It mostly appears that babies are unphased by what happens around them. To think that most people don’t have any memories from their infancy or even early childhood can make us, as parents, undermine the psychological influence of that stage on the rest of our child’s life. One might claim that parenting in its first few days is physically draining, and to add the mental pressure of what impact our words and actions have on the child, I understand, would be far too overwhelming to cope with. So, before you go on to read the rest of the article- don’t worry, this isn’t going to do that. This is simply an attempt to help you understand the perceptive capacities of your baby.
A baby’s brain is growing at lightning speed. All early experiences of the baby play a part (big or small) in determining what path the brain decides to take for its growth, some that can last a lifetime.
Now, consider these instances, where we don’t realise the brilliant growth milestone of our child’s mind
- Does your infant ever try and unscrew a bottle cap and then give it to you to do it for them? - This actually involves a rather complex process called metacognition. They understand that they can’t do certain things and they have the sense to ask for help.
- Did you know? Your baby can start to categorize words around 6 months of age. They know that two words are related (like car and pram) and that others (like car and juice) are not. This a major progress in terms of language development.
Through this article, we will see how the brain reacts and registers specific cues and explore the babies’ rather vast (and cool!) emotional range. Here’s an account of a few ways in which our babies register more than we realize:
Babies can read our emotions and relate with us; here’s how:
Researchers have shown that by 4-6 months, babies develop mirror neurons (play a role in forming empathy). They’re also aware of changes in facial expressions and tone of voice. If only primary and basic like sorrow, joy, and anger, they can gauge our emotions and understand our reactions. For instance, when we smile and speak to them in a high pitched voice, they register happiness and perhaps mirror us by kicking and chuckling. When we make big eyes and sound angry, they’re likely to freeze (or stop doing what they were doing).
Now, this doesn’t mean that we must always only be cheerful in front of our babies; in fact, we should gradually expose them to a range of emotions so that they learn to cope with them. However, being aware of our own emotional state can ensure that our children are not entangled, unintentionally, in an environment of negative emotions.
Amazed, Interested, Afraid, Confused- and the many more emotions:
Babies cannot express themselves with words or gestures usually understood by us, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not thinking or feeling actively. They just don’t have the conventional knowledge of how to express it. Even before their first words, by 3-5 months, babies start to experience various feelings- from interest and joy to boredom and sorrow.
By trying to focus in on their facial expressions, sounds, and gestures and identifying a pattern in these reactions to different places and people, we can understand their preferences and help them adapt to non-preferred experiences. This sensitivity helps build trust and more adaptive ways of easing into new environments. So if you walk into a grocery store and your baby starts crying because of the unfamiliar place, colours, object shapes, and people, its best to soothe them by taking them out of the pram. We can help them interact with the new environment by showing them new objects, letting them touch it, and talking to them. They will gradually get accustomed to going to new places and look forward to it.
“Listen in, this is important”:
Babies almost immediately recognize when they’re being given important information (of course, they can’t completely understand it or do as you say just as yet). When you make eye contact, call their name, speak to them in a high pitched voice in a sing-song manner, they tend to pay special attention to you. Imagine wide open eyes and undeterred concentration.
Safety Measuring:
The tiny brain is continually working to figure things out. One of the questions it’s actively trying to get answers to is- “is this strange place (our world) safe??”. Anything and many things can be perceived as dangerous by this tiny brain, angry faces, loud sounds, sudden swift movements, too much change in their routine, and an overload of stimulus. In fact, research has shown that even while sleeping, loud, harsh sounds can induce stress in the baby and increase the heart rate. It’s quite normal to have arguments while co-parenting. Life is difficult and unmanageable from time to time (and that’s completely fine to be dealing with), but helping ourselves with these problems will also help our baby. One can avoid developmental delays in language acquisition, and memory, by avoiding negativity from accumulating the baby’s environment.
Aping our emotions:
Also, the baby will always seek reassurance from you and catch onto your feelings. For instance, if at a playground or in someone else’s home you keep coming back to check on him/her, the baby might feel that you’re not trusting of the people you’ve left him/her with. This will cause the baby to have a similar response to those people and be tense. We can think about how we want our baby to fell about certain people and places and act accordingly to help the child understand the situation.
Understanding what children are taking in and learning during daily interactions with the important people in their lives can help us nurture and work towards healthy development, including language, thinking, and social-emotional skills.