Toys That Help (and Hurt) Your Baby’s Development with the All Things Sensory Podcast | Ep. 100

0:00Hey, mom friend heads up. I do want to apologize for the audio not sounding great in this episode. We had some technical difficulties. So if this is your first time tuning in, this is not what it usually sounds like. Just wanted to give you a heads up there. Thank you so much for understanding. Now, in case this is your first time tuning in, I'm Layla and this is the podcast where you get your first time mom questions answered by experts in prenatal, postpartum and pediatric health so that you can be less overwhelmed and more informed. Each expert guest comes with their own perspective and background, so please note that the content presented in this podcast is designed for general educational purposes only.

0:37Today we're talking all things toys, what kind of toys are best for your child's development and which toys to skip out on. We talk about how toys can affect child development and walking and how to choose the best toys. And we covered it all with the incredible women from the All Things Sensory podcast. Now let's get into it, shall we? Hi, Rachel. Hi, Jessica. Welcome to the Learning to Mom podcast. Thank you so much for being here today. Hello. Thank you for having us. I'm really excited. This is a conversation that I like genuinely have questions about. So I want to dive in, but before we do, I would love for each of you to just tell us a little bit about yourself and then also together what spurred you to start all things sensory.

1:22Okay. Well, I'll go first. I'm Rachel. I am an occupational therapy assistant by trade and a primitive reflex integration specialist. I am a mom of two, but I just love being a mom. I love teaching people about all the things sensory reflexes, babies, kids, finding a balance. So that's me. I'm Jessica. So sorry for my voice. This is not how I normally sound, but we're making it work. I'm also a certified occupational therapy assistant, primitive reflex clinical specialist. Rachel and I actually went to school together to get our degrees in occupational therapy. And then we both worked together for like the past 10 years.

2:07Yeah. We worked in outpatient pediatric clinics and learned a lot on the job. Like we learned the majority of what we know now by doing it. Yeah. Jessica and I were working together in the pediatric population. And we were really frustrated because we felt like when we were working with our clients, there was a disconnect between being able to teach the caregivers exactly what we were doing in the sessions. Because we had like 10 minutes after our sessions to be like, hey, this is what we were doing. This is why it's important. This is what you need to do at home. Okay, go. And we're like, there has to be a better way.

2:44And so we started our podcast, All Things Sensory, back in 2018. And kind of like before podcasts were really like super popular. And we just wanted a place to teach mostly parents and therapists how to support their clients, support their kiddos, and really just give more information than we can one-on-one with clients. Awesome. Thanks. Starting off, I think just a good place to start this conversation would be, can you guys explain the importance of age-appropriate toys in supporting a baby's developmental milestones from birth to 12 months? Like why is it important that we're even having this conversation?

3:26Yeah, well, milestones are kind of an interesting thing. And there are so many different kinds of milestones. And I think most people think of gross motor milestones, the rolling, the sitting, the crawling, the walking, like that's really what we think about when we think about milestones and trying to incorporate toys that help a baby achieve those milestones. But there's really so many different milestones we want to look at. And as occupational therapy assistants, that's what we do during our sessions when we're working with the early intervention population. So you have to think about the fine motor milestones, the pincer grasp, the raking grasp, the pointing, the waving.

4:05You have to think about the social emotional milestones. You have to think about the visual processing and the visual motor milestones. Like there are so many, the cognitive milestones, the speech milestones, like there's so many different things that we have to think about. And you can work on a lot of those things through play. Again, in occupational therapy, that's what we do. We focus on the child's occupation, which is play. And we help a child reach those milestones through play-based activities, whether that's toys, whether that's activities, whether that's movements, whether that's just everyday activities.

4:38That's what we're working on. I think it's important to remember too that these developmental milestones build on each other. So when we're looking at toys for our babies, we want to make sure that we're starting with the basics and then building up and we don't want to skip any of those milestones. So when we can get toys that help our babies reach those milestones, we're helping to build that foundation for later development. Okay. What you guys just said actually flows very easily into the next question that I had for you, which was like, what are the different key developmental areas that toys should target.

5:14So, you know, you mentioned the fine motor skills, cognitive development, sensory exploration, teach me everything. Well, yeah. I mean, you're, you're pretty much on it. You know, we have our gross motor activities, which is our rolling, our crawling. And one of our favorite things to promote that, and I'm sure we'll get into this more, but like a therapy ball, right? A yoga ball is something that you can have in your house. You use it during pregnancy and then you should be using it honestly every day with your baby from the time that they are born until dot dot dot. Like, you know, like that's that's something that you can have in your house and use with your child every day.

5:50And it's an activity that grows with them and helps them reach those gross motor milestones for our fine motor skills. I mean, honestly, we don't have to think about necessarily toys. We can just think about things in their environment, weight bearing on open hands, crawling, picking up objects in their environment, picking up food, spoons, self-feeding, all of those daily activities can really help to promote a child's fine motor skills. Visual skills, rolling a ball while they're sitting or while they're laying on their tummy, rolling a ball back and forth to them, working on their social emotional and their cognitive, singing songs to them, interacting with them, going on a scavenger hunt around the house.

6:30And you can do this when they're tiny, tiny babies just going around and talking about the things that you see. And, you know, those social, emotional, those cognitive, those speech milestones. I was having a conversation with a friend the other day who was two year old, doesn't really talk very much. And I have a two year old. So, you know, by, by nature we compare, right? She's like, well, why is your daughter talking so much? And she's like, I was reading this book and they were saying to narrate everything that you do. And I was like, yeah, I talk about what I do with my kiddos all day, every day.

7:00Literally, I don't shut up and they probably are annoyed about it, but they hear it. And I think that's something so simple that we can do is just talk to our babies, sing to our babies. And so often I feel like people are looking for the next best thing to entertain our children. And we just have to take it back to the, you know, the simple things in life, us, like we are, we are the entertainment. We are the best toy, quote unquote, that a child can ever have. Well, and going along with that, there's a lot of toy options. And there's a lot of videos out there showing us like, hey, you should get this for your baby.

7:39And we use social media a lot to kind of look for things that we want for our babies. But really, you don't need to buy the newest, fanciest toys. You also don't need to buy a lot of toys. Like Rachel said, we as the caregivers can be our baby's best way to learn. Toys are great. And I definitely have a few that are my favorite, but we want to think about less is more with our babies because when we provide them with too much, then they get overwhelmed. Just piggybacking off of that. I think that it's important to share this research article that's just stuck in my head. It's been there for years.

8:18I don't even remember where it is. I mean, I could probably find it at this point, but the article was comparing giving a child four toys in their environment versus 16 toys in their environment. You can kind of identify where it's going to go. They were showing that the kids who had four toys in their environment had better sustained attention. They played with the toys longer. They explore the toys longer versus the kiddos who had 16 toys. It was more like, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. And they're just moving between the toys rather than really exploring and learning with those toys.

8:51This is so good. So like zero to 12 months is obviously a huge range. So in that, when you talk about even like groupings of the toys, cause I know that's what we're going to kind of focus on today. Like what are the age ranges in that zero to 12 month that you guys like breaking up? Yeah, I feel like zero to three. You can kind of work on some of the same skills, zero to three, I would. Which is what? Really just like sensory integration, like getting our senses to develop. We're laying on the floor. We're visually tracking high contrast activities. We're doing slow swinging in a blanket swing.

9:31We're like laying on our tummy over the therapy ball. we are listening to classical music you know think about all of the eight senses and maybe we need to cover those but if you think about all of those eight senses you could do simple activities that promote that sensory development and you can just think about oh this wake window we're going to focus on the sense of smell and this wake window we're going to focus on the sense of our vestibular system and I love that yeah and then what's the next one I would say three to six three to six months yes because then you're really working on like improving that tummy time you're working on like some like core strengthening activities they're starting to do like little sit-ups you're working on like more of a defined like grasping toys bringing them to midline bringing them to their mouth yep um and then six to nine they're really working on sitting rolling ideally starting to get up into that quadruped position really working on the reflex integration at that age too and then I would say nine to twelve where they're crawling they're sitting unsupported they're managing their environment they're going to start pulling up to stand to get ready for walking and again those are a lot of the gross motor but even within all those different age ranges like Rachel mentioned we're working on grasping so between like six and nine months, our babies are going to start learning how to like intentionally pick up a toy and put it somewhere.

11:00Maybe they put it in a cup. They're going to start transferring toys between both hands. Um, they're going to be looking and watching their environment and watching people move. Um, babbling starts imitating. So if you're like, you know, they're going to start looking at your mouse and trying to imitate those and then, you know, starting to point and starting to wave and starting to show caregivers what they're interested in and gather their interest as well and share interest too, which is a really important like social emotional skill. I also think too, you know, we're therapists. So we have a lot of this information in our heads and we don't want to overwhelm parents with being like, Oh my gosh, what does that mean?

11:44I don't, I need to take notes. It's like, no, you really don't. It's okay. Just put your baby on the floor, have like one or two toys or one or two activities planned to do with them and just be on the floor with them and follow their lead. What are they looking at? What are they reaching for? And just really that biggest piece is that connection to you. Yeah. I think just when you're connecting with them and you're working on reading stories. I mean, there are so many different ways that you can read stories with your baby that are going to be beneficial. Rather than just sitting next to them reading a story, lay on your tummy and read a story.

12:24Lay on your back and hold the book above your head. Sit across from them. Prop them up and sit across from them. Lay on your tummies across from each other. Talk about what you see on each page rather than just reading the words. Point to different things on the page. Ask them questions. Like they're not going to be able to answer the questions at this young, at this young age, but they'll at least be able to start recognizing, oh, this is a conversation. This is what we're looking at. This is shared attention. So, I mean, you can break down one simple task, like reading a book and, and do it in so many beneficial ways.

12:56One of the most common questions I receive is what pregnancy or nursing safe skincare and makeup do you recommend? In case you didn't know, it is so important to be using pregnancy and nursing safe skincare during those seasons. I mean, I believe it's important to always have toxin-free skincare and makeup. You're literally putting those products on your body, but especially important when you're pregnant and postpartum. You need to avoid anything that has hormone or indican disruptors along with formaldehyde releasing chemicals. Even some natural herbal ingredients can cause preterm labor contractions.

13:32Crunchy doesn't have any of that. Pregnancy and postpartum hormone shifts lead to skin discoloration, hormonal acne, and loss of collagen, which can cause pimples, melasma, and new fine lines to appear. So I understand the desire to find a product that works. Because you want to feel your best and be the most confident version of yourself as possible, especially in this life phase. Which is why I've been using Crunchy, because it actually makes my skin look good and I have peace of mind while using it because their ingredients are clean. I could literally talk for days about them and why I stand behind them so freaking hard from both an ingredient standpoint and from a performance standpoint, but I don't think you'll believe me until you just bite the bullet and try it.

14:16And there's no harm in trying it. They have a 30-day money-back guarantee, but I literally have never returned anything and my whole contents of my makeup bag is from them. And speaking of my makeup bag, I linked everything that's in my clean makeup bag to help you get started to see my go-to regular products. Or you can go straight to their website. I linked both in the show notes below for you. If you click on the link in the show notes below and use the code ADVOCATE10 at checkout, you'll get 10 % off. You can thank me later, mom friend. Let's go back to the eight senses. What are the eight senses?

14:53Yeah, we got to curve those. Okay. So you have your common five, right? I have to like look at myself when I do this, because it's hard for me to list off these five. Your sense of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. Okay. So those are the five that we learned about in elementary school, but some of our hidden senses, which I feel like are the most important are vestibular, which is your sense of movement. You have, you have receptors in your inner ear. They tell us, oh, we're upside down. Oh, we're moving. We're rolling. We have our proprioceptive system, which is in our joints and muscles and our tendons.

15:31It's the receptors that tell us where we are in space. It's the only sense that isn't, we can't be, we generally aren't over responsive to proprioceptive input, meaning you can't get too much of it. Whereas you can get too much vestibular input, you can get too much auditory input. So it's a really cool sense in that regard. And then the last one is the interoceptive system, which is internally what's going on. Am I hungry? Am I thirsty? Am I cold? Do I have pain? Do I need to go to the bathroom? And then that really connects to our emotions as well and our emotional awareness and intelligence too.

16:06And the interesting thing about all eight senses is they're all connected to each other. So for example, because our vestibular system is located in our inner ears, it's also connected to our auditory system as well as our visual system. Because when we move our head and our vestibular system is activated by the fluid in our ears, we're using our vision to lead our head, right? So we have that connection there. And when we think about our babies, they're really working on that visual vestibular integration when they are rolling, when they are transitioning between different positions, like laying down to sitting up.

16:48when they're crawling, all of those movement activities are developing that visual vestibular system. Yeah. And I have really important thing that I always think about is you think about babies in the womb, they're surrounded by fluid, they're upside down, they're in these different positions and they come out and they're like, Oh, here I am on my back. And they're not getting that same stimulation. So we have to think about this as babies still need to move. They need stimulation. They need to be swung. They need to be up and down and turned and spun, you know, gently, of course, but we still, we're not flipping them in the air quite yet, but we need to continue to stimulate their vestibular system, especially for babies who are breech or who are born via C-section or premature and, you know, waiting or, you know, making sure that they're stable before we're flipping in the air.

17:38But yeah, we need to make sure that we're continuing to provide them with that input that maybe they missed in utero if they were breech for a long time, they weren't, they weren't getting that same input. This is so fascinating to me. This is like a whole new world that I've never thought about. So I'm like, I'm like pumped to try all this, you know? So I want to talk about baby gear as you're talking about the swings and just in your guys's professional experience, what do you think of the baby gear that's like limiting? Because I guess in my head, I thought like, okay, the bouncers and the seats and like carriers are great, but not for a long extent of time and like all this stuff.

18:18But then it kind of sounds like you guys are like, so team swing that I guess the swings. Let me, let me explain. Okay. Team swing does not mean a team, like just the repetitive swing. Okay. It's not, not the swing that you buy from target. No, we do not recommend those in our personal or professional opinions. If you want to do that, that is totally fine. Just make sure that you counteract any time in the swing with floor time. But the type of swing I'm talking about is like a blanket swing where you literally are holding your baby in a blanket and you're swinging them, you're lifting them up and down.

18:56And it's you who is doing the motion. It's not an electronic component. That they're going to be in for a long time. Right. We're talking about even like a playground swing for older children, right? That's the kind of swings we're talking about. Okay. So to the, what other thing, what other baby gear are you not a fan of? What do we? I think so many things. First, it's important to know that we're not like anti baby gear altogether. It's more about using it in moderation. We don't recommend putting your baby in like a little bouncer for a long period of time. You could use it occasionally. totally fine, especially if you are busy or have other kids, or if you need to go cook dinner for 30 minutes and your baby, you need some help, right?

19:44Go ahead and use it. But like Rachel mentioned, we want to make sure we're providing our baby with lots of floor time. So open play on the floor where they can move the way their body needs to move to develop those gross motor, fine motor, all of those developmental milestones, right? So we're not like anti-anti-containers. We don't want people to feel like they're going to ruin their child's development if they put them in a swing. Like, no, if you put them in a swing and then you put them in the car seat and then you put them in the bumbo seat and then you put them in the bouncer and then you put them in the, like if they're going from container to container all day, every day, then yeah, they're probably, they could potentially have some, some challenges.

20:29But everything in moderation and just be mindful. Like if you're if you know you're going to go for a long car ride with baby, then make sure that they have ample floor time before and after. Right. So going back to your question, things that we definitely would maybe not recommend. Like the biggest things for the younger babies are like those electronic swings, the bumbo seats that like suction your feet in. There's a newer bumbo seat. That's okay. But we love the upseat because it was, it was designed for, um, it was designed by pediatric therapists, but not until baby sitting on their own. We don't want to put them in these positions, in these containers that baby can't hold on their own.

21:12Right. And going along with that, what are the ones where you put baby in and they're upright and they can like bounce with their feet, the jolly jumper, right? Yeah. We've got exorcer. Yeah. So those are ones that we don't recommend until baby is walking, which once baby starts walking, you might actually not need those. But the reason for that is because until baby is pulling themselves up to standing and walking, their body is not actually physically developmentally ready to put their full body weight on their legs like that. So, you know, I've seen a lot of PTs, physical therapists actually say, no, this is not good for our babies.

21:52If you want to use them, that's your call. But I definitely don't recommend those until baby is able to bear weight independently on their feet. Yeah. I think the only other one that I'll mention too, that's like a really big no-no are those walkers that you sit the baby in and they like roll around. I was thinking of that one too. Yeah. those are actually banned in other countries and they're just not safe. And we just, you know, we want baby to develop the ability to walk on their own. We don't want it to be in a container, um, for them to learn to walk. So things like, you know, the, the push wagons or those little push walkers, those are better once they're starting, starting to walk.

22:32But yeah, those are like the big ones I'd say. Okay. Those that's great. Is it true that now like the average walking age is after a year because of all the containers that we put our babies in? The research that I have found, we're going down a whole rabbit hole, is that - I told you I was throwing away the Google shop. I know. That changes actually from the back to sleep campaign that started in the 90s, right? So because babies are designed to be prone on their tummy, the research shows that the walking age used to be like nine to 12 months. And now it's like 12 to 16 months because of that lack of, of prone time.

23:16Um, I will say side note, my son did great with tummy time, met all of his developmental milestones. He didn't walk until 14 months or 13, almost 14 months. Um, so, you know, as we're talking about this, just know that every child is a little bit different. That's how my kids were too. They were tummy sleepers. They did tummy time. They did all the things and they were also 13, 14 months. So, um, and that we didn't use any containers either with them. So it's, it's so hard to say like, this is what's going to happen. This is exactly why that's just the research that we found. But also I feel like in some, in some instances, you know, for babies who are walking later, achieving those milestones later, it could be from the lack of, of tummy time, but also we see kids who are walking at eight or nine months and they're skipping milestones or skipping crawling because there is potentially an underlying challenge and they're not going to integrate those primitive reflexes like, like we'd want them to.

24:15So it can really go either way. Okay. That is fascinating. Okay. Well, I'm sorry that I'm like jumping around here. I'm like, no, we've met this and I have this. So sorry, listeners for the little rollercoaster ride that we're going on. Jessica, earlier you talked about some toys that you do recommend. So I'd love to get into like your favorite toys for development. And then also maybe just what are some like green flags to look for when you're at the store and you're trying to decide should this come home with me? For the first year of life, we want it to be simple, right? We don't need anything super complex.

24:56I love container toys. I mean just some sort of container bucket with an opening on top that baby can put their hand in to take the toy out and put their toy back in you can use tissue boxes if you don't want to buy anything but container toys are one of my favorite and they grow with baby right so you can start introducing container toys between like three and six months old I'd say and start showing them how to take the toys out, show them how to put the toys in. You can put all of the toys around baby and they can grab the toys, put the toys in their mouth, put them in the container. I also really like bubbles.

25:36I think bubbles are a really easy way to stimulate multiple things and being able to watch them. And they're fun to pop and point and kick and clap as baby is growing as well. And it's one of those things where we're not necessarily turning on the bubble machine at this young of age. We're being more intentional with like teaching them how to blow the bubbles, having them watch us blow the bubbles, catching the bubbles on the wand and bringing it to them and letting them touch it and pop it and just being really intentional with that and singing while we're doing it. And again, you can have them sitting, you can have them laying on their back, you can have them laying on their tummy.

26:16You could, if you want to get fancy and they're six months and they're starting to sit on their own, you can have them sit on the therapy ball and then have someone else blow bubbles. Or then you can turn on the bubble machine and really work on that postural control and that core strength. So, again, it's simple, but it's using one toy in multiple ways. I like that. you know how when you become a mom and suddenly you start paying attention to everything like truly i didn't give a flying crap about ingredients until i became a mom it's just this realization that the choices you're making for you doesn't just impact you anymore your body wash your makeup your food and then one day you look at your laundry detergent and you're like oh what what is this stuff?

27:05What, what is this stuff? Because the label says clean, but the scent is spring meadow. And then you actually start looking at the ingredients and it's a whole mess of chemicals, fragrances, dyes, and hormone disruptors that are not it. Especially when your baby's going to be wearing the clothes that they are washed in, sleeping in them, drooling on them, breathing the scent in through their crib sheets at night living in them that's why i made the switch to truly free and i'm never going back it's a non-toxic refillable laundry system that's actually safe for pregnancy postpartum and baby clothes no artificial fragrances no dyes no parabens no greenwashing just real clean ingredients that do their job without making you question if your laundry is slowly poisoning your family.