I hope you know by now, internet, that there isn’t a parenting book I won’t read. I find them endlessly fascinating and educational, even if I disagree strongly with their advice. (Really, even disagreeing with something is taking a stance, and learning more about your inherent style of parenting.)

And so that’s my introduction to Louise Bates Ames and her series on child development, published by age.  Read it for the info, maybe ignore the advice.

Ms. Bates was born in 1908, and studied children for 17 years at the Yale Clinic of Child Development. In 1950, she founded the Gesell Institute of Child Development in New Haven, CT and went on to write a series of books about child development.

Last year, as Bean turned 18 months, I was overwhelmed and crazed, and ran to our local library looking for solutions Your One Year Old: Fun-Loving and Fussy. I read about the half-birthday theory and felt better. This year, as Bean approached 2 and a half, having completely forgotten the half-year theory, I was overwhelmed and crazed, and ran to the library again looking for solutions Your Two Year Old: Terrible or Tender. And then smacked myself over the head because…oh, hey, right, what’s up half-year birthday, thanks for bringing the crazy back.

So, hey! Let’s talk about Ms. Bates and her half-year birthday hypothesis.

As Ms. Bates begins her hypothesis in Your One Year old, “Our observation of the development of the emotional behavior in the growing infant and child has revealed that from the earliest infancy on, ages of emotional equilibrium tend to alternate with ages of emotional disequilibrium. These changes in emotional stance…seem to result chiefly from changes which go on in a child’s body.”

I think this may resonate with many of you with a toddler/preschooler. I found 12 months to be drastically different from 18 months. You might remember that Dr. Burton White also groups toddlers in the 14-20 month range as going through a distinct stage, as they test boundaries and “experiment with interpersonal power.”

In Your Two Year Old Ms. Bates writes, “It is two and a half, not two, that gives this general age period such a bad name.”

She blends this in with her general theory on half-birthdays, “Stages, or ages, when things are fine and in good equilibrium, seem to need to break up and to be followed by stages when things are not so fine and equilibrium is not so steady…The good, solid equilibrium of any early age seems to need to break up into disequilibrium before the child can reach a higher and more matures stage of equilibrium.” She diagrams how this equilibrium-disequilibrium works in a simple chart. (And, yes, it looks she believes these cycles continue until the child is 5. Awesome.)

On the one hand, perhaps this resonates with me because it is what I’m experiencing and it’s not universal.

But, it’s also helpful to hear that Things Will Get Better (And Then They Will Get Worse.) Which is what all parenting advice always boils down to.

What do you think? Do you think your child tended to go through trying times on her/his half birthday?