it's causing some kind of stress or dysregulation with him. That's a very important question, and here's a very special one that's hard to answer because it's so personal and so sensitive. Is his screen time increasing? Right. Am I relying on it? Maybe I did get a new job or maybe my husband is traveling and so I'm relying on screen time more often to help out. And that is dysregulating his behavior. You can also ask yourself, is it a new season? Am I not getting enough outdoor fresh air, sunshine, opportunities? Are there enough moments in the day, or am I just being rushed around? Is there room for him or her to experience boredom and learn how to play on their own? All of these questions are very, very typical first questions that I would ask a parent if they called my office. You ask yourself these questions. What's really important is that we begin to look at how our daily habits can either stimulate and support growth or they can really disrupt it. I want us to always be evaluating what's different, what's going on, what's my daily routine like? Because here's the good news, and I think it's really good news. Research shows us that parents who have more information about the milestones are much more likely to be proactive and to stay ahead of their child's development and know where they are today and where they're striving. And so therefore, those parents who are better informed about the milestones typically have or are less likely to have their kids fall behind and create those gaps. And so the truth is that there's power behind you becoming or enhancing your proactive parenting skills. And so what do I mean by proactive? It means really to be present in your child's day to day world. And it means honestly to show up with intention or with purpose, even in those ordinary moments. And it also means being playful, being engaging, being light hearted and curious. Because you and I both know that babies learn through our interactions. And I've referred in other episodes about what I've kind of coined as my three P's to be present and purposeful and playful. And if you can ask yourself at the end of each day, you know, did I tap into those, did I give enough room, enough space in our flow of our day to really be those three P's right? Purposeful in my interactions and well, first of all, present, right, you have to put the phone down or turn off the background noise and be in it with them. And so I think if we're open, we can create this home environment that really is conducive to learning through everyday experiences. And we don't need to add more pressure or the idea that we have to have these special sessions, play sessions, right? It's really being intentional through everyday moments. And so let me give you a relatable example. And I thought about this as I was putting this information together. But let's say any one of us, you want to make a healthier year for you, maybe lose a few pounds or gain some more energy so you can do all the things that you want to do with this beautiful Family of yours, would it make sense to go to the gym once a week for even 90 minutes and work out intensely? Right. Do some weights, do some cardio? Would it make sense to do that once a week for a big session and expect big changes or long term positive growth? I don't think so. Not one. One workout session a week out of seven days. We know that health improves through our everyday choices, that it's a little bit across the board. So we would look at, okay, can I eat more whole foods and less processed junk? Am I drinking enough water? Can I up that? Can I choose to take the stairs and not the escalator? Can I quit alcohol for 30 days? Am I getting seven or eight hours of sleep every day? Am I open to building smoother morning routines and smoother evening and bedtime routines for everybody in my family? Am I getting enough outdoor fresh air and true sunshine? Get that natural vitamin D. Am I sitting down and slowing meals as a family? Right? Slowing that, that whole rhythm together, all of those things together would build a healthier lifestyle and help impact my physical health and well being. All of these variables add up to big healthy changes. Well, the same principles apply to your child's development too. So one big amazing therapy session a week isn't going to be magical. It's not going to be the silver bullet. No matter how good of a therapist I thought I was or I strived to be, if moms and dads and families didn't work with me the other, you know, six and a half days of the week, progress was not seen. When you as a parent build in small daily habits of connection and communication, movement and play, that's where transformation happens. It's not in these big therapeutic events. And I know that a lot of parents throughout the years, but I see it now on social media, oh, I'm on a waiting list. We're going to get an evaluation in six weeks and then things will start to change. That's not really how it happens. The best growth and health moving forward comes from you on a daily basis at home. And here's the best part. You don't need a, you know, a degree in child development, a PhD or a master's or any of that. You need some guidance because nobody is really born knowing how to raise another human. You need some confidence building, right? And a willingness to show up. And that's how we keep them moving forward. You're already on the right track just by listening to me today, just by showing up and saying, okay, what tidbit can Erin Share with me and how can I think about that and apply it in my daily life. So I want all of us to think about this simple framework that we could observe and then support and then ask. And simple three word framework can really help you sink into being the guide and being the primary facilitator of your child's growth and learning and development. To observe, right? To pay attention what's going on with my baby or what's not going on. And we can use these milestones to help prompt some of those questions. It's not a test, like I said, it's a guidebook. You understand what their play skills are like and you understand where their motor skills are like and you understand where there's speech and language and listening skills and chewing skills and then you compare it to what the expectations are. So if you're still unsure after all of that, or if you feel in your gut that something might be off or that you might be missing something, that's when you reach out and ask. You can ask me, of course, reach out to me, email me, DM me. You could ask your mom, your sister, your friend, other women that have been in the same boat but maybe three years before you. If you're really unsure, then call an SLP office, right? A speech language pathology office. You can call your pediatrician, but they're just going to check the stuff and then they will refer you out to a speech language pathologist or an occupational therapist. But the, the key here is to trust your gut. You know your child better than anyone and you might not know all the lingo here and the jargon and all of that, but you know your child. So let me give you a quick picture of taking everyday events and turning them into a learning moment. Say you're sitting on the floor with your baby and she keeps dropping. If you're just listening to the audio, I have a little chew toy in my hand and she would drop the chew toy. You could be on your phone and be disengaged and she's figuring out, oh, and then she gets disengaged. Or if she keeps dropping it, then you could look at her because that's a social game in the making. You could smile at her, say, uh oh, you dropped fell down and you pick it up and you give it to her again and then she repeats that process. Uh oh, you dropped it and you hand it to her again. That's a human interaction. You're teaching her how to interact and that's brain building. That's progress. And perhaps the Next time she'll join in and say, oh, those are two vowels that just go up and down in the back of your throat. That's easy to make, easy to imitate. So the key here is that I know and you know that you've got this. But there are questions, uncertainty and a sense of overwhelm. I know it feels overwhelming most days, especially if you do start googling and you see charts after charts and apps and social media noise, it's a lot of racket. And I say this to a lot of parents, you don't have to know everything. I reference a lot, pull out a little checklist for say she's 6 months or 12 months and so focus in on that age range. But I don't want you to say, oh my gosh, I have to study and memorize all this. I want you to say, okay, she just turned six months. Let's look at this bracket here. And by the time, this is six to nine months, by the time she's hitting the nine month mark, I'm working toward those. Or I could see how they build on each other. And that's the key point here, is that you don't have to know each and every step along the way. It's a process and you are really learning on the job. And so don't be afraid to look things up or to ask questions. I can meet with a 16 month old or a 24 month old and I can look at the gestalt of them. Are they walking, I watch them walk into my office and how they handle their body, the right side and the left side or are they clinging to mom but to really analyze and tease apart the fine minutia. I look at charts, I look at comprehensive questionnaires and so always go back that you are learning on the job and that's okay. That's what your role is. So if you find yourself needing advice, that's cool. That's exactly what you need to do. If you're asking questions, that's powerful because you're in it, right? You're, you're open to learning. And if you're showing up, that's exactly what your baby, your toddler needs more than anything else to show up and to learn how they tick and how they're, how best to be in it with them. And I want acknowledging that you're not behind, right? You're in it with them whether they're nine months or 18 months. And you're right where they need to be. So it's important just to give yourself that freedom to kind of breathe and say, wow, look how far we've come. I went through the pregnancy. I delivered a healthy baby. We're nine months in. A lot has happened with me, too, and I'm here to help you every step of the way. Reach out to me any way. Email. Like I said, dm. And if you know another mama that could benefit from hearing this, please share. I really appreciate your time. I appreciate your willingness to show up, to ask questions, to seek guidance. So then you can be the best version of yourself as all of you walk this journey together. So take care, and I'll see you in the next episode.