A Guide To Baby Brain Development

When babies are born, they are not fully developed. This comes from stimulation from the environment and people around them. It is important to stimulate their brains so they can learn what they need to and develop at a normal rate. Enlarge

A Guide To Baby Brain Development

When babies are born, they are not fully developed. This comes from stimulation from the environment and people around them. It is important to stimulate their brains so they can learn what they need to and develop at a normal rate.

So, after your baby's born, their systems continue to develop. None more so than the brain, which develops at a phenomenal rate at this stage. Your baby will be sleeping a lot of the time but they're still learning when they're awake.

They're using all their senses to take in lots of good information from around them, from their environment, and all about the family. Babies learn through their senses, sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste, and stimulating these will help their brain to develop. Although, stimulating taste is a bit early yet as they will only be having milk for six months.

The best you can do, at this stage, to help your baby develop and brain develop is to nurture them, to love them and respond to them as they need, to touch, to cuddle, to hold, to talk to them. This way, when you're holding them, they can see you. Their sight, when they're born, is only six inches and the first thing they see are faces, so they like faces.

They like contrasting colors. They like to be held close so they can see you. They can also hear you.

They like sing song voices, so talking to them in a sing song voice is really, really good. Talk to them as if they can understand you and as they get older, give them time to take it in and maybe, response to you is really, really good. They don't like loud sounds.

They jump but that is a normal, automatic response. If it happens, just reassure them and say, “It's okay, baby.” They recognize your smell and then, they'll get to recognize other smells as well.

Remember, at this time, yes, you do want to stimulate your baby. You do want your baby to grow up and talk to you but over-stimulation tires the baby out, so baby will show signs that they're not interested anymore. They will start to look away and at this stage, it's time to put them down or to give them a cuddling.

Change the toy you're playing with or just let them go back to sleep, if that's what they want to do. When babies are born, on average, their brains are only 25 percent developed so the rest is there for us to stimulate. However, all babies develop at different rates.

It's not a race. It's not a competition. Most important of all, have fun together and enjoy baby development. .