22. Their Cognitive Leap is Yours, As Well.

Happy Suzday Everyone,

If you’re in the first year or two of raising a child, you might be spending some time on The Wonder Weeks app, checking the forecast for the next leap in your child’s cognitive development.

The flurry of fits and breakthroughs that ensue are ultimately signs of healthy growth for your little human. But they can be a lot for the parents raising them.

So this week, I’m pointing out how Moms of young kids are also developing during the first five years. From changes in postpartum brain circuitry, to periodically adjusting how things get done at home, your child’s cognitive leap is yours, too, which warrants a special approach to how we treat ourselves.

Because we no longer accept mothers being taken for granted, I’m here to help you embrace the early years of your child’s lives, not just through the lens of their growth, but through yours, as well. 

As families and educators across the world learn to support early childhood development in helpful ways, we as Moms have an opportunity to give ourselves some grace, and to acknowledge the bio-psycho-social changes we undergo as our children grow.

Because Yoga supports our physical, mental and emotional aspects as we go through changes associated with our children’s growth, it’s a perfect modality for supporting Mother’s well-being in the first five years, and a way to build a healthy future for all. 

And if you’re wondering, “but how?! And When?!” to build this kind of resilience-making into your weekly routine, I’ve got the answer.

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Welcome to Yoga for Mom-Life. I’m Susana Jones, and I help lighten the load of early motherhood. With stage-based yoga that complements your child’s development, raising kids looks and feels more like thriving. Get started with a free download today, at yogaformomlife.com.

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Now, we may not be forming a million new neural connections a second” like they are for the first couple years of their lives, Today’s Parent (2021), but we are definitely forging new ones as we problem-solve within their new phase of development. And this doesn’t just happen during the baby years. 

According to Vanessa Lapointe, a psychologist based in Vancouver, a brain flooded with neurons making new connections is most prolific in the first 6-8 years of life, but continues through adolescence and adulthood. 

Meanwhile, there’s a tremendous re-wiring that happens for Moms after childbirth, and I’d venture to say that the ways in which the maternal brain changes in those first few years are part and parcel of our kids’ neuronal development.

Within the worldview that brought us Yoga and Eastern thought, nothing happens in a vacuum. Everything co-exists, and co-arises as part of a greater unfolding. 

Thich Nat Hanh referred to this as inter-being, which describes the experience of being the mother of a child very well. 

And while my first-person perspective only accounts for the first few years, I’m really excited to see how this “longitudinal study of motherhood,” so to speak, evolves over time.

One example of how a change in our son’s abilities, had a ripple-effect through my mind, my body, and my household, was when he learned how to unlock the front door. 

For awhile, he had been really into latches, and doorknobs and mechanisms that he could flip back and forth to his delight. One day, he discovered the deadbolt on our front door, and how to open it up to the big wide world. 

I had been anxiously awaiting the day that he’d figured that out, so when he wsa suddenly able to step out on his own, my nervous system was basically already in fight-or-flight mode. As it was for years. Hence, the Yoga.

So dealing with the front door situation became our immediate priority. And this was before he really had a sense of what danger could look like, so we had to make sure he wouldn’t leave the house without us. We installed a higher-up latch, and put up some toddler gates around. 

In all, that involved a combo of foresight, a bit of hyper-vigilance, and changing up how we move around the house.

But he was also teething at the time, which had it’s own set of discomforts. So there were more tears, and more wakeups in the night. I was also still breastfeeding. So that week, we were all going through a lot.

It makes sense why, when you chat with a mom-friend and ask how she's doing, she’ll often reply with what’s going on with her child. How they’re sleeping, how feeding is going, what kinds of meltdowns they’ve endured lately. Because it all implies how Mom is doing. 

Mom is only really doing as well as her kid is doing a lot of times. And tho it doesn’t look right from the outside, it actually feels like a pretty healthy, if not normal connection that Nature designed to preserve the species.

But the way we might refer to this inter-being of mom’s quality of life depending on the well-being of her child as “part of being a mom,” can be a little precarious for Moms’ health in the absence of nurturing support, which could look like a lot of things. 

And I think the loss of self that a lot of Moms experience comes down to meeting the immediate, evolving needs of their children without anyone providing her that nurturing care.

And how to get from point A to point B as a society is a bit beyond my scope, but I think it will help to normalize how raw and carved-out, and out of sorts moms feel a lot of the time, to take some pressure off ourselves where we can, and incorporate what feels like the encouragement and soothing we provide for our kids when they’re shaken up.

In terms of solving this problem, 15 minutes of yoga might sound like a bandaid-type of solution, but at least that bandaid can prevent pain, quell inflammation, and support healing while we co-create the culture of care that we want and deserve.

Adapting to how our kids are changing, on top of disrupted sleep and greater caretaking, is a LOT on our brains. When your baby is weaning from breastfeeding, or your toddler has just discovered how fun it is to say “NO”, they go through a “fussy phase” before the new skills set in. During that phase, they’re more clingy, cranky, and emotional. 

Now recall, if you can, one of those leaps when your child’s brain activity is compared to television static, that flurry of white noise before they land on a new, more coherent channel. 

In that phase, are you more cranky and emotional, too? How are you helped through that discomfort?

The combination of what goes down during a child’s cognitive leap and one’s own physiological, psycho emotional response to it can be rough for parents, especially because it co-arises with all the other things that adult life entails. 

Remember, nothing happens in isolation. It’s all unfolding within a larger context.

Even when things have seemingly mellowed-out with our child, the life stressors continue.  Even when we numb-out and stay busy the imprint of stress stays with us, informing what the future could look like for us personally.  

Some stress can be good, and prompt us to grow in certain ways - but when that situational stress becomes chronic, it degrades your quality of life, and can lead to disease.

You already know this. And you also know that being there for your child is essential. Maybe you really need some peace and quiet, but your little one is so clingy during a leap phase that it’s hard to even go pee. In those cases, your respite naturally has to come later.

Practically speaking, your needs have to come after your child’s needs have been met, especially during a developmental time frame. 

A lot of you aspire towards real self-care. And maybe like me you’re exasperated by hearing that you need to put your oxygen mask on first. It’s like, “With what hands?” 

It straight-up does not make sense sometimes, as a parent, to put your needs first. If it worked, we’d all be doing that, and I’d have no show. 

But if you feel like a failure for not putting your needs first, I’m here to tell you you haven’t failed at anything. I see your hands are full while taking care of your children when their needs are more urgent. 

So instead of pressuring yourself to be good about self-care and a good Mom, let it be OK to put the most urgent thing first, knowing that the next most urgent thing in need of tending might be yourself. 

Instead of guilting yourself for not following a consistent wellness routine, just look for a clearing where you can check in with yourself. And be willing to prioritize yourself, just as you prioritized your child’s needs.

For me, this check-in sometimes happens while loading the dishwasher, or folding some laundry. At times, it’s easier to transition from hands-on parenting to an activity that resets me with a task like that, where I can hear my thoughts and figure out what’s next high priority. 

The trick is to let yourself be a top priority, one that rotates through the mix like every other domain in your life. Just don’t let a whole year - or more - go by without knowing how you’re doing. 

Maybe this happens in a moment of stillness. Maybe with your eyes closed. Maybe over the course of a few mindful breaths. It’s a practice, and it can evolve with you over time.

In my online yoga membership, I refer to this kind of check-in as “a break that gives more than it takes.” It takes very little, but it gives you a good sense of where your needs factor-into the greater context of your family’s life at this stage.

And I love the efficiency of a practice that requires nothing more than what you were born with: body, awareness, and breathing. It’s an elegant way to offload a lot of what you’re shouldering day-to-day.

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This stuff matters as we cruise into our 40s. And if putting yourself first is challenging for you, you’re not alone. If it’s uncomfortable to state your needs, it may be because you don’t really know what your needs are at this point. And that’s Ok.

Sometimes figuring out what to do with 30 spare minutes is anxiety-inducing in itself. That’s a big reason I created my membership. Bring me your decision fatigue! I promise you’ll feel more refreshed and alive after 10-20 minutes in my yoga portal.

So when your child’s developmental milestone throws you for a loop, here are 3 steps to emerge from their cognitive leap in a better state yourself:

1. Surrender to what is changing. Let your house get undone. Let your routines be upended, and let your priority be to take care of your child and your family’s basic needs. K? This too shall pass.

1. Watch for a clearing. As things settle down, look for opportunities when you can secure some personal time to check in with yourself. 10-15 minutes can do wonders.

1. See what you need. If it’s vague, just stay present with yourself long enough to know one thing that would feel good to you, regardless of what others need or want. This doesn’t make you selfish, it makes you sustained.

All of this takes practice, and sometimes we need more support with these steps. I certainly have, and I’m happy to be a support for you with these. Because the way our childrens’ development makes us adapt to change can also help us evolve in ways that we may have wanted to for a long time. 

And just like our children, who need extra comfort while a change like this is in progress, we need creature comfort and reassurance, as well. As you practice bringing in more of these things for yourself, know that feeling completely out of sorts means that a positive change is underway.

By using those clearings of time and space to come home to yourself, you’ll be growing alongside your little one, discovering who you are at this phase, and showing your child what it means to be a balanced individual who cares for others.

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Taking personal time can be stressful, but using it well can make the difference between survival mode and thriving. With stage-based yoga routines that complement what you already do everyday, the daily grind feels more like peace of mind.

Get started with a free digital download of playroom-friendly yoga poses that you can do while playing with your little one on the floor. It’s there for you, and so am I, at yogaformomlife.com. 

Thanks for tuning in and sharing this show with the Moms you love. You can help even more moms benefit from these episodes by rating the show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you’re  listening. 

It’s Yoga for Mom-Life, and it’s about time.

References

Lapointe, V. (2021).Developmental leaps happen well beyond the baby years - here’s what to expect. Todaysparent.com. https://www.todaysparent.com/kids/school-age/developmental-leaps-in-kids/