As with many of these growth spurts, it all seems to happen at once. One minute you’re happily playing peek-a-boo with your mostly stationary child, the next there’s been a firmware upgrade and you’re playing clapping games while your child stands in front of you unsupported, then sits down, turns around, and wanders off when bored.

In our case, the marriage of hand co-ordination and linguistic comprehension has meant that in the last two weeks alone, our daughter has started to clap with intent in response to “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands” rather than the random and occasional thing it was before; to wave “bye bye” when someone says it; to sign “mama” in Auslan in response to “Where’s Mama?” or “Say ‘Mama’”; the sign “all done” and say “ah dah” as she does it; to sign “up” even more clearly now accompanied with (at least once) a long, drawn out “aaaaaahhhhhhp”; and to communicate fairly consistently when she needs to poo (unfortunately, we used the grunt-and-ssss method of encouragement for elimination communication, so “I need to go” is “unnnnghhhh”; I’m working on changing that to “poo” or the sign for it).

Intent is an amazing thing. We’re trying the “No cry sleep solution”, as I mentioned last post and the bed time routines are going well. Although she’s only slept through the night once, she is sleeping longer and I’m seeing marked improvement in how quickly and happily she’s going to sleep — I’m not holding a crying baby at 8.30pm who is only just going to sleep; instead I’m patting a restless one who woke up again after a 40 minute sleep-cycle and is trying to learn how to get herself back into the next one. We’ve always had a book before bed (from when she was a week old) but we didn’t have the longer wind-down we clearly needed and now have.

Tonight was a break-through. After dinner, I took our daughter into the lounge room, turned off the main light and sat down for some quiet play. She stood up, went to the table, took one of her books out from under something else, looked at it and put it on the floor, then took a second book that had been under that, looked at it and brought it to me. She then sat down in my lap and waited expectantly. She asked me to read to her and she chose the book she wanted. That’s kind of amazing. What’s more, it’s like saying, “Mama, I’m tired now. Can we skip the playing bit and go to the reading bit?”

As for me, well, I didn’t miss the first two steps unaided and work is pretty fulfilling. I love the way my girl lights up when her Daddy says he loves her and I can’t imagine a better place to be right now. Well… I have some projects I’d like to get started on, but I have this family that’s more important right now.

And a little girl’s birthday party to organise.

Rule 1. Talk to your baby as much as possible.

Talk to your baby as much as possible. Some believe that this interaction starts in utero, while others say it starts the day baby is born. A child needs to hear the sounds and intonation of their native language in order to learn them. They also need to hear it from you – not from recordings, radio or television. So talk to your baby, read, or just keep up a running commentary.

Rule 2. Say things that are true, meaningful and appropriate.

Say things that are true, meaningful and appropriate. Whether or not baby understands what you are saying, there is at least one person who is listening to every word – yourself! Between providing bubs with a “babble channel” and the sharp reduction of adult conversation which is unavoidable in early parenthood, you don’t have the time or capacity to have a separate internal intellectual life.

Your baby-talk becomes your self-talk. What you babble to baby is (or becomes) exactly who you are. If you only babble meaningless drivel, this will crowd out the thoughts you could have been having if you were silent. So please, babble at great length about your politics, opinions, how things work and the meaning of life.

Rule 3. Don’t be sarcastic, rude, cruel, patronizing or in any way disrespectful to the child.

Tone of voice is perhaps more important than the actual content. When you explain something to a child, they will often respond to the tone of voice alone. However, creating that tone without the appropriate words is incredibly difficult, but creating it with the words is pretty much automatic.

Habit-based behaviour is essential to building the capacity to parent effectively. Thinking is incredibly resource-intensive. Parents can’t afford to risk our children’s safety on the assumption that we will notice a critical moment or have the time and energy to think about the issue when it comes up. We are constantly pre-empting situations, controlling the environment and bedding in habits. Therefore, the only rational baby-talk habits to develop are ones based on the assumption of the child understanding what you are saying.

Don’t be sarcastic, rude, cruel, patronizing or in any way disrespectful to the child. Do I even need to explain this? It’s about the habits we form. It’s about self-esteem. I hope this is pretty obvious.

Rule 4. Be beautiful, positive, prolific, imaginative, loving, kind, generous and clear.

Songs and rhymes are great. There is plenty of room for nonsense rhymes along side your more intellectual babble. Love of language, as developed in this way, is an important basis in the child’s learning to read.

Rule 5. Use correct language and grammar.

Use correct language and grammar rather than bastardised language or “in” jokes. And yes, this is harder than it sounds, as common language is very lazy. But if you can manage to use correct language with your child is young, she will have this fantastic resource of being able to access what “sounds” right, without ever having to explicitly learn the rules of grammar.

Are you nodding at how self-evident my rules are, or wondering if I’m a bit daft? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

I’ve noticed I have a pattern around a lot of debates like this. I do research, find out what the scientists and peak bodies think, read the arguments from the really crunchy hippies, and then pick what feels intuitively most nurturing but still matches the science.

That how I’ve ended up a big breastfeeding advocate. The World Health Organization agrees that breast is best and further that breastfeeding should continue (accompanied by safe solids) up until baby is two years of age and may continue beyond that for best health outcomes. It suggests exclusive breastfeeding until six months. The American Academy of Pediatrics issued a revised policy in 2005 that also called for exclusive breastfeeding until six months. It’s important to note the wording though: it says juice, water, solid food etc is “generally unnecessary” for children under six months.

This has meant that some people seem to say, “Baby is six months old today! Solid food for you!”. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I want to know what it is that’s magically happening “around six months” that leads to this readiness for food.

The attachment parenting guru, Dr Sears, gives some reasons: baby’s ‘tongue thrust reflex’ (medically known as the extrusion reflex) is gone and the gut has started to go through ‘closure’. Gut closure refers to the lining of the gut which stops microscopic antigens entering the blood stream (my favourite quote on this was that it “is the process by which the epithelial surfaces of the intestine become impermeable to antigens”). A very quick search suggested that in most humans, gut closure starts before birth, because premature babies have more issue with macro antigens entering the blood stream whether they are breastfed or not. Fascinatingly, though, breastfeeding, and especially colostrum, that fabulous early milk, may actually trigger gut closure which is why breastfed babies may have fewer allergies. It’s chock full of secretory IgA hormone which helps stimulate the baby’s enzymes. Where does this four-to-eight month thing come in then? What’s this six month magic marker?

Interestingly, it seems possible that gut closure completion  is triggered by the introduction of solid food. I don’t have a link for this just yet, as the article that suggested it is behind locked walls and I haven’t had time to read the full reference, but that would suggest we’re looking for other physical signs, then we introduce the solid food, and then the gut realises what’s going on and does its thing. Certainly, in other animals, gut closure is triggered by weaning.

My darling daughter is now five-and-a-half months old. We have a lot of allergies in our family. Between my sisters, nieces and nephews, we have soy, dairy and wheat allergies and my partner is allergic to anything with fur or feathers (skin sensitivity), allergic to arrowroot (as a food and as a skin irritant) and lactose intolerant. She’s sitting up unaided, watching us eat with rivetted attention and most importantly, grabbing at food. Naturally, I’m hesitant to introduce solids if my darling is going to have allergic reactions. The “common knowledge” about this is that you shouldn’t introduce things like egg and peanuts until baby is at least a year old. Based on the latest research, though, the common knowledge is wrong. The Infant Feeding Advice from the Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy says there is insufficient evidence that delaying allergenic foods helps prevent allergies and acknowledges that there is some suggestion recently that delaying such foods can increase allergies. (Who knows how, given the whole gut closure discussion…)

So, with yet another lots of conflicting advice whirling through poor mama’s head, where does that leave us? I think it leaves us as follows:

• Keep on breastfeeding, as it’s the best source of vitamins and minerals for her and the World Health Organization says it has all the nutrients she needs for survival.
• She’s showing all the signs that she’s ready to start eating, even though she doesn’t need food yet. Start giving her tiny pieces of low allergen foods (carrot, potato, rice, pumpkin) to trigger the completion of gut closure.
• Introduce each food as a food on its own, in the morning, as recommended by Dr Sears, and watch carefully for allergic reactions. If none are seen, that food goes onto the list of foods okay to combine with other foods.
• Continue with baby-led weaning. (Note that this is weaning onto solid foods and not off breastmilk.) She’s already licked a few foods — cucumber, carrot — but we’ll follow her lead with how much she wants.
• After she hits six months, but not necessarily on the day, offer her an actual meal of solid food, with selections of items she’s not allergic to, and see how she goes.
• Delay those allergenic foods to eight months, just to give that gut closure a chance to happen but not worry too much about delaying further, based on ASCIA’s recommendation.

Your baby will have her or his own individual signs that he or she is ready to eat. Pay attention to them. Some babies don’t sit up unaided until almost nine months. If yours is one of them, and he or she is NOT reaching for food, there may be no need to start him or her on it yet. And remember that information changes as research occurs. This information is current as of July 2009. If you’re reading this more than a year down the track and we haven’t updated it, check our sources for up-to-date information or hassle us to find out the latest.

The finding that struck me was that for every hour the TV was on, the child heard 700 fewer words from an adult. I’ve noticed that this occurs for us too and I’ve always said I wasn’t going to use the boob tube as a babysitter, but there are a number of issues that arise from this.

Babies need a lot of attention, pretty constantly, if you aren’t going to use a distraction like the TV. A complex toy, like the brightly painted wooden tensegrity icosohedron we just inherited, will keep our angel occupied for about 10 minutes. This doesn’t leave a lot of time for housework, let alone other work and it means at least one parent is occupied with baby care almost constantly. Unless you’re both freelance like we are, that’s likely to mean Mum’s time is occupied with baby. It’s a challenge for the feminist mother who is torn between her intellectual understanding that baby needs stimulation and her need for adult interaction and her own career.

Yet our idea that we will interact with the baby around screen time is clearly misguided. The Steiner system of education solves this by limiting access to television and computers until the child is at least 8, arguing that passive screen time inhibits creativity. My daughter is certainly captivated by the bright light of my laptop screen as much as the television and her experience of it at this age can only be passive. However, if we want our children to be happy, marginalising them from the rest of society doesn’t seem to be an option. If we want them to grow up to change the world, then perhaps it’s best they understand the mechanisms in order to know where to throw their sabots.

There are a number of child-appropriate computer games that do encourage genuine creativity and not just reflexive direction of an avatar, such as the Tux Paint program. Even these, though, are designed for children over three.

It looks like we’ll be developing a screen-time policy and like adults will only watch DVDs and downloaded movies after baby’s bedtime. We may have to work on a similar policy about laptop/computer time, as I know both of us have been guilty of sitting with the baby on our knee and reading our e-mail or catching up with blogs, and patently not interacting with her.

The assumption that she is “quiet” has turned into the assumption that she is happy. Problematic. The challenge is to involve her in tasks, interact with her and narrate our lives in such a way that she is given all the tools to critically engage with the world but without sacrificing our sanity, the cleanliness of our home or our ability to work on adult tasks. It’s not an easy ask. It’s partly made more complex by the nuclear family structure — in other cultures and in our own past, extended family members would share this time-consuming role. In bigger families, older siblings might take on some of the responsibility.

Then again, maybe these days they just all sit in front of the screen together and don’t interact much at all.