Lesson 19: One of the Things I wish more parents knew: Progress Does Not Have to be Dramatic to be Real

At the end of June, I asked a question I have not stopped thinking about since:

What root work have you been doing that no one else can see?

I asked it because so much of parenting happens underground. So much of it happens before there is anything tidy or photogenic or easy to point to and say, see, it’s working. It happens in the repetition. In the advocacy. In the showing up. In the stretches and the appointments. It shows up in the home practices that happen every day and in the way you learn, as a parent, to regulate your own nervous system well enough to hold your fear steady and keep moving.

And I asked it because NICU parents, especially, know what it means to keep tending to something you cannot yet see.

Now we’re at the midpoint of summer, and I’ve been sitting with a different version of the same question:

What has surfaced since then?
What has actually bloomed?
What is still rooting?
What has changed enough to name, without pretending the whole story has resolved?

I want to answer that honestly.

Because there has been visible growth in our house this summer. And at the same time, there is still so much that remains unfinished, uncertain, and slow.

That tension feels worth naming because I think many families are living in it right now. We are close enough to the start of the school year to begin taking stock, but still very much in the middle of the story. Some things are blooming. Some things are still beneath the surface. Some things looked like progress and then got messier again. Some things have not changed at all in the way we hoped they would.

That does not mean the root work was wasted.

It means we are parenting real children, in real bodies, through real seasons of development and strain and change.

What’s bloomed in our house this summer

The clearest bloom in our house this summer didn’t happen in a therapy gym. It happened at bedtime.

Charli was ready for her bottle, and it was across the room from where we were sitting. She saw it, knew exactly what she wanted, and instead of waiting for me, she went for it. She rolled onto her stomach, army crawled toward it in a coordinated, determined way, saying out loud to herself what her parents and therapists have said to her so many times before: “arm up.” She reached it, grabbed it, rolled onto her back, and drank it like this was a perfectly normal thing to do.

It was not a perfectly normal thing for her. It was a first.

And because I am who I am, I took a picture immediately. Not because I needed proof for anyone else, but because I knew exactly what I was looking at. I knew that moment was bigger than a bottle. It was mobility, yes. It was coordination, yes. But it was also initiative. Planning. Problem solving. Desire strong enough to organize her body around a goal. It was one of those moments when you can feel a lot of hidden work suddenly become visible all at once.

That’s what made me emotional about it. Not just that she got the bottle, but that she wanted something, figured out where it was, and moved herself toward it.

If you parent a complex child, you know how easy it is for the world to reduce progress to the biggest, most obvious milestone. Can they walk yet? Can they sit independently? Are they talking? Are they caught up? Have they graduated from high school yet? Do they have a job? Are they living on their own? We all understand why those questions get asked, but they flatten the story. They make it seem as if progress only counts once it arrives in its most polished form.

But this summer has reminded me that some of the most meaningful blooms are smaller and more specific than that.

Sometimes the bloom is a child connecting the dots between I want that and I can try to get there.
Sometimes it’s a body that feels a little more organized. Sometimes it’s the willingness to attempt something without as much hesitation. Sometimes it’s seeing effort turn into action in a way that wasn’t available before.

That bottle moment was one bloom. But it wasn’t the only one.

This summer, I’ve also noticed more stamina and more confidence. More moments where Charli seems to trust her body enough to try. More moments where I can see her experimenting instead of only reacting. More evidence that something is connecting — not in a dramatic, overnight way, but in the quieter way that growth often does.

And that’s the part I keep coming back to: the bloom is visible now, but it didn’t start now.

That bedtime moment did not begin at bedtime. It was built in therapy sessions and in-home practice. In stretches and repetitions and supported movement and all the boring, ordinary work that doesn’t make for a good photo. It was built in the tiny daily efforts that are easy to dismiss when they don’t produce immediate payoff. It was built in the cumulative effect of being asked to try, over and over, and slowly learning that trying might actually get you somewhere.

I think that’s why the moment landed so hard for me. It felt like a tiny window into the purpose of all that root work. Not proof that everything is solved. Not proof that we suddenly know exactly where Charli’s path is heading. Just proof that the invisible work matters. Proof that repetition matters. Proof that something can be taking shape long before it announces itself in a way everyone else can see.

And still, I want to be careful not to over-assign meaning to one beautiful moment.

One bloom is not the whole garden.

A first does not answer every question that comes after it. I still don’t know exactly what Charli’s long-term trajectory will be. I still don’t know what independent movement will look like for her, how much support she’ll need, or which gains will hold, expand, or plateau. We are still very much in the middle of the story.

But I do know this: this summer gave me a glimpse of something new. Not certainty, but evidence. Not a finish line, but emergence. A small, concrete reminder that growth can be happening even when it’s slow, uneven, and easy to miss from the outside.

And for now, that feels like enough to name.

NICU parents are trained to notice tiny progress

I think one of the reasons the language of “root work” resonates so deeply with me and many NICU families is that the NICU teaches you to track progress at a scale the rest of the world often misses.

Before discharge, before milestones, before any big developmental narrative, NICU parents learn to look for change in grams and milliliters and fractions of stability.

A few more milliliters tolerated in a feed. A few grams gained overnight.
One less alarm. A little less oxygen support. A day without needing that extra intervention. A moment where your baby looks less taxed doing the exact same thing that exhausted them last week.

None of those things look dramatic from the outside. Most of them would not register as “progress” to someone who wasn’t living inside the details. But NICU parents know better. They know that sometimes the whole story is contained in the tiniest shift. They know that visible stability is usually built on dozens of almost-invisible changes that came first.

That skill doesn’t disappear when you leave the hospital. It comes home with you.

It shows up later when you’re trying to understand your toddler’s therapy progress, or your school-aged child’s regulation, or your teen’s recovery, or your family’s capacity after a hard season. It shows up when the progress is not a clean milestone but a pattern shift. A little more flexibility. A little less panic. A little more trust. A little more stamina. A slightly faster return to baseline after a hard moment.

This is one of the things I wish more parents knew: progress does not have to be dramatic to be real.

Sometimes progress looks like a child making a new attempt. Sometimes it looks like one fewer crisis this month than last month. Sometimes it looks like a shorter meltdown, a better transition, a small increase in tolerance, a little more language, one extra bite, one more minute upright, one less night of total chaos.

Sometimes it looks like a parent noticing that something feels different here, even before they have the perfect language for it.

NICU parents are often exceptionally good at this kind of noticing, even if they don’t give themselves credit for it. They have already spent months learning how to look for evidence of growth in places other people would overlook. They have already learned that tiny changes can be clinically meaningful, emotionally meaningful, and deeply worth celebrating.

The challenge, later, is trusting that same instinct outside the hospital.

Trusting that quiet progress still counts. Trusting that development can be nonlinear without being absent. Trusting that a child can be making progress even when they are not crossing the milestone that everyone else was hoping to see.

What’s still rooting

This is the part I don’t want to skip over because I think it’s where a lot of families quietly get lost.

Not everything that matters in our house has bloomed yet.

Not even close.

There are still things I am carrying that feel unresolved. Questions about Charli’s long-term mobility. Questions about how to support her body well without making our entire family orbit therapy every waking minute. Questions about school and inclusion, and how much support is enough versus too much versus not the right kind. Questions about what it means to hold urgency and patience at the same time.

And if I’m being honest, there are still moments where I feel the old panic rise up: Are we doing enough? Are we missing the window? Is this the right plan? How long do we keep doing this before we change course?

That is still part of the story, too.

Root work does not exempt us from doubt. It just gives us something steadier to stand on while the doubt does its laps.

Sometimes what’s still rooting is not just your child’s development. Sometimes it is your own capacity to stay present without demanding certainty. Sometimes it is your family’s ability to recover after disruption. Sometimes it is your partnership, your confidence, your tolerance for the unknown, your ability to celebrate what is true today without forcing it to answer tomorrow’s questions.

That kind of growth matters too, even though no one puts it on a milestone chart.

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With you,

Shayna

Founder, Prepare To Bloom | Beyond the NICU

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