What- During her sixth month, what struck me most was how her new age & stage competences lead to a whole new level of behavior. Her ability to sit and then eventually crawl led to so much new exploration. Her hands were now freed up to really manipulate and explore stuff. With toy in hand, she could better sustain her attention on it and seemed to remember objects and how their properties behaved.

I maintained my primary focus on back & forth exchanges (see Q3 Exchanges Blog) but also integrated a bunch of other age & stage competences Whitney was revealing to me. Sitting without tumbling over took a little practice, so I helped by sitting Whit between my legs or with pillows on her side as she mastered her balance. Through our joint explorations and exchanges where we continued to persist as long as possible, we could also work on:

- Social & Emotional competences: emotional range, empathy & reciprocity

1. -Cognitive competences: Noticing Cause & Effect, One to One correspondence
   

2. -Language competences: Looks, gestures and non-verbal communication,
   

3. -Physical competences: Sitting up, “mitten” graspiing
   

How-

Again, the way I prevented all of Whit’s emerging competences from overwhelming me was by keeping the eye on the big picture of Exchanges. If I did not give all these other areas as much attention so be it. While I was in my joint explorations and exchanges sometimes I would notice an opportunity to help Whit with some other thing she was working on. She would show it to me in the moment, I did not need to worry about covering everything it would just come up as we played and had fun together.

I would get on the floor with the focus of starting up exchanges as things unfolded I could easily see the other skills and help out as called for. For example, when she began sitting up I could easily comment on her new skills and bring them into the exchange we were having (see video to right). I could also support her other skills with the appropriate scaffolding like putting pillows around her to try to support her new balance needed for sitting.

Why- This is a great period of new levels of independence, connectedness and competence. All Whit’s new skills of increased mobility, easier manipulation of objects in hands, more logic with cause and effect, greater range of emotion combine to afford her new levels of mastering her world.