Lead
Some parents will tell you their child smiled on day three. Others are certain the real smile didn't come until past the two-month mark. Neither is lying. Both are reporting exactly what they saw.
Open a parenting book or a health record, though, and you find: "First smile: around six to eight weeks." Which leaves the parent who saw something earlier wondering — was that real? Was I imagining it? Was it too soon, too late, or not a smile at all?
The confusion has a simple explanation. Inside the word "smile," medicine has quietly packed two entirely different phenomena. And which one you call "the first" is, in a genuine sense, a question that belongs to you.