Sense by Meg Faure | Episode 203: Turning One
Host: Meg Faure
Guest: Nina Clark
[00:00] Meg Faure: Welcome back to Sense by Meg Faure, where we make sense of the science and art of parenting. Parenting is gray, gritty, and beautiful all at once. And my life’s work as a healthcare professional is helping parents feel more confident in a season that can feel really overwhelming. In each episode, we share honest conversations with real moms, dive into the science with experts, and simply make sense of it all in practical ways. This is your space. You are not alone. You are held. So let’s unpack the journey of a lifetime with Sense.
[00:43] Meg Faure: Welcome back, moms and dads, to Sense by Meg Faure. I am Meg Faure, and today we have our regular guest with us, Nina Clarke. Welcome, Nina.
[00:53] Nina Clarke: Hi, Meg. It’s been a while, actually. I feel like our latest chat has been a bit delayed, so it’s so nice to finally catch up.
[01:01] Meg Faure: It really is. And I actually thought too that I would be speaking to you before “Tiny”—as we knew his name was in the first weeks of his life—before he turned one. But as it turns out, he is a big boy now. He turned one last week, didn’t he?
[01:17] Nina Clarke: Indeed, yeah. He hit the big number. So, yeah, we are… it does feel like suddenly he is just a proper toddler already.
[01:27] Meg Faure: It is so sweet. Well, I cannot believe it has been this long that we’ve been chatting. So we’ve been chatting for a year, because we spoke just after he was born last year. So tell us a little bit about what it is in the life of Josh at the moment.
[01:43] Nina Clarke: Yeah, so he is… sure, I was actually trying to think about it now, sort of just quickly leading up to us jumping on, what is sticking out to me right now. Let’s start on the movement side of things. So he is… he does little steps here or there, but he’s not walking as his main form of transport right now. I think he still realizes that crawling is the quickest way for him to get where he needs to go. But if there’s anyone within a one-meter radius of him, he will grab your fingers and hold on and mission! He won’t let go until he gets to where he wants to be. And it is so fascinating to see how incredibly clear he is about where he wants to go. He really will like barrel his body in the direction that he wants to be in.
[02:45] Nina Clarke: And then I remember reading on a chat group recently—and I can’t remember Maxi doing this—but a mom was saying how her sort of 12-and-up-month-old was really starting to throw almost like a tantrum or get visibly upset if they didn’t get their way. And I’m definitely seeing that with Joshy. I mean, he is good-natured 99% of the time, but if there is something that gets taken away from him that’s obviously dangerous—which is obviously what they usually go for anyway—or he is being pushed in the direction where he doesn’t want to do, as an example, he can get proper hacked off. So yeah, I’m finding that really interesting. He really has a good cry if he’s like disappointed by what we’re doing versus his expectations.
[03:41] Meg Faure: So sweet. Well, I think let’s pick up on both of those because they’re both so lovely. So let’s start with the walking. Walking’s a very interesting milestone because it’s actually… it’s such a hard-coded milestone and most little ones kind of walk at around about the same age, somewhere between 10 months and about 18 months. So he is spot on because he’s 12 months old now, which means he’s got about a two-month gap now in which to hit walking in line with the average. And to be honest with you, I think you’ll probably find within the next three weeks he will be a walker rather than a crawler. So that sounds perfect.
[04:22] Meg Faure: And then on the emotional regulation side, it’s so interesting because it is slightly different to toddler temper tantrums, but we definitely do see this emotional dysregulation where they get very certain about what their will is and what they want to do. And when something is changed or there’s a big disappointment or a terrible frustration—like, for instance, taking away the TV remote or mom’s cell phone, which are classic ones—they really do have a meltdown. And it’s less about manipulating behavior than it is around actually emotional dysregulation. Like: “I am so disappointed I can’t regulate my emotions.”
[05:18] Meg Faure: And so, you know, I think we have to see it that way. That it’s not behavioral, which it does in kind of the twos and threes. Things change a lot then. This is not that. This is just “I want that! Why can’t I have that?” Or “Mommy’s leaving me,” or whatever it is. And I always say, you know, even before children are properly verbal themselves, they understand a lot more than actually what they can say, because our understanding language precedes our spoken language. And so I think at this age it’s still very important to recognize the emotions. So it’s saying things like, “Oh, I know you’re so cross. Mommy had to take the TV remote away.” Or “I know you’re very cross because you can’t have that, but let me give you something else.”
[06:22] Meg Faure: If we have given them the words for how they’re feeling, long term the impact is enormous for them in terms of emotional intelligence. So you know, I think that starts right at this age. You will be so surprised that one day at 18 months old or two years old he’ll say, “I is cross!” and it’s so good when they do that because they’ve identified their emotions. And it can only happen if you’re doing it at this age already for them.
[07:11] Nina Clarke: Yeah, because I know that when it comes to the toddler years and up, the experts obviously always say you need to validate the feelings before you start reprimanding or whatever it is, exactly I suppose for that reason. And I think that’s brilliant to start younger.
[07:27] Nina Clarke: And just another thing that you said there, which I also wanted to bring up, was the fact that the understanding of the language comes before the speaking of. And that’s definitely something that even in the past couple of weeks I’ve just noticed more and more. I’m just loving how he will react to his name, he will look at me when I speak, he will have that like questioning face when I say something that maybe he doesn’t understand. He will, you know, stop and hesitate if I say “Stop, don’t do this!” or “Turn around!” or whatever it is. So he really does respond to what I say. Which, again, I couldn’t quite remember when that starts, but it is just so lovely to, I guess, it’s that part of like serve and return, right? But now you’re just getting so much in return.
[08:24] Meg Faure: I love the way that you mentioned the word “serve and return,” because that phrase is such a clever phrase. It actually starts on the day babies are born, like super little, like just for the newborn baby just making eye contact. As we move on, we start to get a little bit of an understanding at about 6 to 8 months that “my brain or myself is different from you and your self.” And so that’s when little ones start to do things like point. Normally by about 8 to 10 months, a little one will actually point at a bird in the sky because they want you to look at it, or they’ll point at the fridge door because they want the juice that’s inside there. And when they start to do that, they’re showing us that they’ve got what’s called mind-mindedness: what’s in my mind can be communicated to your mind.
[09:20] Nina Clarke: Oh yes, absolutely! Pointing and also just like the sort of holding things up and then wanting to give it to you and just wanting to reach out to everything. There’s definitely a lot of movement with the hands.
[09:33] Meg Faure: And of course that’s serve and return because he points at the door, you know that he’s wanting to go out the door. Now he’s communicated something from his mind—a miracle! He’s got a thought, he knows how to get there, he points at it, he communicates it to you even when he can’t say the words “let me out.” Now that is incredible serve and return. On the other hand, actually saying to him, “I know that you’re feeling sad,” those things is your serve, and his return is now to go, “Okay, now I understand this.” So that circle of serve and return is being reinforced from birth and now we’re at the point where they start to really understand things. It is amazing.
[10:48] Meg Faure: And I think I once read that expressive language, which is speaking and responding, follows receptive language by about six months. So the things he’s understanding today will be the things that he’s saying when he’s 18 months old. So it’s a very important time in their lives now.
[11:07] Nina Clarke: Brilliant. And then, yeah, I think what I’m also just really enjoying at the moment is seeing the differences in development or what’s important to him versus what was important to Max at this age. You know, where Max was so much better at sitting still and reading a book and sort of letting me read it to him and feeling all the little textures in the book. Josh just wants to play with it and close it and then flip it over. But then he’s also very good with putting little things in and closing the lid and that kind of a thing, which I think is fascinating at this age already. Like he’s got such great fine motor skills and he gets very into these like little fiddly bits and then he gets very mad when we take it away.
[12:08] Meg Faure: Yeah, and it’s so interesting because what you’re actually describing there is a very interesting trajectory. First of all, he has a different sensory personality to Max. Max was much more of a settled baby, and certainly Joshy is much more of a social butterfly. Now social butterflies tend to be geared towards sensory seeking, and that sensory seeking tends to be, although not always, but very often towards movement and what we call proprioception. So proprioception is the physical. So that’s like when you say he wants to slam the book shut or open it or push something. Even you said to me very interestingly just now, you said when he’s walking, he almost seems to steer you with his body. And that’s a proprioceptive strength. He is really using his body to get sensory information about the world.
[13:06] Meg Faure: Now what’s very interesting about that is as you get in this proprioception or this information from your body and your muscles that goes to your brain, it drives down from your brain back down to the muscles on a vestibulospinal tract to build muscle tone. In other words, to create strength and dexterity. Strength and muscle tone often allows our little ones to be a little bit more coordinated. And he’s showing that just exactly in what you described. He seeks proprioception, he’s a movement seeker, he’s built up his muscle tone, he’s a robust boy in terms of his muscle tone, and now it’s gone on and it’s actually leading into good fine motor skills as well. And that’s like… that’s classic.
[14:04] Meg Faure (Ad): Today’s dose of Sense is brought to you by Parent Sense, the expert-based parenting app that gives you daily support from pregnancy to sleep, feeding, and daily routines. Take the guesswork out of parenting. Download Parent Sense today and use the code SENSE50 for 50% off.
[14:24] Meg Faure: Um, and then I suppose on the other topics, eating and sleep?
[14:29] Nina Clarke: Eating-wise, he is… he just chows, Meg. This kid literally all the time. I was out with a friend the other day and she’s got a little girl the same age, and we were out for a good couple of hours and this girl just didn’t eat anything the whole time we were out. And I just thought, my gosh, I would have been feeding Josh probably four times by now already. But he does… he’s keen, you know, and if you’re eating, he definitely wants it. But very interestingly, for sure more picky nowadays. For sure throwing the food down when he doesn’t want it. And so, yeah, just really starting to see that, you know, it’s not everything goes anymore, which I know is again right for this age, but it’s just the funniest thing to see when he just like mic-drops all the food that he’s not keen on.
[15:48] Meg Faure: I mean, there’s two parts to what you’re speaking about there. So first of all, just the amount that he’s snacking on all the time. I remember you and I having a conversation a couple of months ago where we spoke about the fact that he uses his mouth to kind of regulate himself, which is very, very common with our sensory seekers. And food is one of those things. So they love to have something to snack on.
[16:24] Meg Faure: And then going onto the picky eating. It’s so interesting that between 12 and 24 months, most toddlers go through a picky patch. And I had an incredible interview on our podcast in the last week of October with Natalia Stasenko. She is a dietitian who lectures at Columbia University in New York, and she’s developed an app called “Easy Bites.” And it’s a very interesting app because it really gives you little cues on what you should be doing and why this picky eating patch happens. And a lot of it centers around you relinquishing control. So it’s actually a lot to do with the mom rather than with the baby.
[17:21] Meg Faure: And so what they do is they go through a patch now where they just don’t need as many calories. It’s like a big shift. They just don’t need the same amount of calories. And so then they start to get picky. And what often happens in that moment is we panic because we go, “They’re not going to sleep, they’re not getting enough nutrients.” So then we bring that emotion to the table: “But you must eat!” and it’s that cycle that actually facilitates this whole picky eating spiral. So in this podcast, Natalia spoke quite a bit about actually letting it go, putting on the table what she calls “safe” foods, and mealtimes having safety and connection. When you get those two things right, they tend to do better. So don’t put things that are challenging on the plate if he’s going to really battle with it.
[18:31] Meg Faure: And also recognize that it takes 14 exposures with little ones before they actually will engage with something new at this picky eating phase. So kind of build a plate that he can control, that you don’t have to feed him, he can feed himself because that’s what the stage dictates, and let him define how much he’s going to eat. And then know that two hours later there will be snack time. And if you go and listen to it, you’ll actually hear right at the end of the episode we give a voucher code for free access to her app as well. So please do go and have a listen.
[19:15] Nina Clarke: Brilliant. And then on the sleep side of things, he interestingly… I found that he was giving all the signals to drop down to one nap already now at 12 months. And it has been fantastic. It’s been such a wonderful change. His wake windows have always felt longer than other babies at that age. He just wants to jaul and doesn’t want to go down when it’s the short, sort of recommended wake windows of that age.
[20:16] Nina Clarke: And so, yeah, we started sort of just pushing his morning nap a little bit later and then he just automatically started doing a… well, he always had a long nap in the morning and then a very short nap in the afternoon, but as always it was a massive fight to get him down for the second one. Or he just needed it so late because that wake window was so long, he would go down at 4:30 and then bedtime would be crazy late. And so, yeah, he sort of just stuck with his nice long morning nap, which he maybe extended by half an hour or so to make it two and a half hours. And now his bedtime is a normal time and it is just fantastic.
[21:11] Meg Faure: No, it’s spot on. All the research that… well, I mean if you’d asked Aya instead of ChatGPT because she’s based on all of my stuff, then she would have definitely told you 12 to 14 months. So the earliest I would recommend is kind of just before one year old, and then if they haven’t dropped them by 14 months you absolutely must drop them, otherwise they’re going to have more wake ups at night and they’re going to push out their bedtime.
[22:04] Nina Clarke: Great. Yeah, and I mean his nighttime sleeps are fine, actually, at the moment. I’m sure we’ll have a teething phase again at some stage. But he slept through for the first time probably two days ago for the first time in months and months. But he has maybe two wake ups a night and that is for either a quick settle or a quick feed. He is definitely learning to just calm, chill out.
[22:50] Meg Faure: Well, I mean that’s amazing because he’s had some fairly firmly entrenched habits at different points and he’s obviously navigating that a little better. Couple of little pointers: First of all, because he’s a social butterfly, he needs a lot of movement in the day. Get a swing and swing him long and hard in the late afternoon because he will need that. Limit TVs completely in the late afternoon particularly, because that definitely wires their brain for wake ups at night.
[23:37] Meg Faure: And then try not to feed him if it isn’t… if it’s earlier than 3:00 AM. Try and see if you can do water or patting. And then only after… if it’s after 3:00 or 4:00 AM, then actually do the feed. That would be my recommendation.
[23:55] Nina Clarke: Yeah, 100%. Hubby does the… if there’s multiple, then I tend to go in if it’s earlier on in the night if he just keeps waking up because then I just feel like maybe he’s hungry or something. But if there’s just one wake up earlier in the night then he usually tends to go in and just quickly resettle, because it’s just always quicker when he goes in because I think there’s no expectation from Josh that like there’s going to be a whole, you know, comfort feed anything. So the hubby’s just know how to get them down quick-quick.
[24:34] Nina Clarke: But the screen time thing—so I never put him in front of a screen. Max doesn’t get screens during the week, so there’s like no exposure for Josh then. But over a weekend, a Saturday and Sunday, he can watch a little bit. So Maxie will actually give the screen attention if something was on, whereas Josh just doesn’t. Not at all, not interested for a second. And I find that so fascinating again, a little comparison there.
[25:12] Meg Faure: And again, it replicates exactly what we were talking about their sensory personalities. Where your settled baby might be a little bit more drawn to visual—Max would sit and look at books with you whereas Josh will move the books. And the problem comes when little ones are put in front of screens and TVs to keep them calm, keep them quiet, keep them entertained. You actually do them such a disservice because their natural instinct, which is to move, engage, get that sensory input, is then kind of almost… they almost lose their natural instinct, you know. They lose their intuitive approach to sensory changes. And that is when you start to see some very, very serious problems coming through little ones where they start to use screens and not get enough of what they need, which is proprioception and vestibular.
[26:17] Meg Faure: So, yeah, I think and being conscious around screens is just so important, it really is, which you certainly are. Well, Nina, thank you for letting us follow your journey with Josh. It has been such a pleasure. You’ve been such an insightful guest to have along regularly because you ask such interesting questions. So I really do appreciate it. And moms, we will have Nina back as Josh is a little bit of an older toddler, but it won’t be as regular as it has been. So, yeah, just a huge shout out and thanks to you, Nina.
[27:01] Nina Clarke: Oh Meg, thank you always for your time. It is always incredibly interesting and so helpful.
[27:07] Meg Faure: Thank you for joining me today. I hope today’s conversation brought you a little more clarity, calm, and confidence on your parenting journey. If you enjoyed the episode, please do share it with a friend who needs to hear it today, and also go and subscribe to the podcast so you never miss out on an episode. I’ll be back next week with another episode, same time, same place, and always here to support you. And in the meantime, download the Parent Sense app to take the guesswork out of feeding, sleep, weaning, routines, and everything in between.
[27:43] [Outro Music Ends]
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