One helpful aspect of parent awareness throughout your child’s life is to know when developmental milestones typically occur, while also respecting the individuality of his or her unique timetable. I was reminded by last week’s Wall Street Journal article about waving bye-bye, of just how delightful “milestone spotting” can be over the course of a child’s unfolding! (The article points out that a baby typically acquires the bye-bye wave between 10-12 months, and that premature infants have a delayed and different bye-bye wave.)

Here are a few other enchanting developmental milestones to keep your eyes peeled for:

• Toward the end of the forty-day cocoon period, at around six weeks, attuned parents will notice a change in their baby: Like Noah after the forty days, she is “ready to open a window on the world.” She’s becoming more alert, more aware and responsive to the surrounding environment. Her journey toward relatedness is beginning. She is now ready to enter more into family life, needing somewhat less protection from the ordinary household noises, sounds of active older children, visitors, etc. Occasional gentle radio music is now acceptable. But television is still best avoided; the high quality of the sense impressions coming to the baby are fundamental to her newly wiring brain circuitry, making this one of the sensitive windows neuroscientists talk about. {Read more at mothering.com}