~Beyond Feeding and
Holding~
By: Kori Bower
Most parents know that a baby’s basic needs are food, sleep,
and love. Doctors direct us on the
best diet for the baby and a quite, peaceful baby easily identifies sleep with
eyes closed. But how do you really
show a baby love? Experts know
that reasonably recognizing and fulfilling your child’s need for food and sleep
is an expression of love that is imperative to a sensitive period in the
development of your infant’s brain, physical growth, and emotional and social
development. Meeting these needs
forge a secure attachment between the primary caregiver and child. Other loving interactions can include
holding your baby in front of you to explore your face. Studies show that newborns can learn
the facial pattern of their mother’s face and distinguish hers from an
unfamiliar person by visual sensitivity to the broader outlines of faces. Read a short board book to your newborn
child at bedtime. This fosters
secure attachment, operant-conditioning gives the child cues to prompt that it is bed time, and it strengthens
their language skills, revealed in studies that recorded ERP brain-waves
capturing infants’ ability to recognize meaningful sound variations around 5
mo. old. These are just a few ways to lovingly
interact with your infant beyond holding and feeding.
I wonder if that explains why babies always want to touch your face when you're holding them. When you mentioned that a baby can learn their mother's face, it reminds me of someone telling me how the baby's vision improves as they get older. It makes sense to me, that their vision isn't great when they are newborns, and the way they distinguish a stranger's face from their mother's is by the outline of their face. I really thoght your blog was very informative as well as entertaining. Zara Foley
ReplyDeleteThat is very interesting advice. I believe that it is important for people to give more attention to their infants than just making sure their basic needs are met. Some people don't realize that even when they are that little they are able to learn and that it's important to help them in any way we can.
ReplyDelete-Jordan Howe
There are so many ways to interact and show love to an infant and toddler. Feeding and holding are important basic needs for a child but interaction is also important. They need to be able to see how we respond to them and for them to learn how to respond to us. Just spending a lot of time with infants and toddlers shows them how much we care and love them. Love is not any one thing we do for them, it is a combination of things.
ReplyDeleteSusan Davis