Too often, and in my own personal experience, the phrase "They'll grow out of it, you're just an over-anxious first-time parent" is being overused. And to put it simply, in too many cases, it is simply incorrect. It invalidates our God-given mum instinct. It invalidates our gut instinct (which is, in fact, a real phenomenon, thanks to our enteric nervous system). But more importantly, there's a baby or child's wellbeing at stake. Our feelings as parents are being invalidated and shut down. But, they ARE valid, and they need to be listened to. Our feelings are completely OK to have, and we know our children better than anyone. As parents, we are gifted to protect and advocate for our children and babies, and we owe them that.
If I earnt a £1 every time I've personally heard this towards me, let alone the families I've supported, I'd probably be able to afford a Porsche!
Whilst I am not hands-on with children under 7 years old officially as yet, in order to refine just my hands-on skills for an extra year (the theory is well understood), my own personal experience has been one of the best yet hardest educators I've ever had in my life. Our children can be some of our best teachers. For almost a year, whilst hellbent on finding the cause of my child's ongoing discomfort, I had the term "leave your child alone, let him grow out of his severe silent reflux", and even had the threat of social services from one gastro clinic on the request by them to take my child for allergy blood tests (I note, against my will because I knew this was not the case), just to % rule out that this was not a factor, "if you do any more tests on your child I will flag it to social services". Lets just note, this was the first test I had ever been asked to do to my child, and was not something I felt was necessary. Low and behold, there were no allergies, just pollen allergy which is hereditary.
Thankfully, thanks to one amazing friend I made on a reflux Facebook group who shared the same attitude towards advocating for her child as I did, one priceless day she told me about a lady she met up North who assessed her child, understanding the root cause of their discomfort. And from there, the rest is history. I contacted that lady up North who gave me a referral to a lady down south, who taught her, and the day finally came where my gut instinct had been correct all along. There was a cause for my child's discomfort, and it started with what I call, an extraordinary failure of care in the tongue tie practitioner world - a poorly treated tongue tie revision, twice, with no or incorrect exercises, no functional assessment, just a simple "let's cut it, oh it's reattached lets cut it again, here's some exercises for a couple of weeks with no assessment of muscle tone, tension points or patterns, areas of compensation or dysfunction. Equally as important, no understanding or awareness of the importance of pre-division exercises in order to stretch the frenulum to expose as much of the restriction as possible pre any division, and no recommendation for targeted biodynamic craniosacral therapy to loosen the tissues and muscular strain before any division. Low and behold, when it came to a year in, my child had never learnt how to use their tongue - and worse still, they had a tongue tie still remaining. His body was so twisted fascially from the oral dysfunction issues and had a huge impact on feeding mechanics, and his body was stuck in a birth trauma that had never been unravelled. 3 cranial osteopaths in, and none had identified any of this. We finally found our 4th and final Osteopath trained in biodynamic craniosacral therapy for paediatrics, and after 2 months of intensive intra-oral exercises and craniosacral therapy, my child's silent reflux journey was finally over.
We still carry the consequences of this failure of all the medical teams we had in place with impacts on jaw development and speech, but that's a separate journey. It just taught me whilst I was also training in biodynamic craniosacral therapy, the importance of not dismissing feeding challenges or intervened births or difficult stressful pregnancies impacts on any child, and to resolve the cause of their issues early.
Both through Facebook groups I belong to, and through discovery calls I have with worried parents, I am constantly hearing the same term "they'll grow out of it". Two years in, children are still facing the same and other challenges because the root cause of their original discomfort was dismissed by medical people and the whole family continues to suffer. Sleepless nights, behavioural problems in the children, child up at night for hours, frequent night wakes, difficulty potty training.
Only yesterday, I had a request to call a worried first-time mum. Her baby born arm first, through a very traumatic birth, the legs angled to the right, because of the right arm first birth pattern .Now, the baby is now developing into a C shape, with a very prominent side preference to the right side when feeding, sleeping etc. The mum insisted that this was not normal, and dismissed her doctors advice to just "let them grow out of it". Thankfully the mum followed her God-given mum instinct and sought out a call with me to discuss her concerns, and was referred to someone I knew would be able to help now, whilst I prepare myself to help with exactly these problems.
I have multiple messages on Facebook groups around newborns, older babies and even toddlers. Worried parents constantly told to let their babies "grow out of "Colic" or "reflux" or frequent night wakes, or issues with weaning onto solids, amongst many other issues. Sadly, the majority of the time, these later issues are a result of being advised to just grow out of it. They are manifestations of the underlying cause developing into new symptoms. The baby is, in fact, growing "into" them. You cannot grow out of dysfunction.
I recently signposted a worried mum to paediatric cranial osteopath who practices biodynamic craniosacral therapy too. Her baby, still suffering from the causes of silent reflux symptoms, was struggling with sleep, constantly overtired, constantly fidgeting, "high maintenance" at nursery, and up for hours at night. As a baby, their tongue tie was released with no exercises pre or post, with bodywork done by an osteopath who was not experienced with dealing with paediatrics, and the poor parents were just told to "wait it out". Furthermore, there was a potential missed diagnosis of CMPA. I was so relieved to support the parents with explanations as to why the issues were going on, and how to resolve them, supporting them with oral exercises just to get them started which, even though these should be tailored to the individual child, the parents could not currently fund that help yet. So I was able to help them get started with those whilst organising an appointment with the paediatric craniosacral-trained osteopath.
The bottom line is, there is always an underlying cause for fussy feeding, reflux, unsettled behaviour, poor sleep, not sleeping through the night, even signs of aggression. Their little bodies are messages to us that something is not as it should be. And growing out of them is often not an advisable option - largely because, they only grow into them.