For months, I was told to sing to him.
Sing during play.
Sing during routines.
Sing while dressing him.
Sing while feeding him.
Use more language.
More interaction.
More engagement.
So I did.
I sang.
I talked.
I repeated the same songs over and over again.
And nothing happened.
At least nothing that I could see.
He wasn't looking at me.
He wasn't joining in.
He wasn't interested.
After a while, the frustration started creeping in.
Maybe I wasn't doing it correctly.
Maybe I wasn't trying hard enough.
Maybe I needed a different song.
A different voice.
A different strategy.
So I kept trying.
But the harder I pushed, the further away it seemed to get.
What nobody explained to me at the time was that a good strategy still needs a way into the child.
Because children are not reached through activities.
They are reached through what captures their attention.
What feels meaningful to them.
What they are ready for in that moment.
And that looks different for every child.
The problem wasn't the song.
The problem was that the song wasn't where my son was.
His attention was somewhere else.
His interests were somewhere else.
His way of engaging with the world was somewhere else.
And until I started paying attention to those patterns, I kept trying to bring him to me instead of meeting him where he already was.
Everything changed when I became less focused on the activity itself and more focused on the child in front of me.
What was he drawn to?
What made him pause?
What made him return?
What kept showing up again and again?
Those patterns became far more useful than any single instruction.
