*A gift guide from someone who has watched what helps, and what doesn't,
for nearly twenty years.*
By Susanne Rice \| Grounded Parenting
The baby industry is enormous, anxious, and very good at making new
parents feel that the right object will make the difference. The right
monitor. The right muslin. The right developmental toy for exactly this
stage. The right everything, curated with love, ordered in advance,
wrapped in tissue paper.
After nearly twenty years of working with families, watching hundreds of
children in their first months and years, and supporting parents through
the uncertainty and exhaustion and joy of it all, the things I have
watched actually make a difference are rarely the ones in the gift
guides. Objects can be useful. Some of them are genuinely good. But they
are not usually the point.
This is my list. It is not a product catalogue. It has no affiliate
links. Some of what is on it costs nothing at all, some of it is an idea
rather than a thing. And all of it comes from watching what the evidence
supports alongside what I have actually seen in real families over a
very long time.
The most useful gift you can give a new parent is usually not
something you can wrap. But some of the things on this list come
close.*
1. A way to carry the baby
Something to buy, but choose for fit and comfort, not brand
What we know about infant carrying, drawing on decades of research into
kangaroo care and infant proximity, is consistent: closeness regulates.
A baby who is held in arms, in a sling, or against a body has a more
stable heart rate, better temperature regulation, more settled sleep,
and more conversational turns with the adult holding them. This is not a
parenting philosophy. It is physiology.
A good carrier or sling, one that supports the baby's natural position
and the adult's back, that is easy enough to use that it actually gets
used, is one of the most genuinely developmental gifts in the early
months. Not because it makes the parent a certain kind of parent.
Because it keeps the baby close, and closeness is what the baby's
nervous system craves.
*If you are buying one, prioritise fit and simplicity over aesthetics.
The most beautiful sling that takes twenty minutes to tie is the one
that stays in the drawer.*
2. Time. Actual, unhurried time.
Costs nothing, and is the hardest thing to give
Not a visit where you hold the baby while the parent makes tea. Not an
afternoon where well-meaning relatives pass the baby around and the
mother sits on the sofa feeling vaguely surplus. Time where you arrive,
take on a task, cooking, washing, the older child's school run, the
thing that has not been done for three weeks, and give the parent the
gift of being able to do nothing, or sleep, or shower, or sit.
What we know about postpartum wellbeing is consistent: practical support
in the early weeks is one of the strongest predictors of maternal mental
health and family adjustment. The meal delivery service is a pale
version of this. A person who actually comes and does a thing is the
real version.
*If you want to give this and mean it: offer a specific thing at a
specific time. 'I am coming on Thursday at ten, and I will do your
laundry and make your lunch' is a gift. 'Let me know if you need
anything' is not. A mother once told me that what made her cry in the
first week was not the flowers or the cards. It was the friend who
arrived, washed the dishes, and left without asking her for anything at
all.*
3. Permission to follow the baby
*An idea, not an object, but one of the most valuable things on this
list*
New parents are bombarded with schedules, routines, and systems. Feed at
these times. Sleep at these times. Do not let the baby fall asleep on
you. Do not let the baby get used to being held. Create good habits now.
Most of this advice is either wrong or irrelevant in the first months.
What we know about infant development is clear: responsiveness,
following the baby's cues, responding to their signals, being led by
what they need rather than what a schedule dictates, builds the
attachment security that gives a child the strongest foundation for what
follows. You cannot spoil a young baby. You can only build or fail to
build the trust that the world is responsive.
The gift is this: tell the new parent that following their baby is not
weakness, not giving in, not creating bad habits. It is the most
developmentally sound thing they can do. And then mean it when the baby
is still being fed at two in the morning, at four months old, and the
parent is wondering if they have got it wrong.
They have not got it wrong.
4. A good book about the early years
Something to buy, choose for voice, not prescriptiveness
Not a what-to-expect week-by-week manual. Not a schedule-based sleep
training guide. A book that helps a parent understand what is happening
developmentally, that trusts the parent's intelligence and the baby's
capability, and that reads like a companion rather than an instruction
set.
The books that I have watched parents return to again and again are the
ones that explain the why: why babies need what they need, why toddlers
behave as they do, and why the early years are structured the way they
are, neurologically and relationally, when you understand the why, the
what becomes much easier to navigate.
*Look for books that are research-grounded but human in voice, which do
not pathologise normal infant behaviour, and that position the parent as
capable rather than as a risk to be managed. There are several excellent
ones. You will know the right one when you read it and feel your
shoulders drop.*
5. The understanding that the witching hour is not their fault
Free, and worth more than most things on this list
Between roughly five and eight in the evening, many young babies cry
inconsolably for reasons that have nothing to do with hunger, pain,
wind, temperature, or anything the parent has done or failed to do. This
is sometimes called the witching hour, and it is one of the most
distressing and misunderstood features of the first months.
It is developmental. The immature nervous system, having managed the
sensory load of the day, reaches its limit in the evening and needs to
discharge. The baby is not in pain. They are not manipulating anyone.
They are neither hungry, underfed, nor overfed. They are a developing
nervous system doing what developing nervous systems do.
Parents who know this in advance can hold the crying differently. Not
without distress, it is still distressing. But without the layer of
guilt and self-questioning that amplifies distress into crisis. The gift
is the information, given before the witching hour arrives. 'This will
happen. It is not you. It will pass.' I have lost count of the number of
parents who have said, when I explained this: 'I thought it meant I was
failing.' They were not failing. They were uninformed. Those are
different things entirely.
6. A sling library visit or carrying consultation
Something to arrange, often free or low cost
If you are giving a carrier or sling, pair it with this. Most areas have
sling libraries or trained babywearing consultants who will fit a
carrier properly, show the parent how to use it safely and comfortably,
and help them find what works for their body and their baby. This is
often free or very low-cost.
The barrier to carrying is rarely the desire; it is the uncertainty
about whether it is being done correctly, the back pain from an
ill-fitting carrier, and the anxiety about the baby's position. A single
session with someone who knows what they are doing removes all those
barriers. It is one of the highest-return gifts in this list.
7. The message that asking for help is not failure
Free, and needed more than most parents will admit
The transition to parenthood is one of the most significant identity
shifts a person makes, and it happens in a context of significant sleep
deprivation, hormonal upheaval, and relentless newness. Most parents
find it harder than they expected. Most feel, at some point, that they
are not coping as well as they should be. Most do not say so.
The gift is explicit permission. Not 'you're doing so well', which,
while kind, closes the conversation. But: 'This is genuinely hard. If
you are finding it hard, that is not a sign that you are doing it wrong.
It is a sign that you are human. And if it gets harder, I want to know.'
And then following through, checking in, and asking again at six weeks,
three months, and six months. The parents who most need support are
often the ones least likely to ask for it.
8. Loose parts and open-ended objects for later
A gift for their first birthday and beyond
When the baby becomes a toddler, and the developmental toy aisle starts
to feel overwhelming, the developmental case points consistently towards
simple, open-ended objects rather than battery-operated single-purpose
toys: wooden blocks, fabric squares, small containers, natural objects,
things that stack and sort and roll and fit inside each other in a
hundred different ways.
The most developmentally appropriate toy in an early years setting is
rarely the most expensive. It is the one that does the least, that
leaves the most to the child's imagination, that can be a hat, a boat, a
drum, a phone, and whatever the child needs it to be in the next five
minutes. Loose parts, open-ended objects, and unstructured time with
them are what build the creative and cognitive capacities that no app or
flashcard can replicate.
*A set of good wooden blocks, a basket of natural objects, and a
collection of fabric in different textures are gifts that grow with the
child and last for years rather than months.*
**One more thing, A guide to understanding, not managing, the early
years**
The Grounded Parenting guide, available at groundedparenting.co.uk
I wrote this guide because the thing I watched parents most often lack
was not technique but understanding. Understanding of what is happening
developmentally for their child, why children behave as they do, what
they actually need from the adults in their lives, and, crucially, what
the parents' own experience of this is, because the two are not
separate.
It is not a manual. It does not tell parents what to do. It offers the
kind of understanding that makes the doing feel less fraught. When you
understand why your toddler cannot stop playing when lunch is announced,
or why your three-year-old needs the goodbye ritual to happen in the
same way every morning, you stop trying to manage behaviour and start
responding to a person.
*It is the book I wish had existed when I started. It is the book I wish
every parent received before the first hard week.*
The reminder that the ordinary is enough
Free, and the most important thing on this list
The bath. The walk. The meal eaten together at a table with no screens.
The song before bed. The moment you stop what you are doing and look at
what the child is showing you as though it is interesting, because to
them, it is. The thousand ordinary moments that do not look like much
from the outside and that consistently shape who children become.
New parents are constantly told they need to do more, prepare more, and
optimise more. What they rarely hear is that the ordinary moments, the
unremarkable, unhurried, unoptimised ones, are the ones that matter
most. That connection is not a supplement to good parenting. It is good
parenting. That they are, in the slow afternoons and the difficult
evenings and the three a.m. feeds, doing something profound.
That is the gift. The reminder that they are enough, the child is
enough, and the ordinary life they are building together is more than
enough. In the end, the gifts that matter most are the ones that meet a
human need, not fill a market gap. The baby industry sells the second
kind. This list is the first.
A note on what is not on this list.
You will not find specific brand recommendations here because brands
change, products are discontinued, and what fits one baby and family
beautifully can be wrong for another. What matters is the principle
behind the object, not the object itself.
You will also not find sleep training guides, scheduled feeding systems,
or any resource that positions the baby as a problem to be solved. Not
because I am against routine (gentle, responsive rhythm is genuinely
useful) but because the framing of the early months as something to get
through and manage tends to work against the very thing that matters
most: the relationship between the adult and the child, built moment by
moment in the ordinary days.
That relationship is the gift. Everything else is furniture.
Susanne Rice
Susanne Rice
Registered Childminder · MEd, MRes · EdD Researcher
Founder, Grounded Parenting & Growing Curious Children
Founder, Grounded Parenting & Growing Curious Children
Parenting guide, covering the capable child, the home environment,
rhythm and ritual, screens, sleep, behaviour, and the reflective parent,
is available at groundedparenting.co.uk.*