What Does It Mean To Celebrate An Inchstone?

Once upon a time, Pinterest was mainly used for entertaining, home, and fashion inspo. Whether you were in the market for a mermaid-cut wedding dress, prepping for a major kitchen renovation, or needed some cake decorating guidance for a themed birthday party, Pinterest was there to give you all the ideas. These days, it’s so much more than just a library of aesthetically pleasing things — people are actually using Pinterest as a search engine for parenting questions and hacks, and yes, inspiration, and one thing the people behind the image-sharing-and-collecting site noticed is that more and more parents have been looking for ways to celebrate their child’s “tiny triumphs” or what they are referring to as inchstones.

What are inchstones?

This isn’t the first time the term has been used in the parenting space. Parents of kids with special needs have been using inchstones (or sometimes referred to as inch pebbles) to describe their child’s unique achievements and accomplishments. When a child with special needs or developmental delays shows progress or success towards a bigger goal, those “small” successes can feel monumental.

Within the parenting realm of Pinterest though, inchstones are little wins that are all a part of parenting and growing up. Unlike the standard developmental milestones (like talking, crawling, and walking) that doctors use to track your baby’s growth and development), inchstones are “tiny triumphs will make the heart grow fonder as parents sprinkle party vibes on their kids’ not-so-grand moments,” they wrote in a trend report. This could include losing their first tooth, a potty training accomplishment, and so on, and in this day and age, every occasion or achievement calls for a full blown party — at the very least, a beautifully curated Instagram post.

Some parenting moments Pinterest is recognizing as trending inchstones include the following. For these, their records show that there was a 30-100% increase in users searching these and related themes:

• End of year school party ideas
• Monthly milestone ideas
• Baby naming ceremony
• Potty training rewards ideas
• My first tooth party

So you might not necessary see the actual term ‘inchstone” tagged along the specific wins, but you will likely see more and more people posting about the more granular events that serve as hard evidence that their child is, well, simply growing up — in totally eye-pleasing, filtered photos of course.

In all instances, setting and acknowledging inchstones is all about celebrating all the special in-between moments between major milestones, big wins and small.