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DEVELOPMENT!

Nurturing Your Infant's Development

Main Influences & Factors Predicting Child Development:
  • Your relationship with your child is the foundation or starting point of his or her healthy development
  • There is a balance between nature & nuture (Your child's development depends on both the traits he or she was born with (nature), and what he or she experiences (nurture)
  • The areas of development including social, emotional, intellectual, language & motor are very much linked, and all affect one another
  • Parent's have a strong influence on child development in how they respond & give attention to their child, along with other experiences in the child's life

    Babies Developmental Stages

0-2 MONTHS: Regulating eating, sleeping and emotional patterns in order to adjust to their new world. Use gestures, sounds, and facial expressions as forms of communication. They connect sounds to sources (ie mom's voice to mom. Playing with and talking to your child is a good way to connect to them, as they adjusting to the sounds around them and ways in which they communicate. The motto "You can't spoil your baby" is a good one to follow during this stage. This means attending to your babies cries all the time, to show him/her that you care. They need lots of attention in order to have healthy brain development. Responding to your baby shows them that you care and that their ways of communicating are effective. It also helps them learn ways of self-soothing. Experiment with toys of different colour and texture to give your baby variety and find out what he/she likes. Talk & sing to your baby, as they enjoy the sounds around them, and it is a good bonding experience.
2-6 MONTHS: Babies are very interactive at this stage, using their newfound verbal and communication skills. Lots of cooing, and babbling will be heard. Babies will pause between their babbling to test your response. Parents should talk and babble back to their babies, as well as talk. Babies pick up new words. Imitating is common, as babies will mimick what you do, for instance if a mom sticks out her tongue, baby will try. Babies love to explore and touch objects. At around 3 months they are reaching for things. At 4-6 months babies can sit with assistance, and are able to roll over both ways. They have become very mobile. Place your baby in a variety of positions, and provide your baby with one toy at time that they can focus their attention on. Let them explore the toy or object.
6-9 MONTHS: By this age, they are good communicators with their gestures, facial expressions and sounds. They are starting to form words such as the common "mama" and "dada". Narrate and emphasize words in sentences, and see how your baby responds. Baby will connect the different narrations and sounds to emotions. They are better able to do things with their toys, such as use the cup for a purpose, instead of just holding the cup. While playing with your child, you can teach them cause and effect, by demonstrating something (ie pressing the button that plays a song. Then wait, and let them try it themselves, and they will. Their motor skills have developed to the point where they can either crawl or stand and walk. At this point they want to achieve things from their actions, such as seeing a ball and walking/crawling over to touch it.
9-12 MONTHS: Expressing feelings with gestures and sound is evident at this stage. Babies can "conversate" with you by imitating each others sounds and actions, handing things back and forth, and they have learned cause and effect, so they recognize the tone of voice used when they have done something bad. Help your baby manage his/her feelings and develop self-control by attending to him or her when they have feelings of frustration (acknowleding), comforting when crying, and rejoicing and laughign with them when they are happy. They have developed their memory, and know that you exist and when you leave you will still be there for them in the end. You can play hide-and-seek games like peek-a-boo to demonstrate this, and get them used to being separated from you. Instead of picking baby up and rocking back to sleep once awakened in night, just go to bedside and comfort to let him/her know you are there. This further helps them develop self-control and self-soothing techniques, as well as get used to being separated. Babies love to repeat actions once they have learned them, to prove to themselves and others what they have learned. To help them develop this once they have repeated an action over and over, help them along by showing them a new way of doing it, or adding onto what they know (such as adding another block to the tower).