To milestone or not to milestone?

A list-nath production. Human beings are a species driven by achievement. It's quite far from here. The tape is broken and so is the record as needs of long been dreaming about. And that's how Roger Bannister became the first man in the world to run a mile in under four minutes. From the four-minute mile to our 21st birthday, we're masters of setting milestones and using them to push our boundaries and grow. We use milestones our entire life to track progress and signal when we have reached a new level. And this journey of growth and reflection begins the second we're born. Can you say mama? Mama? You're first. Good job. You're going to stand up? But infant milestones can be a tricky balance and every parent will have a different approach when it comes to nurturing and measuring their baby's growth. I'm Emma Watkins, a children's entertainer and lover of all things science and research. And this is the BabyLab podcast where I team up with parents as well as experts from the Marks BabyLab at Western Sydney University who are gaining valuable insights into how babies learn, grow and interact. On today's episode, we're looking at infant milestones, those codec moments that you capture on camera and stick on the fridge. We'll look at why milestones matter but also why sometimes they can be the cause of a little bit of pressure. But let's start with what exactly milestones are and in particular what are some of the important ones during infancy? If we're talking about motor development, kids in the first three months are usually flipping over. Flipping from your, I can't remember if it's going from the belly to the back or the back of the belly but one of them is definitely motorically easier. You might recognize that voice from our episode on socialization. That's Professor Sue Hesfos from the Marks BabyLab and it turns out she's an expert in milestones as well. Six months is on average when kids sit by themselves, that's considered not supporting themselves with either hand. It involves a certain amount of lumbar support, so core ability, strength. Nine months is the average for crawling, 12 months is the average for walking. So again, I'm going to qualify all of this by saying there's a variation in there and it's a variation not on US parent but it's a variation on really big babies. They sit early, they got a low center of gravity and so they're just solid sitters at like four months sometimes and so that's great. Long skinny babies, they have the right muscle, it's physics. It's a muscle to mass ratio thing of they have the strength to get their butt off the floor. So really it's like a gravity issue and so they're going to crawl earlier. Walking is really interesting, everybody says back to sleep, so you put the baby on the back to sleep that causes babies to do a lot of leg lifts and makes their lumbar area stronger, their core stronger. So they sometimes skip crawling all together and just go straight onto walking. But if you have a kid that really likes to sleep on their belly, they're going to crawl earlier because they're doing push ups and then they're going to walk a little later. And also even crawling, like some kids start off literally going backwards. Other ones do sort of like this military crawl. Some do this like kind of sideways thing. Huge variation but within about six weeks of the onset of crawling because of the way our joints and our hips are attached. We all end up with opposition crawling. So that's like the left hand goes forward with the right knee. And so they all converge later, but kids have different strengths and weaknesses and so they build up those strengths and all converge sooner or later based on the physics of how we're connected. So can you tell us why you got interested in this area of research of milestones? I find it interesting because it goes after what people take pictures of what people brag about hitting milestones is so culturally important in terms of I got his first steps on video or he's sitting up now or so my kid has started crawling and I have to baby proof the house. So there are big changes that happen when kids achieve these milestones. And then what's really interesting is all the factors that influence when they actually occur because there's huge variation within typically developing kids of when they hit these various milestones. My name is Jennifer Weinberg and currently I live in Australia originally from Long Island, New York. And my family right now currently consists of my husband, Professor George Saritor, our 18 year old which is George's biological son and my step son who I've had since 11. Paul and our little baby Aeslie who just turned one on April 18th. So as you'd say big milestone. So tell me about your little one, I guess at being a first time birth mother, maybe we can find better words for that. But really what are the kind of things that you were looking out for? Are you aware of anything? Were you fairly relaxed? What's your approach? Well, just to give a little context, she was four years of IVF to get to her. So I don't even know if I'd actually because of my age, I'm an older mom. I didn't know if I'd actually be able to have a baby. But to credit my brilliant husband, we came up with a strategy within IVF to be able to get to a place where I had a chance. So when it turned out that I got the call from the doctor to say you're pregnant, a lot of curse words came out of, oh my god, I can't believe this. And I think it was just a thrilling thing. I mean, I had gone through some other miscarriages and stuff like that, a lot of disappointments. So when I got her and she was developing and we kind of got through the milestone of a lot of the tests, it was like almost unbelievable. And I was just so thrilled. I was like, honestly, I just thought I hope she comes out with George's brain. She's so smart. So it felt like the milestone journey for you had kind of started obviously from conception, but really, I guess also maybe not that important because of yeah, like in our family, we really concentrate on being happy and healthy. And we feel that if you're happy and low stress that then you're going to be able just to develop and you're going to be able to I guess find your own way and that's how we do it with Paul as well. If I say, man, that's his nickname, by the way. And that's how we do it with him. I've never really pressured him for anything except for to try and do the best at what you're doing and put your efforts into it because it will make a difference. So a lot of people get really like really held up on school and having the correct grades and all this sort of stuff. And we just wanted him to understand what his responsibilities were to himself and that's sort of how we kind of move along in life. And it's proven to be I think great outcomes as he's just blossoming this year himself. And I can see that translating to easily and that's the way we do it with her as well. So in this first year of Aisley, which feels like it's a title of a book at this point, what are the things that you were wary about or what milestones were you thinking about or were on your radar? I have to tell you nothing to be honest. I really do like, you know, in Australia, which is very unique because they do not do this in the States when you have a bar they put you into a mom's group with other women who are her babies within the same month. So I'm in a lovely amazing mom's group. We're a very strong mom's group because we make it that way. I do have to say one of the things there are a lot a lot of them are very like, oh, the milestones, the milestones, the milestones that I've never been like that. For instance, I'm in the beginning, everyone had an app. When are they sleeping? When are they pooping? When are they when are they drinking their bottles and everyone's putting everything in the app and I would go home and I'd be like, I need to get this app, I need to get this app, this is a lot of pressure. And I'm like, what is this data going to do for me in the end? Probably nothing. Who's ever going to look at it? Am I going to care that she drank five bottles one day and eight the next really the most important thing is that she's gaining weight. But again, I sometimes come from a different perspective because I'm married to a world of renowned scientists who's changed a lot of my viewpoints on a lot of things. But I don't worry about it. He was just like, as long as she's gaining weight and growing, that's what we want at this point. So they're all taking putting everything into the app and I go to the groups and they're like, yeah, yeah, this and I'm like, and she was the best sleeper in the group. So I just never she has her little pose with her hands behind her head. Everybody knows the A's, Lee pose and she goes to sleep. Is that because I didn't stress about it? I don't know. Is that because I wasn't worrying about putting it in the app? at an app, I don't know. But if she's happy, she's going to thrive in life. If we've learned anything so far in this series, it's that no two parenting journeys are the same. And while Jennifer found herself having a fairly relaxed attitude towards milestones, that's not the case for everyone. So I think that when you're learning to be a parent, you're always looking at what should he be able to do at this point. Should he be calling yet? Should he be rolling yet? Should he be sitting yet? Anna Sarledge joined us earlier this series to talk about the role that music plays with her son Vincent. But Anna is here today to share her experience with milestones. You look at those as markers of whether or not things are going okay, because you've got nothing else to go by. It's your first time doing this. So if he wasn't meeting some of those, it does become a source of anxiety because you're thinking, is everything okay with him? Is everything okay with me? Should I be giving him different learning experiences? Should I have done more time and time or more this or more that? Am I not doing enough to let him achieve his potential and grow in the way he has to grow? So I do think that there is a certain pressure that a new mum feels, but in the same way as anyone starting off with something new would feel, you want to do the best job you can and you're conscious that some little life is depending on you, you're at home alone with that little life a lot of the time, like your partner's still at work and you it's all on you to make sure they develop. So it's quite natural that you would be looking at milestones and things like that. Did they give you extra anxiety in your life? How did that impact you? Yeah, I think at the beginning, not so much because he was doing everything quite early, so he was lifting his head supporting it very early. He was lifting himself up on his tummy early, rolling at a normal time, sitting very, very early actually. But then come around six months, I know some of the other babies that I knew from my mother's group or from just friends and relatives, they were already moving, so I started to move forward, like not quite crawling, but moving forward and Vincent wasn't moving forward yet. So that's when I started getting quite anxious because I thought, well, what am I not giving him? Am I not stimulating him the way I should be? Am I not giving him enough time and time? Is it his muscle ratio? Is that not right? And that's when you start worrying is when it's actually when they stop meeting. When things are just going as planned, you just kind of roll with it. But when something happens that he's not quite getting it, that's when I started getting a bit stressed. I guess it bothered me even more because it bothered him that he couldn't move around the way he wanted to, he wanted to reach toys, he couldn't get there himself. He was reliant on me. And when he was around the other babies, he was becoming more and more timid because they could do things. They could crawl up to him, take his dummy, run off. And he couldn't respond, right? So he was starting to become a bit more timid and that was then bothering me and adding to my stress. So I took him to Jim Barou, which one of the mums actually recommended. And they gave me some good tips about how to move his legs and just little pressure points to stimulate and get him moving. And within a week of his first class, actually, he started moving forward. And by two weeks, he was just crawling around everywhere. So after that, it was just easy straight after that. He was some, yeah, combino crawling. Then he started classic crawling and he was lifting himself up, standing. Yeah. So I think once we met the milestone, I started feeling better about things again. But at the time, I remember being stressed. Yeah. As a parent, keeping calm in the face of delayed milestones can be a tough ask. Even when a lot of those delays end up working themselves out like in Anna's case. But sometimes they don't. And that's when people like Sue are able to help. We have a gauge. And them hitting it on the day is not important. However, them hitting a certain milestone like sitting, crawling, walking has to happen at some point, right? You don't want to just put it off until they're 15. And so it is important to compare your kids development to other kids. At some point, if a kid isn't meeting a milestone, usually months later, but it becomes a concern, right? And this is something that you can ask your general practitioner about that you are the pediatrician about. The reason that it is important to do comparisons is that earlier interventions, if there is a problem, an early intervention is the best way to make that outcome, that final outcome as best as it possibly can be. So ask questions, do comparisons. And if it is a lingering concern, ask professionals for help. Because the earlier you can fix a motoric development problem or a language acquisition problem, the final outcome is going to be better. Because it takes time to figure these things out. And what is the treatment plan that is right for a particular kid? In many cases, delayed milestones are not a cause for concern. And the right at which a child hits certain milestones varies based on a myriad of factors. But sometimes a delayed milestone can signal a need for a little bit of extra help. And that's where Professor Caroline Jones comes in. I'm a professor at the Marx Institute for Brain Behavior and Development at Western Sydney University. I do research in language learning, so how kids learn to speak and use language. Caroline specialises in language development. And as a part of her work has developed a powerful tool which can be used to track infant language milestones. This helps decide whether they might need a bit of assistance with their development. Parents in care give us, no, the child really, really well. They've got huge detailed experience together from days and days and minutes and minutes and long nights and weekends and all the time that parents and kids spend together. So parents are really, if you like, experts on their child. Their experts, completely experts on their child's latest word, the latest thing that they do. So we developed a tool which is for parents and professionals to measure their kids language development. And it capitalises on parents knowledge. So it capitalises on parents knowledge of the latest word to measure their child's communication development. Why would we want to do this? Well, milestones we've just discussed are kind of fuzzy things. So, you know, you might say, well, most kids are saying their first words sometime around their first birthday. Kids should be putting words together by the time they're two. We've sort of adopted an approach which is out there in the international literature and applied it to the Australian context where we're trying to put some numbers around that. So we're trying to take the guesswork and worry out of assessing kids language development. And we've made a 12 minute online tool which is safe and free for parents to do. It's called the Osirisf, OZI, iPhone SF. You can Google it. It's an Australian version of what's called the MacArthur Bates communicative development inventory, which is a lot of words. That's a lot. So basically it's a checklist. It's a checklist of first words and gestures, games and routines. And it's a short practical tool that asks you about 100 words that kids are typically learning between the ages of one and two and a half. And it asks you which of these words you child understands and which word your child says, well, they're trying to say even if the pronunciation is not quite adult yet. So it's a tool that's developed both for kids who are learning one language of time like English as well as for kids who are learning more than one language of time because we know how common that is in one in Australia and how important that is for kids language and social development. When you've done the little online survey, you get a report which you can take a look out and take along to your GP or share with it print out. Lambda print it. Exactly. And you get a score as well. And you can go to our website, put the score in and get a recommendation which is based on our research with Australian kids about how your child's developing and a suggestion if you should probably go see someone to get a further assessment and a check on your child's development. And these links to resources as well for easy ways that you can work with your child at home to improve their speech and language development. So the research suggests that really parents are experts on their kids and they are very good at this age at identifying how many words their kids understand and how many words their kids say. So what was the catalyst in building this tool? One of the great things about my job about Western Sydney University about the kind of work that we do is that we get to collaborate with people from all different backgrounds and disciplines and from all different walks of life. So I work at Western Sydney University as a linguist. I work with psychologists, speech pathologist, nursing colleagues, and we had colleagues from South West Sydney, local health district, speech pathologist who use the checklist, the communication checklist, the long one. And we were interested to make a short one, to make it a more practical checklist that speech pathologist could ask parents to do so before they come in for an assessment that would be shorter or easier and just as accurate for tracking progress. The really great thing about the OZISF is that it respects parents as the expert on their child. And it invites I guess collaborative discussions with the professional. The professional has so much to learn from the conversation with the parent around the OSF about the words that their child is learning and the context in which they're learning them, the languages that the kids are learning at home and the kind of environment that the child's growing up in. So it supports collaborative decision-making and is contributing to some of our goals in this area of research, which is identifying kids who really need help earlier, as early as possible, so as to get them into early intervention. So as to avoid a common refrain that parents often hear that they should maybe just wait and see how the child, maybe they'll grow out of it, or some will, but some won't, and we can't actually predict who. So this tool is helping measure a child's development more sensitively, so that parents are able to act as soon as they can. Caroline's language measurement tool utilises a combination of the latest research and a parent's expert knowledge of their own child. By empowering parents to take the first step towards early intervention, her tool becomes a much needed link between the home and places like BabyLab. You are a parent who is with this kid, day M, day out, and so you have information that the professional doesn't have, and so sharing what your hunches are is very helpful, doing a little bit of research on the internet, but not too much, please, is informative. Right? If the better informed you are, the more likely that you're going to find the solution sooner and effectively, but be open to hearing information that you don't want to hear, or information that may or may not apply, right? And so people want to give you a variety of options, and their advice on what they think is the best option. And the parent does have to be open, but also willing to try things that they think might work, they think might not work, and working it out, giving it the attention that it needs, because that's going to lead to a better final outcome. At the end of the day, developmental milestones are just a guide, and although it's important to pay attention to any delays and seek help if needed, sometimes that worry is understandably heightened, and it can be important to take a step back and gain some perspective on the issue. Up until 12 months, we were really lucky, we avoided any illness, any fevers, and so I was still, you know, why isn't he saying his first words yet? Why isn't he? Oh, other babies are walking, why isn't he walking? And then he got ill, and he was ill for a long time, and lots and lots of inflammation and so on, and we thought he might be actually a sign of a much more serious illness, which luckily the specialist doesn't think he's the case, but at the time, he just wasn't getting better, and he was about a month, and so we thought he's really ill. And at that point, I started to realize how insignificant all of the hype about milestones and everything else is, because all you want is their health and happiness, and that's it. And so everything else, whether it's being stressed at work, or whether it's the garage flooding in the recent rain, hailed into insignificant. So whether it was something at work that was stressful, the deadline, or whether it was the garage flooding in the most recent rain, or whether it was whether he walks a month earlier or a month later than other babies, all of that seemed to then be really unimportant in the face of him potentially being really ill. So I think that it's moments like that in your parenting journey that you just gain a bit of perspective and you step back and you just pause and reflect on what really matters, and that was actually really good for us. I don't mean to say that I'm glad he was sick, I would never be glad of that, but it was a good thing for my husband and I to just take a step back, and roll with it a little bit more, and as long as he's healthy, as long as he's happy, everything else will fall into place. It feels like that your experience through this challenge with Vincent actually gave you more perspective or flexible perspective around milestones and making sure you hit certain accomplishments. What advice do you have for other parents if they haven't had a challenge yet? Yeah, I think just talk to other mums and expose yourself to other mums, so whether that's someone in your family or whether like I did, I joined a mother's group, or play dates, play centres, there's lots of things that communities do, and just get to know people from all walks of life in all different situations, I guess, because there's lots of very inspirational stories out there of mums who are doing it tough and who've been dealt a difficult hand, and lots of babies have all kinds of challenges they have to deal with, and when you see that, or when you're exposed to it or you hear about it, you start to really gain that perspective and realize that, you know, don't sweat the small stuff, basically. It shouldn't necessarily be judged as, are you keeping up? Because there's babies are limited in their budget, right? Like there's only so many hours there or a bank, they got to eat, they got to sleep, and so in the weeks when they're focusing on babbling, there is going to be a reduction in their motor abilities. Why? Because they've got a limited budget, so like this week they're doing language, and next week they're going to do crawling, and so if you're worried and you're going to your mums group and everybody else is crawling, why isn't my kid crawling? Don't worry. And I think what's great about the mums groups is that your kid is ahead in something, but not in something else, and there is no single path to development. Kids each take an individual path, it's a, you know, it's part of the kid's personality and temperament that they're bringing to the situation, it's part of the environment that they're growing up, and it's part of how much the parents are pushing one thing or another too. And so all of these things, you know, combine, but they can't do everything all at once. I think the thing to really keep in mind about your household is your stress levels. If your stress levels are down, your baby stress levels are going to be down, and that's the most important thing. I'm pretty sure that the research shows that I'm no scientist, someone else can do the, the science on this, that stress is a major cause of many different elements, and I guess bad things in life, right? And the people who are less stressed have a happier and just overall better life. And that's one of the things that George has actually taught me over the years. He's the most happy, bubbly person ever. When I, when I first met him, I was like, oh my God, are you always so happy? I'm like, oh, you're Canadian. So of course you're happy. But really, he really is so happy. He really tries to keep that stress down. And I do realize that I think that through my whole journey to get easily the less stressed I was, the better outcomes I was having. And I think the happier household is like the happier you are as the parents giving that example, then the happier your children are. And that's what's important in life. Because if you're happy, you're going to take risks. If you feel supported, you're going to take risks. You're going to have more failures, but you're going to have more successes. And that's what we try to project in our home. Like, we're here. We're here to support you. We want you just to not worry. Go out there to what you want to do. And if it doesn't work out, we'll try again. Milestones can be an important guide to look at when it comes to your baby's development. But it's important to remember that no two children are the same. And milestone timelines can vary significantly from child to child. So although your baby might be a few months late with crawling, that doesn't mean it's time to hit the panic button. But if you are concerned, reach out to your local health professional or get in touch with the team at BabyLab. Coming up on the next episode of BabyLab. I looked at screen time as watching TV, not a great use of your brain. But, you know, playing a game on an iPad where you have to actually move things and figure out how things are going to move around. To me, that's education. We're diving into the virtual world and exploring everything screen time. That's next time on BabyLab. The BabyLab podcast is a listener production brought to you in partnership with the Marx BabyLab at Western Sydney University. Hosted by me Emma Watkins, audio by Kelly Fulstom. Executive producer is Todd Stevens and producer is Thomas Dexter.