Lessons from an 8 month old
My 8-month-old lives in the moment. Awash with sensory information soaked up by her delicate nervous system, like an ultra-porous sponge on an ocean shoreline. She is captivated by the simplest things - birds, peekaboo, her own reflection in the mirror.
My baby lives so completely in the present. Void of self-consciousness and judgement, with only a developing reference point of how things are “meant to be” - what is right or wrong, good or bad. My role in how this blank cognitive canvas is painted on feels vitally important.
I watch her in enviable fascination as this naïve state of mind allows for complete joy when engaging with people, objects and environments. Naïve or wise?
Each new task is a playful problem to solve and an experience to extract every last drop of learning from. We are firmly in our repetition era, where one mastered skill leads naturally to a slightly trickier one in a perfect developmental sequence. Rolling, sitting, crawling, pulling to stand. Practice, glorious practice fuelled by playfulness, curiosity, delight, persistence, joy and creativity.
Watching this process unfold makes me want to protect it with everything I’ve got.
I’m grateful that Bub and I experience safety and health as the foundation for her blossoming in this way. I also know full well that soon others will contribute to her canvas and she will have experiences, relationships and interactions that shape her nervous system and self-concept in ways I can’t (and shouldn’t) control.
I’ve been an OT for over a decade, much of that time spent working in mental health and complexity. Along the way, I’ve noticed an interesting pattern.
The qualities I see so naturally expressed in my baby girl - curiosity, playfulness, persistence, creativity, delight and joy - are the same qualities that support growth, learning, mental health and nervous system regulation throughout life.
They are also often the first things to disappear when people are struggling.
As children, these qualities often emerge naturally when safety, connection and opportunity are present. Of course, not every child gets that foundation. Trauma, adversity and chronic stress can shape a nervous system towards protection rather than exploration from a very young age.
But for many of us, these qualities were once far more accessible than they are now.
As adults, they can become buried beneath responsibility, stress, life experiences and the constant pressure to be more, do more and achieve more.
Thoughts designed to keep us safe can become surprisingly restrictive. Fear of judgement, comparison, failure and self-doubt quietly dull and narrow our world. We stop doing cartwheels. Exploring. Stop singing for the joy of it. Stop trying things we’re not immediately good at like fumbling through a new piano piece - guilty as charged! Growth becomes based on pressure to achieve rather than a gentle unfolding into further alignment of what feels good and how we actually WANT to live.
In thinking about this, I’ve found myself doing little mind-action audits. Postpartum provides a unique opportunity to intentionally rebuild an identity after it has been so thoroughly dismantled (my experience anyway). So I’ve been tuning in to when I’m truly present, where my mind goes when I’m not, and what genuinely feels good moment to moment.
For me right now my priorities are my daughter, family, my health, real connections and building a successful values based business. Mind chatter that gets in the way or creates tension around this (perfectionism and self doubt I’m looking at you) gets spotlighted.
In mental health we know that increasing our awareness of unhelpful thoughts can soften their grip, make them less convincing, less automatic and less in charge. Our body and mind are more inclined to relax into a nervous system state of safety and healing. With the space and energy created through this process something else becomes available… connection back to the qualities of our 8 month old selves. Curiosity. Playfulness. Creativity. Delight. Spontaneity. Joy etc.
My invitation to you is to make like an 8-month-old. Notice what sparks your curiosity, captures your attention and brings a sense of delight and joy. Maybe it’s something you loved as a kid but it wasn’t deemed productive or lucrative. Maybe it’s something entirely new, but you’ve been too busy to follow the thread.
Find the thing and do heaps of it. Paper mâché. Flying kites. Creative writing. Building robots. Learning piano badly.
Do it not for the outcome, but for the experience itself. Notice when judgement, resistance or self-doubt appear and make that okay too.
The qualities that support wellbeing, mental health and a regulated nervous system aren’t always found in striving, achieving or becoming more, but can be found in curiosity. In play. In delight. In the unlearning of patterns to allow for these innate qualities to emerge.
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