BA BY
“The brain is without a doubt our most fascinating organ. Parents, educators and society
as a whole have tremendous power to shape the wrinkly universe* inside each child’s head,
and, with it, the kind of person he or she will turn out to be.“ – Lise Eliot1
*The “wrinkly universe” refers to the child’s creased brain.
What can sabotage
the journey?
Faster is not
necessarily better
• When baby is constantly on mom’s
body or cooped up in a stroller or
wrapped up like an Egyptian mummy,
it prevents the freedom of movement
that he needs to develop the brain
wiring required to reach each milestone.
According to Graham Codrington
the average baby has a potential life
expectancy of around 130 years. If
that is true, why on earth would we
encourage a baby to rush through his
milestones if he is going to read and
write for more or less 124 years? What
is the big hurry?
When a baby is born premature, the
best place for him is skin on skin on
mom’s body and sometimes wrapped
up like a mummy, but a full-term baby
needs the opportunity and freedom to
move and discover his body and what
it can do.
• Illness, as well as poor feeding and
sleeping patterns, can sap the little
one’s energy. With low levels of energy
movement becomes too much of an
effort and baby tends to be “floppy”.
Floppy limbs are hard to move
resulting in even less movement, thus
less wiring and less muscle tone
development, which will delay
reaching a milestone.
• Contraptions like supporting chairs,
walking rings or jumping apparatus
hold baby in a position that his body
is not ready for, potentially resulting
in a skipped milestone which means
less complete brain wiring. Research
has shown that many emotional and
learning problems later on in life are
due to skipped milestones in infancy.
• A messed up sequence means
messed up wiring because each
milestone uses the previous
milestone’s wiring, which it adds on
to, to build an amazingly complex
network of nerve connections. Poor
nutrition means the fatty acids that
are found in breast milk, and later
in fish and some vegetable oils, are
absent. The brain wiring needs these
omega fatty acids to insulate and
protect the nerve wiring. Messages
travel at high speed when wiring is
insulated, but travel very slowly in
unprotected wiring that is the result
of delayed milestones.
The faster a baby reaches each
milestone, the weaker the wiring.
When pressure is high, later on in
school, the wiring collapses and can
be seen in the child’s behaviour and
ability or inability to learn. Faster is
not necessarily better.
The purpose of each of the physical
baby milestones is to wire a specific
part of the brain. Moms and dads
do not have to worry that they don’t
know how to trigger a new growth
spurt in preparation for the next
milestone. Nature takes care of that by
prompting baby to move in a certain
way and to repeat that same series
of movements thousands of times to
strengthen brain wiring.
What is even more amazing, is
that this prompting follows the
same sequence in every baby:
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suckling
neck control
rolling over
pushing up
sitting unaided and without support
grasping at will
crawling all over
pulling up
cruising around furniture
walking
A walking baby has graduated from
infancy and is now officially a toddler.
Please resist putting pressure on baby
to perform, rather allow him to dive
deep into each milestone to get as
much pleasure out of each experience
as possible. We owe it to our children to
help them grow the best brains possible.
“A milestone shows that a part of the brain has
just been wired and is ready to be used”