The Wonder Year

A play companion for babies - COMING SOON

Babies are cute - but they're not that interesting. At least that's what I thought before I took my masters. I didn't have children of my own at the time so my experience of them was limited - but how wrong I was!

In my first few years of teaching, I struggled. After an initial shock, behaviour management wasn't a problem - male teachers get an easier ride - but I always felt I was missing a piece of the developmental jigsaw. I'd switched to teaching after taking law as an undergrad and the year-long post-grad was light on theory. I knew what to do but I had no idea why.

I still squirm to think back to those first parents' evenings after I'd qualified. I was like a politician trying to filibuster, running down the clock before they could ask me any difficult questions.

That all changed once I studied babies.

Babies taught me to see.

School-age children are just too complicated. There's so much going on, so much is interconnected. Their actions have become integrated.

But babies are simpler. their actions more straightforward. They spend their first year trying to escape the embrace of their primitive reflexes and bring their bodies under voluntary control. And as they control their limbs and start to interact with the world around them, so too do they

The Wonder Year will be an occasional series. I'll publish posts whenever they support an idea we're exploring in Start with the Child, our toddler newsletter. But, over time, I hope to start writing weekly.

The newsletter is included with a Co-Conspirators subscription.

Even if your child is beyond her first year, the series will give you a window into her developing mind.

Look out for the first issue next week.

I hope you enjoy it.