I Am Not a Mommy Blogger, but I Am a Mom Who Blogs

Notes from a new mom who studies learning and is still full of questions.

Two moments, one baby

My son is almost four months old. Twice today I offered him a ball. Twice he ignored it, fixating instead on something else across the blanket. I followed his gaze and found the culprits: a board book about animals and a book about fruit.

So: A positive love of books- Tempting story. Tempting enough that the educator in me started developing hypotheses about how this could be duplicated.

Later, while I was answering email, he worked very hard [as a four month old] to scoot close enough and lift and hold his head to see my laptop screen.

So: A negative love of screen time - I am a failure. Problematic enough that I start thinking through interventions to change this behavior.

Then the researcher in me cleared her throat: N = 2 (or N = 1). Two moments do not a theory make. I study learning, but home is not a lab; it’s a living room. I’m trying to hold both truths: notice patterns without overfitting, and design better questions without turning our days into experiments.

This post holds my current half-baked ideas.

Mom-who-blogs, not “mommy blogger”

I’m sharing observations, not prescriptions. I know that TikTok and Instagram have to exaggerate claims to gain audiences but this is not TikTok or Instagram (The computer science educator in me does need you to know this is in fact a social media though). have training in education, but I don’t have training in your child (or even tomorrow’s version of mine). I’ll talk about what I noticed, a few tools I use to notice better, and how I resist the pull to generalize from a couple of adorable data points.

What I won’t do: crown “books” the winner and “screens” the villain based on two glances and a hunch.

The N=1 problem (and how easy it is to overfit)

In data science, overfitting means you mistake noise for a rule—you build a perfect story for yesterday’s quirks that doesn’t generalize to tomorrow. Parents are especially at risk because we care so much and we’re swimming in tiny data: one child, one morning, one mood.

Also, I’m biased! I love books. I’m more likely to notice a book glance and to tell that story later. And because I work on a laptop, a screen is often present; it may “win” attention just by being there.

Naming these biases isn’t self-criticism; it’s a way to keep my stories honest.

A few learning-sciences lenses (in plain English)

I keep a tiny mental glossary to frame what I’m seeing:

Island of expertise: Sometimes kids go surprisingly deep on a narrow topic (trains, bugs, planets) because the family ecology feeds it—books, talk, trips, toys. Is a baby-scale island forming around “books”? Maybe… or maybe it’s just this week.
Affordances: What an object invites you to do. A cloth book affords crinkling, mouthing, page-turning. A ball affords rolling, grasping, dropping. A screen affords staring at motion and light. The invitation matters.
Serve-and-return: The back-and-forth of attention and sound between adult and child—point, look, vocalize, respond, repeat. Books are great props for this; screens can be, too, when they become a shared object (“Wave to Grandma!”).
Scaffolding: Temporary support that helps a baby engage (pointing, labeling, holding the book steady). Fading is removing those supports as the child takes more of the lead.
Joint attention: Looking at the same thing together; babies often chase whatever the adult is staring at (hello, laptop).

These aren’t laws—just lenses that help me ask sharper questions.

Why “book love” might be happening (hypotheses, not answers)

If I step back from the easy story (“books good, screens bad”), here are several plausible paths to the moments I saw:

Perceptual draw: Board books have high-contrast edges, faces, animals—features babies are tuned to notice. That might be as compelling as my literary dreams.
Social cueing: My voice changes around books. I smile, point, and name things. He follows my gaze and affect.
Proximity & order effects: Maybe the books were closer, or I presented them first, or they were easier to stabilize during tummy time. Small setup choices matter.
Texture & action: Cloth/flap books make sounds and invite grasping. The ball rolled away—interaction over.
Novelty: Today the book was fresh; tomorrow the ball might be new again.

The point isn’t to pick a single cause; it’s to stay curious when multiple explanations fit.

About that screen…

Screens are attention magnets because of brightness and motion. That’s design, not destiny. There’s also a social layer: babies want to see what we’re seeing. If my face is angled at the laptop and my voice gets quiet, he tries to join my focus. That’s the seed of joint attention—a good thing!—even if the object is a productivity app.

So I’m reframing: The issue isn’t “screen = bad” but “What role does the screen play in our interaction?” A screen can be passive wallpaper, or it can be a shared object that we talk about, point to, and use to connect with people we love. I’m choosing co-viewing (short, social, narrated) over background glow.

Tiny “home studies” (without turning home into a lab)

I don’t want clipboards. I do want better noticing. These are my playful guardrails:

Pre-register (lightly): Before I start, decide what counts as “chooses book.” For me: looks at it for >3 seconds and reaches once.
Counterbalance order: Some days I present ball → book; other days book → ball. If book always comes first, book will often win.
Equalize distance/height: Place both objects equally close and equally propped.
Note the state: Post-nap baby is not pre-nap baby. I jot “post-nap, fed” or “overtired” in my phone so I don’t compare apples to cranky oranges.
Record lightly: One-line field notes, not spreadsheets (unless spreadsheets spark joy).

These steps don’t make it science; they just reduce the most obvious ways I might fool myself.

Designing the environment to make good moments more likely

Book baskets at floor level in the rooms where we actually spend time—next to the play mat, near the rocker, by the couch.
Reading as performance: Exaggerate labeling (“Cow! Moo!”), linger on faces, let him turn the page (yes, it will be chaotic).
Screen hygiene for me: Close the laptop during floor time. If it’s open, narrate what I’m doing so the screen becomes a co-attended object (“I’m emailing Auntie. Look—her photo!”) rather than a silent lure.
Rotate affordances: A soft ball that doesn’t roll away; high-contrast cards; a small mirror near the books. If the environment invites richer actions, we get richer moments.

More small scenes that complicate the tidy story

I’m collecting counter-examples on purpose:

Music moment: He freezes when I sing and then kicks to a steady beat. Rhythm may be as strong an attractor as pictures.
Texture basket: Today a wooden spoon beats plastic rings; tomorrow, the opposite. Preferences are a moving target.
Language play: During diaper changes I repeat “banana” and he watches my mouth intently. Maybe the real magnet is faces + voice.
Grandparent video chat: A “screen” that’s actually deep serve-and-return—waving, turn-taking, smiling. Not all pixels are equal.

These vignettes keep me from writing a morality play about objects. The throughline is interaction.

What I will generalize (and what I won’t)

I will generalize: Wonder is data. Slowing down helps me see more. Small design choices—order, distance, my voice—change what happens next. Co-attended objects (book, ball, screen) become better when I scaffold and narrate.
I won’t generalize: Rules for your baby. Rules for future-us. Today’s preference is not destiny.

Ethics & boundaries of blogging about a baby

I’m writing as if he’ll read this someday—because he might. That means minimal identifying details, sparse and thoughtful images, and a tone of curiosity over certainty. He doesn’t need to grow up inside a case study; he deserves a childhood with room to change his mind.

A tiny template for “Baby Field Notes” (if you want to try)

Date/Time: Objects & Order: (Ball → Book or Book → Ball) Setup: (equal distance? floor? propped?) Mood: (post-nap, hungry, overstimulated) What counts as a “choice”: (>3s look + reach) One thing I loved: (the eyebrow raise when the flap opened) One thing I’ll change next time: (start with the ball so it doesn’t roll away)

Five lines, two minutes, no graphs required.

Closing: The real story isn’t books vs. screens

The duel between “book” and “screen” is less interesting than the dance of attention we’re building together. Some days the animal book wins. Some days the laptop glow wins. The part I can control is the quality of the moment: the serve-and-return, the scaffolding, the space for him to lead and for me to fade.

I’m not a mommy blogger; I’m a mom who blogs. Which mostly means I’m a mom who notices, wonders out loud, and tries again tomorrow.

Tags: education learning-sciences mom