Groundwork

No one tells you how long, or what to do when they scream after ninety seconds, or what you're even supposed to be looking for.

Then it's rolling and yours goes one direction beautifully and flatly refuses the other.

Then it's sitting, and every baby you know is upright while yours folds sideways the second you let go.

Each time the advice is the same shrug, “every baby is different” or “they'll do it when they're ready”.

But here's what nobody connects for you… tummy time and rolling aren't two separate problems.

The weight-bearing through the forearms you're supposed to see in tummy time is what makes the roll possible in the first place. Skip it early and you don't get a tummy time problem. You get a rolling problem two months later, and no obvious reason why.

This course won’t give you a longer to-do list. It's the same twenty minutes you already spend on the floor, aimed at something specific.

You'll learn the four play positions – tummy, back, sidelying and vertical – and what each one is actually building, so tummy time stops being the whole strategy and stops being a fight.

You'll learn rolling as two four-step frameworks, the 4 T's for belly to back and the 4 R's for back to belly, instead of something you wait for. So when your baby stalls in one direction, you know which of the four steps is missing.

You'll learn the repositioning habits that lower the risk of flat spots and torticollis, built into the feeding, carrying and diaper changes you already do.

And underneath all of it, you'll learn to read what your baby is telling you: whether to keep going, or change something.

By six months you won't have done tummy time. You'll have built head control, then a roll in both directions, in that order and on purpose.