Child Rearing And Caring
Child Rearing And Caring
To understand Infant Stimulation, it is important, first, to dispel the myths that babies only eat, sleep and excrete; that they don’t see well; cant hear at all; and in general don’t know what’s going on around them until they are three months old.
We must replace those myths with these eight revolutionary proven facts of life.
Fetuses respond to their mother’s heartbeat and voice while still in the womb. Up to six weeks before birth, fetuses actively use their senses of taste, touch, sight, hearing and movement, as documented by changes in fetal brain-wave patterns. In the first two hours after birth, newborns maintain alertness longer than they will for the next two months. Infant Stimulation can help babies sounds and facial movements like tongue thrusts when only four days old, recognize a simple word at only nine months, and construct complete sentences before eighteen months.
Babies have a biological need to learn
Any stimulation provided during the first twelve months has more impact on the brain’s growth than at any other time in baby’s future life.
By six months of age, a full 50 percent of baby’s brain growth has occurred. By one year of age, 70 percent of brain development is completed. Baby’s mind grows faster in the first year of life than it will ever again.
You present your babies with experiences that foster learning and growth, not by force-feeding knowledge but rather through an interactive, loving relationship that never fails to form when you practice stimulation that pleases your baby. Infant Stimulation is a form of play that challenges your baby’s mind and satisfies his newly discovered preferences earlier than we ever thought possible. The scientific community has yet to discover any manner of promoting you infant’s total growth that equals simply to your baby’s preferences.
The Elements of Growth
An individual’s total growth is made up of the interrelationship of physical, mental, emotional, and social development. From researches, it is clear that Infant Stimulation will impact on you child’s total growth without stressing one area at the expense of the others.
Physical Growth
Physical growth is the easiest to measure accurately by scale and chart. It refers to your baby’s height and weight. Comparative studies have shown that infants who are caressed and cuddled more than others actually gain weight faster. Parents who thoughtfully touch their infants, talk to them, help them exercise appropriately, and provide them with a variety of pleasing visual targets actually enhance their youngsters’ ability to sit, crawl, walk and develop.
Mental Growth
Infant Stimulation accelerates a baby’s mental ability and increases a child’s skills in finding ways to stimulate himself. Studies have shown that with continued and consistent stimulation over a two-year period, I.Q. can be boosted by 15 to 30 points, when I.Q measures are taken at four to five years of age. Did you know that:
- If you stimulate your baby’s sense of sight, it actually helps him to concentrate longer?
- When you stimulate your baby’s sense of smell, it helps his motor development?
- When you rock or move your baby rhythmically in space, you may be helping his memory to develop?
- When you appeal to one or two of you baby’s senses at the same time, you improve his curiosity and attentiveness?
Emotional and Social Growth
Children who feel loved and secure are most likely to get along with others in their world. They are the sociable little ones who learned the fundamentals of satisfying interaction with people and situations. And they are the one who as adults are likely to make positive contributions to the society in which they live.
There are countless studies that document the effectiveness of the kind of physical, mental and emotional growth stimulation I have mentioned. The two studies below showed dramatic results, one from a negative and the other from a positive point of view.
Dr. Warren Dennis, an American pediatrician interested in child development, examined children in a Iranian orphanage in 1960 and brought the following shocking facts to light:
60 percent of the two-year-olds in that institution could not sit up unsupported ( remember, normal age for this is six to seven months ).Vocabularies were markedly undeveloped; in fact the youngsters were significantly limited in every area of development in every age group. Dr. Dennis concluded that because these children had received only minimal amounts of touching, rocking, talking and general nurturing attention, their growth and development had been severely stunted.
Then, in 1967, a developmental anthropologist, Dr. Mary Ainsworth, observed that babies in Uganda were cuddled, carried, and rocked by family members some eighteen out of twenty-four hours. Along with these overt expressions of warmth and caring, the Ugandan children were strapped to their mothers’ bodies while the women worked in the fields, and thus were exposed to continuous movements, rhythmic talking, and singsong communications.
As a consequence of this constant attention, the Ugandan babies were able to:
- Sit unsupported before five months of age
- Crawl at five months of age
- Walk at seven months
- Complete toilet training by an amazing eleven months.
The famous Swiss developmental psychologist, Dr. Jean Piaget, and other researchers in this field have stated conclusively that infant requires sensory stimulation in order to grow and learn. From these studies, we can plainly see that the first six months of life is a crucial time for parents to supply the stimulating events and objects necessary to keep infants’ minds active.
Infants under six months of age cannot create their own thoughts about puppy dogs and ice cream cones. They need someone to provide the information and materials for them to think about. This is your parental role. You will be able to fulfill it expertly by interacting with the six senses already very keenly developed in your newborn: sight, touch, taste, smell, hearing and movement