Unpopular Opinion: I Hate The Wonder Weeks

If you’re not familiar with the wonder weeks, it is a book (now an app as well) that helps new parents determine various ‘leaps’ that their children may go through. In fact, 10 leaps within the first 2 years to be exact. It also predicts “stormy” periods where your baby may seem more irritable than other times and such.

The thing about the Wonder Weeks, is that it’s pseudoscience. There is SO much variation within babies that it would be impossible to predict specific leaps at exactly the same weeks for every baby. Even for developmental milestones such as learning to roll, crawling, and even walking - those can’t have a specific “learn by” date because specialists are aware of the differences in children! Some children who are developmentally delayed will never hit the milestones during the recommended window, while others hit them much before.

According to sources stated in Rational Wiki, in the book Plooij (author) claims that that the cognitive development of babies occurs in predictable jumps and that these "leaps" will indicate when the baby will be especially fussy. However, a follow-up study by Plooij's PhD student, Carolina de Weerth, failed to find any evidence of predictable leaps, which is unsurprising because the idea that you can predict when babies will be fussy from week-to-week is completely ludicrous. A follow-up study by Plooij's PhD student, Carolina de Weerth, unsurprisingly completely failed to find any evidence of greater fussiness or higher cortisol levels corresponding to these supposed leaps - therefore calling BS on the whole thing.

In fact, it’s absolutely normal for babies to have spurts of fussiness, followed by times of happiness. Even within a 24-hour period.

Hello, they are humans with feelings and emotions. AND they just got taken out of their ideal environment (uterus) and put into a strange world - with great people who love them, but STILL. Have we not heard of the 4th trimester?

The issue is that some parents really utilize the Wonder Weeks as absolute truth, writing on Facebook Mom Groups that “oh, my baby also did X, Y, & Z during this leap” which in turn, is just confirmation bias. It is normal for parents to want their babies to be happy 24/7, so having those leaps of growth and fussiness so close together can muddle together and feel really relatable for a parent who wants an answer and specifically a ‘reason’ that their child is fussy. Not accepting that fussiness is part of the human experience.

It’s not a bad thing to read the book or to have the app downloaded, but I want you to give your child the benefit of the doubt if they’re having an emotional day. There isn’t always a reason we wake up on the wrong side of the bed - similarly to how sometimes our children just have off days with no explanation.

The Wonder Weeks can be compared to reading your daily or monthly Horoscope. There will always be generic nuggets of information that will be relatable for anyone. There will also be things in your horoscope that won’t apply to you at all. The Wonder Weeks are quite literally a baby’s horoscope. Not credible, but can feel believable.

Your child WILL go through major developmental progressions in their first 2 years of life, but this is normal and does not necessarily need to be characterized as periods of extreme fussiness.

However, if following the Wonder Weeks has worked for you and you want to keep doing it - keep it up. If you’re wondering what the Wonder Weeks are, I’d recommend not wasting your time. There are plenty of credible resources out there that can provide so much more information about your developing baby than their book or their app.