Our role as parents from the moment we bring our babies home from the hospital is to little by little transfer responsibility for their daily care from us onto them. So that can start as early as the first few weeks of life. In the beginning, babies need you to soothe them off to sleep. But as their nervous system matures, they can start to soothe themselves. So in the beginning, while you might need to rock your child off to sleep, your baby ultimately will be put down in the crib awake and will be able to fall asleep on their own. These things continue in many different areas. So for instance in the beginning, you need to feed your child all their meals, whether you're breast feeding or bottle feeding. You're holding the bottle, you're holding your child to your breast. As they get older, you can encourage them to do this on their own. Let them wrap their fingers around the bottle so you can snuggle them and cuddle them while they're participating in the feeding process. When children are 9-10 months old, they can start to finger feed on their own. So you don't want to be placing every morsel of food in their mouth. You want them to be exercising their fine motor skills and their pincer grasp of being able to pick something up, release it, and then swallow. It's wonderful to be able to give your child the opportunity to be able to do this on their own. And if you raise your children with this in your mind at the beginning, little by little you'll be withdrawing your support as they grow older and they'll grow up to be independent, self-reliant children.