Answer what they reach for

Toward the end of the first year, a baby may begin to say what they want by pointing, crawling, or gesturing toward it — a whole conversation that needs no words from either of you. Treating a reach as a sentence, naming it, and answering it where you can is what turns it into a back-and-forth.

🛡️ Answering a reach never means handing over what is hot, sharp, or small enough to fit in a mouth — a mug of tea is still hot enough to scald long after it stops steaming. Move the hot drinks out of arm's reach before you sit down, and when the answer has to be no, step 4 is the answer: name it, and say what happens instead.