3-min read
2025-08-26
5-min read
Development isn’t a race. It’s a flow.
Every baby—and parent—is figuring it out at their own pace.
Instead of milestones, we encourage you to focus on this amazing moment.
Your baby’s brain makes more than one million neural connections per second in these first three years. Simple, consistent interactions with baby today can have profound, lifelong benefits.
Here’s how baby’s brain is developing this month, and how you can support their progress.
Developmental Highlight
Baby’s holding their head upright with more coordination and making new sounds and tongue movements. The activation of the head, neck, tongue, and vocal cords represents the Social Engagement Network, which is essential for executive function maturation and more advanced information processing. Baby’s also starting to show interest in what you're eating.
The next adventure: baby’s first pureed foods.
Creating opportunities to explore different tastes opens up baby’s world and exercises their immune system. It also improves tongue coordination, which stimulates language and helps baby explore a wider sense of satisfaction. Research suggests that introducing tiny amounts of diverse flavors can help reduce food allergies and improve baby’s lifelong interest in food.
Brain-Building Activities
Pull Up a High Chair
Routine: Mealtime
Families connect by eating together. Research shows that family meals are associated with healthier eating habits, higher self-esteem, and improved academic performance.
What you model at home has a profound impact on what baby learns, feels, and thinks about mealtimes. When baby watches you eat, you’re also modeling how to chew and swallow. So start healthy habits and the tradition of togetherness now.
- Pull baby’s high chair right up to the table, or create a space where you and baby can eat together.
- Even if you’re not eating a meal at the same time, try to share a little food with baby.
- Demonstrate enthusiasm as you eat in front of baby and watch them try new foods.
- If baby finishes eating before you, allow them to stay in their high chair and watch you and the rest of the family enjoy a meal together.
- As much as you can, avoid being on your phone or having the TV on when eating together. Otherwise, you may inadvertently set up habits of distracted eating.
Feast Your Eyes!
Routine: Mealtime
At this age, baby’s nutrition is still coming from breastmilk or formula. The first bites of food are just for taste. Think of the high chair as baby’s first classroom, because food = information. It can take up to 15 tries for baby to decide whether or not they like a particular food, so keep trying and go slow.
- Once baby shows signs of readiness, begin with tiny amounts (half a spoonful or less) of purees to get their tastebuds excited. Yellow vegetables, which are the easiest on a young digestive system, or mashed avocado are a good place to start.
- Spend a week on one food to see how baby responds. Even if baby doesn’t appear to like a food at first, keep trying.
- After you’ve gone through a few yellow/orange veggies (butternut squash, carrots), move on to green veggies (spinach, peas, zucchini). Then introduce grains or egg (boiled or scrambled and then pureed with breastmilk or formula).
- Consider waiting to introduce fruits, because once baby gets a taste of sweetness, feeding them veggies gets increasingly difficult.
- If possible, choose organic foods and always avoid added sugars or preservatives. Keep things exciting for baby with interesting ingredients, though honey should be avoided.
- If you have concerns about food allergies or other dietary restrictions, reach out to baby’s pediatrician.
- Avoid focusing on how much baby eats. Instead, look for signs that they’ve had enough (turning away, not opening their mouth). Eating is about connecting, so never force-feed.
You’ve Got This
Some food for thought: Stress can make even the most patient, loving parent less aware, less sensitive, and less responsive than they would like to be. Experiencing severe amounts of stress can send resources to the wrong part of your brain and hijack your good intentions.
Children look to adults to see how they react in stressful situations, a concept known as social referencing, and can pick up on reactions you’re not even aware of. When you’re stressed, it impacts baby’s regulation and elevates their nervous system.
So what can you do? Put your own hypothetical oxygen mask on before attending to baby. Breathe before you respond, practice mindfulness, and offer yourself forgiveness and compassion. If it feels like stress is interfering with your daily functioning or relationship with baby, it may be time to seek professional help. Ask your doctor or baby's pediatrician about resources in your community.
