WHO motor development milestones
World Health Organization
The six gross-motor milestones and the age windows they usually fall in. This is where our stage ranges come from, and it is why we write "around four months" instead of "at four months".
What we read
Our sources, our limits, and who is checking us
Almost every baby brand implies a laboratory it does not have. The phrasing is always the same, guided by science, backed by research, developed with experts, and it is almost never possible to find out which science, whose research, or which experts.
We would rather be the opposite: a small company that reads a great deal, names every source, hires the expertise it lacks, and tells you plainly where its knowledge stops. This page is the whole of it.
The library
Six sources, named
All public, all free, none of them ours. If you only read one thing from this list, read the second one, it is written for parents and it is better than anything we could write.
Learn the Signs. Act Early.
US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Month-by-month checklists written for parents. Plain, free, and far better than anything a shop would write on its own.
Consultatiebureau and JGZ guidance
Dutch youth health care
What Dutch parents are actually told at their own clinic. If our copy contradicts their nurse, we are the ones who are wrong.
Complementary feeding guidance
ESPGHAN and national health services
When solids start, why the window matters, and why we will not put an age on a spoon that ignores it.
The Absorbent Mind and The Discovery of the Child
Maria Montessori
Read in the original rather than in the marketing summary, so that when we eventually use the word Montessori it means something.
EN 71 and (EU) 10/2011, in full
European standards bodies
The actual test methods, not a supplier's summary of them. Reading these is how we learned which questions a factory hopes you will not ask.
None of these organisations endorses us, works with us, or knows we exist. Naming a source is not the same as being approved by it, and we will not blur that either.
Who is checking us
Three professionals, none of them hired yet
This is the honest gap in our knowledge and the plan to close it. When each of these people is engaged, their name, profession and registration number appear here, and every claim they reviewed carries their name and the date.
Paediatric dentist
Teething, shape, hardness
Whether a teether's shape and firmness help or hinder emerging teeth, and what to tell parents about how long a baby should be chewing on anything at all.
Feeding therapist or paediatric OT
The mealtime set
Spoon depth, bowl rim height, grip diameter, and where self-feeding genuinely begins as opposed to where it looks good on camera.
Developmental psychologist
The play set and the stage writing
Whether our stage descriptions are accurate and appropriately hedged, and to strike out anything that overpromises.
If this is you
We pay for hours, we do not pay for endorsements, and you keep the right to tell us in writing that something is wrong. We will publish that too. Two founders, a small budget, and a genuine willingness to delete a sentence you object to.
What we will know that nobody else does
Two hundred parents, one question each
We cannot fund a research department. We can ask every family who buys from us one small question at the right moment, and publish the answers with the sample size attached.
At what age did your baby first hold this with one hand. Which spoon did they reach for. How many weeks did the teether last before it was ignored. Nobody publishes that, because nobody bothers to ask, and because the answers are not always flattering.
Do that for two years and we stop being the shop that read the research. We become the only people who know what actually happens between four and twenty-four months in an ordinary kitchen.
How we ask
One question, in the email you already get when your stage changes. No survey, no incentive, no popup.
How we publish
Median and range, never an average that hides the spread, always with the number of families who answered. Where n is small we say n is small.
What it is not
It is not a study and we will not call it one. It is a large number of honest parents describing their own child, which is a different and useful thing.
Who owns it
You can see your own answers, remove them, and take them with you. We will never sell them, and we will never publish anything that identifies a child.
In writing
One page per month, not a blog
Nobody searches for a lifestyle article at eleven at night. They search for "baby 7 months everything in mouth". So we are writing one page per month of life, answering exactly that, with the sources named at the bottom.
4
Months · not written
5
Months · not written
6
Months · not written
7
Months · not written
8
Months · not written
9
Months · not written
10
Months · not written
11
Months · not written
12
Months · not written
Nine pages, one a fortnight, starting with month seven because that is where the questions are hardest. We are showing you the empty grid rather than publishing nine thin articles this week to look busy.