One mother’s account of activities for baby and toddler together
In this episode of the Learn With Less podcast, Ayelet chats with Rachel Kammeyer, a speech-language pathologist and mother of two children under two.
Rachel has an 8-week old baby and a nearly 2-year old toddler. She joins us nearly a year after we brought her on the podcast back on episode 58, when her son was about to turn one. Rachel received an advanced copy of the book, “Understanding Your Toddler,” a month-by-month development and activity guide for playing with your toddler from one to three years.
We cover the strategies Rachel uses to keep afloat as a mother of “two under two,” the resources she turns to when searching for developmentally appropriate, simple play activities for babies and toddlers, and simple ways she can engage both her young children at the same time (without feeling guilty)!
QUICK ACCESS TO LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE:
Understanding Your Toddler: A Month-By-Month Development and Activity Guide For Playing With Your Toddler From One to Three Years, by Ayelet Marinovich
Understanding Your Baby: A Week-By-Week Development and Activity Guide For Playing With Your Baby From Birth to 12 Months, by Ayelet Marinovich
Learn With Less® Curriculum parent education & parent support classes for parents and caregivers of infants and toddlers
Surviving and Thriving in the First Year of Motherhood: Learn With Less podcast episode 58, featuring Rachel Kammeyer
TEXT TRANSCRIPT OF THIS EPISODE
Ayelet: Welcome to episode 75 of the Learn With Less podcast. Today, I’m speaking with Rachel Kammeyer, the mother of an 8-week old baby and a nearly 2-year old toddler. I had Rachel on the podcast back on episode 58, when her son was about to turn one. Let’s see where she is now!
All right, so Rachel, let’s get started. I would love to ask you, why don’t you give us a little bit of a background. We chatted a little bit before the launch of the first book, Understanding Your Baby, a few things have changed for you since then. You are now also in the process of reading Understanding Your Toddler. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about you and who you are, and what your family looks like these days?
Rachel: So, I’m Rachel Kammeyer, I have a background in speech pathology. I had been working primarily with adults in the geriatric and brain injury communities and then I had my first little guy who will be two in April, and since then I’ve become a lot more interested again in the early childhood side of things. And then at the end of December, we welcomed little Bridget to our house, so now I have an 8-week old and we are a family of four!
Ayelet: Amazing, congratulations!
Rachel: Thank you. It’s amazing. Thank you. So we’ve got the “two under two” thing going for us…
Ayelet: Woo! Brave lady, yup!
Rachel: Yeah!
Ayelet: You’re not alone… So tell me a little bit about, because you are in the sort of unique, not “unique, unique” but in the interesting, unique position of actually reading both of the books right now, at the same time. I know that since you had already skimmed through Understanding Your Baby previously when your son was just about to turn one, basically, you have a sense of how it’s a pretty quick read, it’s an easy read, it’s short and sweet, but now you have two under two. What is it like? Did you have some skepticism about what it would be like to actually read some books? Sit down and and find time to read the books or what? What’s that like for you?
Rachel: I think it was actually the opposite. What happened was I felt like I knew what I was doing, because this wasn’t my first rodeo. And motherhood is such a double-edged sword of feeling like you’ve got this while simultaneously feeling like you have no idea what you’re doing. And around Bridget’s six weeks timeframe, when my mom had left (she was here for four and a half amazing weeks) and we were really in the thick of, like, just being a family of four and my toddler was, William was doing a really good job of adapting to his sister, but we have a lot of rain and our routine… We didn’t have a routine, we were trying to figure out what our new routine was going to look like. And that’s when it sort of dawned on me that I had the resource that I needed to help in this exact situation. I had the toddler book for my toddler, and I had the baby book for my baby.
And in the moment of sitting there I pulled up the one where it talks about giving your baby time to rest, like, sensory downtime. And I was like, oh, it’s okay that she’s sleeping a lot. It’s okay that I’m not like totally in her face like all the time doing the things that I did maybe as a first time mom jumping right in and being like, “oh look, I’ve got this baby I need to nurture and I can do that because like look, I’m home and it’s great.”
And so that immediately just helped me feel relaxed and, and then I was like, oh, and next week I can see what’s on the plate for the next week. Like, I don’t have to read ahead and like start getting one foot ahead of the other. I can just save this for when I’m nursing. Just check in on Sunday when she rolls over to the next week.
Make that my new habit and do the same look William, just like, I have the two books side by side in my drive so I can just swipe between them, and get some ideas. And the nice thing with the toddler book is, because I’ve been reading it as a part of the pre-read, the launch team, I jumped to his age group first and then I realized that I needed to read a little bit ahead for him because he’s definitely moving along at a good clip. But then I got to go back in the past few days and go back to the introduction and check-in with all of that other early except, and that’s actually been very helpful because it helps me really… I’ve been really interested in play lately, not just because of the LAB [the members area of the Learn With Less® Curriculum] and all of your good work on it, but because we’re thinking about pre-schools and thinking about what William will need as a person and where we want to like take his education route.
And the more and more I learn and the more and more I read, I just really want play to be an important part of it. And I’ve had conversations with other parents that are like, “well we want more academics because our kid is interested in that.” And I’m like, I just, I don’t know how to articulate it, but I don’t think there’s, there’s, they’re not two different things. Like, you can treat them like they’re two different things, but I just… but I just, I just don’t feel like they are. And I was reading your introduction just this morning and I watched that Carol Westby talk yesterday, and I was like, yeah, okay, okay. PLAY. And then what’s nice about the toddler book for me is that the “TALK” section I got down. The PLAY, I realize, because I, for example, I didn’t do a lot of ECI [Early Childhood Intervention] work. I only worked with kids that were three and up.
And when I worked in the schools I was doing a lot of activities, but I wasn’t doing a whole lot of like “on the floor play” with that population. And it’s been really nice to read those tips on play. Like, how to make the two trains, talk to each other and have their experience. Cause I’m like, oh usually he’s the one I do a lot of like child led. Like he’s the one with the trains, and even with all of my experience, it didn’t dawn on me to get on the floor and pretend to be another train with him, and like talk to him on the train. I know.
And so that’s what I love about the book is it’s like, it’s one little sentence that can just like radically alter what you’re doing maybe in a moment, and you feel good about it. You feel like you don’t have to stress about it because it’s one tiny little thing, it’s one little detail and it’s just using what you already have. But it’s also like a little revolutionary sometimes, especially when you are really tired and you’ve spent all morning and all you’ve really managed to accomplish is feeding everyone and getting everyone drops and it took three hours and yet you know that that actually wasn’t accomplishment because it did take three hours.
Ayelet: A minor miracle, in fact, yeah! Oh gosh, totally. And yeah, I love what you say about how it’s just that tiny little shift that you can make that can actually make a difference. I find that so much to be true. You know, when I read a new book that I’ve never read about play or infants or toddlers, because it’s somebody saying the same thing in just a slightly different way, for instance. And even then, you’re like, oh yeah, yeah, that’s a great way to think about it.
And I think also as professionals working with families, we’re always looking for new ways to explain things to parents and caregivers as well because as parents we tend to get in… not in a rut, but we get in our own routine. We get in this sort of limiting factors of trying to balance everything and trying to get through the day because those are limiting factors, right? Yeah. When we can use exactly like you said, the things that we’re already doing, the time we’re already spending, and then shift something just a tiny bit that can be really useful. I would love to know, what are some of the things…
Describe to me a moment that instigates you going to the books. I think the easiest way to describe this I’m sure is when you have a free hand, obviously as you sit here with me feeding your baby in one hand and talking on the phone with the other, that’s clearly the answer, but is there any other time that instigates you heading to either book?
Rachel: Yeah, so one of the things that’s been intriguing to me sort of as a researcher / parent /clinician, is William’s language is really advanced, but he’s still very much a 22 month old. And so, there are a lot of times that I see him doing a skill that might indicate my expectation for him might be too high for other things. So, I’ve been really using the book a lot to kind of check in, to kind of puzzle-piece together where William is and what I need to do for him. For example, one of the things that I’ve been . doing a lot of… It’s not the drill and kill, kind of like “what is that, what is that, what is that?” Lately I’ve been asking him a lot of questions about “well, why did that happen? What happened?” Because he’s been doing a lot of testing behavior.
And I loved – I absolutely loved the part – and I told my husband right after I read it, about how at this age they’re little scientists and they’re doing a little controlled experiment to see if they get the same results when they replicate their action across contexts. And I love that. That really resonated because that, in that moment, that’s what I needed to see that he’s not only testing is it okay to throw a ball in the house? Is it okay to throw a lid at your sister, is it okay to bang on the table in this context, in not this context. And it really helped me frame my perspective that okay, this is totally, it’s not just is it age appropriate, but what he’s doing is he’s looking to me for the guidance of “what can I get away with because I need to know what’s safe and what the acceptable, and I need you to explain it to me.”
So I’ve been trying over the past couple of days to reframe his analysis of it and take that burden off of him and just say, “that is unsafe because it’s hurting the table” or “this is unsafe because your sister is here,” or “that’s actually just really annoying and mommy is getting uncomfortable having to listen to you say that over and over again. Can you try to maybe tell me something else? I think you might be feeling like this, are you feeling like this?” We also tried taking away his binky this week and that… You can let me know what chapter that’s in.
So for me, the book has been a moment where I think, “okay, I’m seeing something and I kind of want to know how I can do more or less to meet him where he is and I need to figure out where he is.” And so the other thing that’s been really nice with the book when I go to it is when a friend comes and asks me about something, and then I can say actually my friend just wrote this book. But I’m not trying to sell it. It’s really, I mean I would like to help you, but also, the fact is, we’re all asking the same questions and you know, we tend to, you know, you’re always saying we don’t parent in isolation, but when you’re at home alone with your kid it often just does feel like you’re isolated with a tiny dictator and you’re wondering, you know, what the next steps are.
And, I’ve lately felt because I am literally sitting in a corner nursing now, a lot more of his day. Am I providing him an appropriate level of engagement? And obviously, like my mom, she had this huge joke with me because I think Bridget was like two weeks old. And William was getting really needy and obviously I was really feeling the loss of just William. Like I was not, it’s a thing like in a lot of ways like our relationship shifted and I felt that just as acutely as he did.
And it’s a weird thing, you can’t explain to people, but there’s this loss of that time. And like I would cry in front of my husband, I’d be like, you know when she’s really hard right now cause I miss William like I miss, I miss him because I’m over here doing this with Bridget and I looked at my mom at one point and I was like, “yeah, like I know urgency needs are like almost as important as William, like feeding her.” And she was like, “do you hear yourself?” I was like, okay, play is not actually equal to like Bridget eating.
Ayelet: But it feels like that! Because, he was your world. He was your only child, the only person you were responsible for (aside from yourself, and maybe your husband a little bit – oh that guy, right)! And then all of the sudden, that is just turned up on its head and of course you feel way, because that has been the most important thing! And you know the value of it, you know the value of that input, all that input that you’ve been giving him. And then suddenly you can’t… Do it the same way. That’s the end of that sentence: you can’t do it the same way.
Rachel: Yeah. And that’s where the book is also very helpful because TALK and SING and MOVE are parts of it. So we’re going through, and when I’m sitting there in the corner nursing on the sofa and he’s playing in front of me, how can I still engage him and these two different modalities that we can still be connected and also she’ll be getting the indirect… now she’s hearing the singing, and she’s hearing the talking, and that’s good for her too. Although, she gets overstimulated during the day and she doesn’t really come alive until he’s asleep.
So it’s definitely, that’s when I’ve been accessing the toddler book is really trying to figure out where William is and what he needs. Like a problem solving tool, I guess, although I think once like I’ve read through it for the purposes of helping the launch, I think what I’ll just be doing is going back to the week by week or the month by month. You know, because it goes through the month and it adds the different, like different like, social/emotional… And that’s something today I was thinking about with the binky, was that William was always really good at self-soothing.
But a lot of that came from the oral component. He got a rash and that’s what facilitated taking the binky away is because I think he’s teething and I think that saliva created a rash and we just needed to remove the binky for him to get better. And we explained that to him and he understood “rash.” But he’s been waking at night, and he’s been really a lot more challenging during the day.
And it kind of dawned on me about 48 hours ago, that the binky probably has something to do with it. And I didn’t give him a replacement behavior. I wasn’t going to tell him to suck his thumb, and I wasn’t going to hand him food, but I didn’t really know what I could do instead for him. And then, one of the chapters, I think somewhere around 24 months, was talking about the social emotional needs of the kid and labeling the feelings and saying, you know, are you experiencing this?
And kind of talking them through that. And I realized this might be an opportunity for me to use that. That dialogue when I see he’s starting to tither and he either asks for the binky or he’s like looking for that, we can start using some of that language to help. Are you feeling like you need a break, or you’re like, I need to start giving him some way that we can communicate what he… to help him grow.
And I may also just give him the binky back for a little bit because I’m not sure I’m ready… but I know, it’s like sleep training, you know, so lots of different schools of thought on it. But it became very clear to me that that was a crutch for him and I took it away and I didn’t give him another tool. But in the book that could be an opportunity for me to help give him something else instead. And so I need to read that again.
Ayelet: Well that’s really interesting how you described that, because I think that is some really good information about how the book can be used. Because, although it may not address specifically how to take the pacifier away and remove that from your child’s life, there are tools that you learned because the book literally is about understanding your toddler, how they learn in all these different ways and what’s going on with them, you know, cognitively communicatively, motorically, social emotionally and how we can support those things… That you can take the tools that you’re learning from each of the sections in the book and apply them to all the different specific situations in your life.
Rachel: It’s not like you’re not like you’re not going to address his social-emotional needs until 25 months. That’s just a section that talks about “this is a good opportunity for that, for where they are in this new period of transition” or whatever. And or, you know, you’re always going to be addressing their social emotional needs. But like the social stories thing – that was really useful because we had been using transition objects for a long time, which is something that you know, you talk about in the baby book.
Ayelet: Yeah. Why don’t you tell a little bit about that so that people who are listening can…
Rachel: Embedded in your routine are your environmental objects that you use throughout the day. And so, for children, oftentimes transitions going from a preferred activity to something that’s less preferred or even just going from one activity that’s interesting to another, it can be challenging. And so having a tool, like a literal object that they need for the next thing or something that they can carry with them to the next activity, is a nice way of helping them transition and redirect their attention and anticipate with next or understand what’s next…
Understand what they need to do, or what they know what’s going to happen to them. And so, for example, like when William was a lot younger, we had a particular towel that we would use for part of the routine to get out of the shower and it was the duck towel, and he loved the duck towel. And then we had a duck towel ceremony where we sat on the duck towel for the story time.
And then what that turned into was the next step was turning off the light and he could turn the light off himself. And so, the routine was full of these punctuation marks of objects that would guide him to what’s next. And he loves them and we’ve been using them for a long time. So, with the screen time being so powerful, and dinnertime, not necessarily being as rewarding, having that extra visual of, okay, this is what’s expected of you because we, he knows what’s next, he knows now that dinner is always after Blippi. And he knows where he sits, but the picture gave him the sense of, oh, this is what it’s gonna look like when it’s finished, when I’m sitting there, getting into my stool.
And he could carry the picture and we can put it on the table where he’s going to go, and he could reference it, he could see it. Now, the next day we did have a big meltdown in that process, but there was a lot more going on. Dinner was later, he was hungrier. Again, there was no binky during the day, so I’m pretty sure he had some pent up feelings about that. So it’s not like everything always works 100% all of the time. No tool is that useful. It’s something that now I just keep it under the laptop, you know? And if there are other things that become challenging, we can write little social stories along the way.
And so, that was a great way of seeing something that you used for Understanding Your Baby transition to the needs of the toddlerhood. It’s not like once you’ve read one book, you’re going to be able to deal like without the book. For the next one it’s that these piggy back off of each other. And also the dynamic nature of a child who’s growing. Is this something that worked can continue to work, but you have to tweak it a little bit. And that, that tweak was very helpful for us because Blippi is five feet from the dinner table, so it’s not like he had to go far, but those are the longest five feet.
Ayelet: Yeah. And there are little steps that have to happen, like Blippi has to get turned off, and I have to go over there and remove my eyes from it – that doesn’t sound fun!
Rachel: Oh yeah, that is, no, there’s – no, that’s the worst.
Ayelet: Oh yeah.
Rachel: But it’s been really good too, because one of the things about being a stay at home parent is, it’s a little bit harder to bounce your ideas off of people in like a context of just sitting here having a one on one conversation like we all right now. So right now in my head it’s like “Ping, Ping, Ping!”, like I’m thinking about a lot of different things because the speech therapist inside of me is well aware of all these techniques, but often they were for older children or children who had a very specific kind of disorder that this might be for and they needed even more structured, even more over labeling of the elements of the transition. And if that’s where you’re always thinking about going, the more complicated things, then the book is really nice because nothing in the both is too complicated.
Ayelet: Right! And it’s a great tool that you can use for a typical or even advanced, or a child who is delayed, experiencing delays – it’s all… Because it is that basic: How do children learn and develop at this, around these levels of zero to three years and it does happen for every child regardless of their chronological age, developmental age, where they are in that spectrum, but it… Any human, it doesn’t matter if you’re in Silicon Valley or in Nairobi or anywhere in between and whatever socioeconomic bracket you fall under, this is how humans learn.
Now how you choose to implement that is also of course going to be determined by your own culture, your own predisposition, your own interests and how comfortable you are with using the SING pillar or whether you’re more of a MOVE kind of a parent or whether you are very comfortable like yourself with talking, but that’s it. It’s giving you tools for whatever style you, wherever you are naturally, or where ever you’d like to take yourself.
Rachel: Or, the temperament of your child! You know, like I have a really strong suspicion that MOVE is not going to be as important for Bridget as it is for William. And so in some ways I’ll have to challenge her in that way but she really loves singing, so she gets to listen to your album a lot, so she’ll know what a real pretty singing voice is! But yeah, the first time she really lit up and connected with me was when I was singing our good morning song together with William and I was like, oh, I am going to have to sing again… because I think one of the first times we talked it was because I was really reluctant to sing to my kid! Like. He doesn’t know that I have a very mediocre voice.
Ayelet: It doesn’t matter what kind of voice you have.
Rachel: It’s Mommy’s voice, yeah. So, that’s how I’ve been accessing the books and thinking about them. The Understanding Your Baby, it’s been nice to just go chapter by chapter again, because that helps… Honestly like this time is going so much faster with number two. It’s really, you don’t want to feel like you’re cheating yourself or your kid out of, like… So I’m not in a rush to move ahead with that. It’s weird. She’s almost, she’s almost two months old. And I’m like, how did that happen?
Ayelet: You’ve spoken a bit about the impact that it’s had on your life. What kind of impact do you imagine it might have on other families? What would you say to someone who’s, you know, looking at a couple of toddler books, potentially. Why is this one a good one?
Rachel: This one is great because it’s evidence based. So I know it’s pulled from a lot of different research sources, versus like one person peddling one philosophy. I think there are a lot of toddler books that say “this is the way to do something,” and this book is, “this is how kids learn, these are things you can do.” I do plan on trying to, so…
When I give this talk to the parents club, I’m very much going to emphasize that there are tools out there because everyone wants to know, well what can I do? Like, I know that this is important, but what do I do? I think the brilliance of this book is in a very digestible content, a manageable amount of content you have, in any given time, a framework for how to do something. You’ve got the MOVE, the SING, the PLAY, and the TALK.
And then you’ve also got one idea, two ideas or the flexibility within each idea of how to do that. And none of it requires anything particular, except for the things you have in your environment that are already there. So I can’t think of a more simple or straightforward way of enriching a child and to say, “you can read in four to five minutes this section on this age group and have 15 to 20 new ways of accessing what your child needs.” You don’t get more bang for your buck than that, you know? And then, there’s nothing you have to buy.
It’s like, hey look, like one of the things I did with William, so for his age, you were talking about categorization, and William has, he learned his colors and he is really interested in where things go. He knows that things have a home and I’ve never really overtly talked about, oh, you know, we’ve talked about the categories of things or what the kinds of things are, I never sat down and did like a sorting task with him. I thought, well maybe I should do that sometime and then – but I don’t have to! No pressure! It’s just, you know, he’s going to get it anyway, God willing.
Ayelet: He is! Because you have kitchen things in your kitchen, and bathroom things in your bathroom!
Rachel: Exactly! So we were sitting down the other day and I was trying to fold laundry and I was like, oh, I dumped out the socks and I said, hey, let’s match the socks, let’s put our socks together! Because some of the socks had days of the week, and some of them just have colors and it was a fun 10 minutes, 15 minute, little activity we could do together. So it was his one, one time with me while she was sleeping, but it was also a really nice way of kind of helping him. He loves, he took the lead, he would pick up the sock and then… He does this really cute thing now where he’ll be like, “how ’bout… this one? How ’bout…”
And so he would like deliberately get them wrong and say “no…” And instead of like just jumping in and being like, “you know which one it is!” I’m just like, oh, okay. How about that one? And then later when they were all laid out, I was like, oh, some of these seem like they might not be a match. What do you think? And then it was really, like, it was so easy. It was, and it’s fun and nice. And I would tell someone: I made sorting socks with my son into a really great cognitive task. And the only thing it took was like 15 minutes versus like a slap dash let’s put the socks away in two minutes, you know, or for however long it takes to put socks away.
Ayelet: Well, for you…
Rachel: Yeah, for me it could have taken 15 minutes regardless. But, but he didn’t dump the socks out, you know, it was really deliberate. It was. So that’s the kind of thing that I think a lot of us want, and that’s what I would explain to someone. You know, I think that this book is a really great tool for letting you figure out things to do in your own home, or things to do in the car or things to do with your family.
Ayelet: Things to do with the things you’re already doing.
Rachel: Exactly. Yeah. Brilliant. And I know, like, I have a hard time or I don’t like sounding preachy because, but I swear like if given the opportunity to talk about a tool that is very useful, I think this would be the top one that I would mention.
Ayelet: Ooh, that’s high praise!
Rachel: But I also would say that you draw from some of the other resources that I’ve also found. And so that’s the other reason that I trust it. And so a lot of people, you know, like the holistic view of learning and understanding the neuroscience behind toddlerhood I think really is an important part of not just seeing everything the toddler does as a behavior, as this acting out, as this super negative time.
Because really for them, it’s a super challenging time because their brain is exploding, but it’s also like this is, their world is getting bigger and bigger and bigger every day, and there’s more and more that they need to do with that. And you know, if you have the privilege or the luxury of being able to directly involve yourself in your child’s care one day a week, seven days a week, it’s great to know, oh this is, this is something I can help them in this world. Be a little world ambassador.
Ayelet: Yeah. You are currently a stay at home parent, what about for a working parent. Is this a good tool for working parents?
Rachel: I can see it, yeah definitely because I feel like weekend for working parents. I know cause my husband is working so there was always this like, pull between getting things done and then the bonding time or the family time. And it’s also really easy, I think to get stuck in a rut when you have like designated days for things. So, for a working parent, I think one of the nice things is that none of the things in this book require any extra. It’s just like we said, like tweaking what you’re already doing.
And if you do have an opportunity to influence your children’s childcare, like with a nanny or a family member or even like a really open daycare system, you know, I think this is a great tool for saying, this is why we’re doing this, or this is how I’m doing this. Could you carry this over or you know you have your Recipes For Play, and that’s brilliant because this isn’t like something where if you read the chapter on the 25 months it’s like a “four week plan for improving your child’s use of spatial relations.” It’s like, “hey look, here’s a box, let’s dump things in and talk about it.”
And this is how you can access, this as a 14 month old and this is how you can access it as a 24 month olds and it’s the same box and we can do, like… And then you can, as a parent, I think it doesn’t matter if you’re working or you’re staying home, you’re still in awe of what your child is doing. Yeah, I know that not everyone has the luxury of 15 minutes to put socks away, but there is some time that you’re spending alone with your toddler or as a family and that’s all you need is a little bit.
Ayelet: Thank you Rachel. This is great. Is there anything else that you would like to share?
Rachel: I think that seeing the world through your kid’s eyes is so important and it can be so challenging at with age because we’re always thinking about these like adaptive skills, you know like the toilet training and the getting yourself dressed and it’s really nice to spend a little time just thinking about play. You know? It’s something I think even as adults we need to do better at, not just scrolling through Facebook and like… Yeah it’s a great resource.
Like, a friend of mine asked me, because I was talking about something I learned from the book, and she was like, well how did you get to read it already? And I was like, oh well it’s because you know, I was part of the launch team. But also, you know, I wanted this book to come out like, since I read the one for the baby! And so I really hope that, you know, anyone who hears me talk about it, knows that I’m, I’m doing this because it’s something I believe in, it really, it’s a great product. It’s a great resource.
Ayelet: Yay. I’m so happy you feel that way. Well, thank you for taking the time to chat with me today, sharing your experience.
Rachel: Absolutely.
