Early Years
Newborn sleep is not a problem to be solved in week one
Almost every piece of newborn sleep advice assumes a baby that has already developed a rhythm. In the first weeks, none exists yet.
Sam Ellery
Contributing writer, Things Parents Know
Sam writes about the early years, mostly from notes taken at 4am.
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15 articles
Early Years
Toddler tantrums are a developmental stage, not a discipline failure
A two-year-old having a meltdown in a shop is doing something neurologically normal. That does not make it easier, but it changes…
Early Years
Starting solids is a skill, and milk is still the food
For the first months of eating, almost nothing is swallowed. That is the point, and it changes what counts as a good meal.
Early Years
The normal range for talking is wider than the milestone charts imply
Two children with a year between their first sentences can both be developing typically. The things worth watching are mostly not…
Early Years
Screen time under five is a question about what it replaces
The published hour limits are cautious estimates rather than measured thresholds. The clearer effects run through displacement and…
Early Years
Choosing childcare when every option has something wrong with it
The comparison is rarely between good and bad. It is between different sets of compromises, and the ones that matter are not the…
Early Years
What parents are actually watching for when a small child is ill
Temperature is the number everyone fixates on and one of the least informative signs. General information only — your national…
Early Years
Teething gets blamed for a lot of things it does not cause
Teeth arriving is genuinely uncomfortable. It is also the default explanation for every bad week in the first two years, and that…
Family Life
Eating together does something, and it is not what people usually claim
The family meal has an unusually strong reputation and a genuinely mixed evidence base. What survives scrutiny is smaller, and more…
Early Years
Most of the baby equipment list is somebody else’s anxiety
The lists handed to new parents are drawn up by shops, or by people remembering one particular baby. Very little of either survives…
Early Years
Childproofing follows the child, not the calendar
A house is safe until a child acquires one new skill, and then it is not. The prompt for another look round is a new ability, not a…
Early Years
Getting out of the house with a baby is a packing problem
The difficulty is not the baby. It is that leaving requires a decision about a dozen items, taken while exhausted, and repeated…
Early Years
The second baby changes the first child’s life more than yours
You have done the practical part before and will find much of it easier than you fear. The person for whom everything changes is…
Early Years
A party for a three-year-old should be shorter than you think
Almost every difficult small children’s party has the same cause, and it is duration. Ninety minutes is generous; two hours is…
Early Years
The nursery sickness policy will cost you working days you have not planned
Every setting has exclusion rules, and they are not really about how ill your child is. Read them before you need them, and build…