What really matters- Playmats are in almost every household and they provide wonderful opportunities to explore with all their features of grabbies, crinklies, squishies. Again during this period it is all about the exchanges you are having with your baby. Back & forth exchanges  build Whitney’s perseverance while exploring, her connectedness with me, and her budding competence at communication. We could do this with any object in her world but the playmat seemed like an easy, safe, and comfortable spot for lots of explorations. (read more about Dev Focus)

How- Setting up the Playmat was simple and once whit was plopped down on any panel the adventures were off and running. I could easily follow her lead as instantly her curiosity was peaked by the objects to explore on each panel. For example, she seemed fascinated by the crinkly sounds squeezing on “eebee’s hair” made. She was excited by batting a raised wheel that made a bell sound. We could easily turn these interests into longer sustained explorations as we developed our back & forth non-verbal dialogue (watch videos to right).

I could really sense how Whit was looking at me for a response-- the next move in our interaction. Sometimes I was alittle out of synch getting to far out ahead of whit-- like the overkill with the “crinkly, crinkly” repetition when she may or may not have been as interested as I thought.  Instead I tried to follow her lead-- as when I saw her banging at the tippy wheel and saw how much fun she was having with its up & down behavior. It felt really good when I could read her gaze and then follow-up with some action that extended the dialogue to the next step.

Why- When I struck the best balance of reading her interests and following up with a targeted response, I could sense her intensified engagement. It was like fuel to keep her going. She was building this stick-to-it-iveness on her own but my actions did seem to make a difference. She was seeing that her cues to me were working and she was motivated to keep the “conversation” going.