6 months old and learning "age is just a number"

Like father, like son.

My son is just about 6 months old now and I'm learning that "age is just a number".

I still hear other parents converting the age to weeks and it makes me laugh. How old does your child have to be before you stop counting in weeks? 8 weeks? 20 weeks? 51 and 1/2 weeks?

I'm not sure when you stop counting in weeks and start counting in months, but I do know my son is a few days shy of 6 months. So if you asked me on the street how old he was, you'd get a simple answer to a simple question. My son is 6 months old.

In terms of how much can happen in a month vs a week, I can see how people might want to measure a baby's age in weeks vs months. But if we're having that conversation, I would suggest we count in days or even minutes, as a baby learns more and grows more in 1 minute than we older folk can do in a week, month, year or even a decade.

So why do I call my son 6 months old vs 24 weeks? Well it's easier for you isn't it? No math involved... just plain and simply... 6 months. If I told you he was 23 weeks, you'd do some basic arithmetic in your head and next thing you know, you'd be telling me he's almost 6 months old. I already know that, yet you'll tell me anyway.

How about I tell you he's about 176 days old or maybe... my son is about 4,246 hours old. Or how about if you asked me how old my son was and I told you quite frankly, he's almost 15,285,330 seconds old.

How would you possibly relate those numbers in terms a comfortable timeframe that you measure your own age by? You simply could not... unless you are a walking calculator in which case I would probably make your day by telling you my baby's age in seconds or hours versus weeks or months.

Anyway, what the heck am I getting at?

Well, I'm going to suggess that "age is just a number". I'm not the first to say such a thing, but I'm going to share the familiar saying in mabye not so familiar way.

Ok... so here's the message I'm trying to convey after a long winded intro.

I meet other parent's who do things "strictly by the book", and what I want to know is where did they get their book. My baby didn't come with an instruction manual, and believe me I looked. So when I hear parent's telling me their reasoning for this that or another thing as if they read it off their baby's manufacuter's label, I have to hem and haw for a bit, as I wonder where my set of instructions are located.

One such situation came from a conversation where my wife and I talked about introducing solid foods into our son's diet perhaps a bit before the recommended schedule. He seemed to want more food in his belly, but giving him more milk just made for more spit up. So my wife started giving rice cereal (based on her mother's recommendation) and milk consumption went to a reasonable amount and as an added bonus, he started sleeping through the night with out waking for feedings.

Upon hearing this, the other mom in the conversation said, that sounds great and suggested to her husband that she might want to try introducing rice cereal in the diet of their son. The quick, no fuss response her husband gave was "the doctor hasn't told us to do that yet".

Although I do not agree 100% with the reasoning, I can not in any way figure how he can be unreasonable for thinking such a thing. He wants what's best for his child and doctor knows best right?

When I think to the doctor's visits I've had (and I like the doctors who've seen our son) I can tell you they haven't told us much one way or the other about... well, just about anything.

At our son's 4 month doctor visit, we finally got some literature on tummy time, exercise, diet and nutrition. While waiting for the doctor, my wife and I leafed through the booklet and were happy to see we were doing the right things for our child. Our son was getting more than the recommended dose of tummy time, physical and mental stimulation; he was already eating a rainbow of food colors; and he was growing at an appropriate rate for his age. He double his birth weight at 4 months, which was what he was supposed to do.

Now when the doctor finally enters the room, she sees us near the end of reading the booklet and says "Don't worry too much about that book yet, that's info that you should be ready to go over when he's back for his six month visit." I said we'd been doing most of what the book recommended about exercise and stimulation since birth and that he was already eating a variety of foods in a variety of colors. She just smiled and moved on with the exam as if I didn't say anything at all.

So, either she didn't believe that what I said was true, or she felt what we were doing was ok or at least not bad. I really have no idea, because we were not discussing that book's contents for a couple more months I guess. But, I would hope a doctor would tell us that we were rushing into things if it were unhealthy for our child... that's what they're there for right?

To get back on point, I'll just say this. It has been my experience that the doctors don't tell us much at all what to do or not do with our kids. So, why would anybody wait for their doctor to tell them anything?

My theory is if you wait for the doctor to tell you to do something, you'll be waiting a long time, and generally waiting until there's some sort of problem.

Here's our boy enjoying one of the colors of the rainbow.
I think this one is yellow (bananas).

I'm no athority on the subject of parenting (rather a student of the trade) so I'm not going to tell you when you should introduce this or that to your child. I think you are the only one who truly knows what's right for your child and your situation.

Remember, age is just a number.

You wouldn't keep 3 month old clothes on a 3 month old baby if they didn't fit any more. That would just look silly.

Parents know when thier kid's clothes don't fit and they move them up in size. They don't need to wait for a professional to tell them to do so, nor do they have to look for a manufacuter that makes clothes tags to match their child's age.

So, why do we get hung up on numbers and ages and think we can plot a plan on timeline (or let our doctors and other professionals do it for us) when we know within our hearts that everyone's timeline is different?

Our son playing with a toy meant for 18 months or older
(what the heck is an 18 month supposed to do with this?)

In an effort to be the best dad I can, I will try my best to listen and learn from my child and make the best educated decisions as to when to introduce what and where.

My 12 week old baby is sleeping... well... Like a baby :)

Here's an update to those who have been following my blog for tips about getting a baby to sleep through the night.

At about 1 month I wrote a post giving advice to a parent of a 10 week old who was not able to sleep and was keeping his parents up all night. Now at the time I duly noted that it might not be fair for somone with a four week old to give advice to wone with a 10 week old. I can just imagine that father saying... you just wait a couple of weeks and see how well he sleeps.

Well, it's been a few weeks and my son is now 12 weeks. So I'm doing a quick follow up to let other parents know that the advice in my previous post is not rubish.

I mentioned that I did not have the 8 hours of sleep magic bullet for him, but guess what. My 12 week old son can now sleep for 8 hours at a time. He goes to bed about 8pm and he only wakes for one feeding and changing during the night at about 4am. He then goes quickly back to sleep until a reasonable 8am (although today he slept in with mom until about 10am... wow). I guess I really tuckered him out yesterday.

As new parents, my wife and I are quite pleased and happy to say to the 10 week old parents out there that if you start to give your kid a floor time workout... you'll not only tire them out so they sleep well through the night, but you'll also be developing your child physically and mentally which leads to social and emotional growth as well. (see comment on my previous post about sleep to see another parent who had similar success and can attest that years later her child is performing great and above and beyond the norm).

And a last bit of data on the subject. We recently moved cross country, so that means a new pediatrician and a new set of nurses who never seen him before. Everybody comments on how strong he is, how alert he is, how healthy he is and how they don't normally see these signs of early development for a few more months.

He's just about to crawl at this point and moves around quite a bit at night. We can here him at night pushing buttons on the light and sound effect toys even though we didn't put him anywhere near them. He's learning cause and effect, and getting smarter every day!

Here's some fun photos of him playing with a Tortoise and a turtle given to him by a great friend and mentor. We put velcro on the back of the Tortoise and on the belly of the turtle and played with him teaching the difference between rough and soft textures. It was quite fun and I was able to show rough and soft on the velcro as well as soft on the turtle, soft on my sons face and rough on daddy's face. My face is rougher than the velcro and you should have seen his eyes light up when I said rough and grazed his hands across my face.

Anway... here are the pics and having some fun!



Learning Soft & Rough with Velcro Buddies

Tummy Time with Pals - what a good little floor baby!

Turtle Passes the Taste Test During a Break









He loves his turtle

Talking about the Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential

Well, here's a quick little blog entry that features me as a father vs my son as my student.

I was lucky enough to attend the Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential last October and recently I have been featured on Birth2Work Radio where I discuss some of the things I learned at the Institutes.

Please click the play button or the link below to hear the radio show in full.

Aired on Birth2Work February 16th 2010

A Father's Joy

with Ken Collins





Listen to my show on Birth2Work Radio

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Ok... so the show may seem like a shameless plug for myself, birth2work or IAHP, but it really is worth listening in to learn more about the institutes and why I bothered to create this blog in the first place.

In an attempt to be the best dad I can be, I'll try to feature my son more and myself less ;)