Innovative ways to stimulate your baby's intellect

From birth, a baby’s brain cells multiply wildly, making connections that may shape a lifetime of experience. Neuroscientists say that repeated experience wires a child’s brain. Each time a baby tries to touch a tantalizing object or gazes intently at a face, tiny bursts of electricity shoot through the brain.

As a baby has different experiences the sensory receptors transmit this information, which stimulates nerve activity in the relevant part of the brain. When a baby is visually stimulated, for example, a nerve is triggered in the area of the brain that controls vision.

Babies are born auditory dominant. This means that they hear better than they see, touch, feel, or smell. By two months after birth, vision replaces hearing as the dominant sense, and the visual system, begins to develop very quickly. Normal eyesight will develop only if the eye, the nerves between the eye and the brain, and the brain itself are properly stimulated. In this regard, the first two years of life are believed to be the critical period for developing good vision.

The development of the brain, senses and skills is activity dependent. Every experience of an infant excites certain neural circuits in the brain and leaves others inactive. Those circuits which are excited often will become stronger and those which are excited rarely may be eliminated. Use it or loose it, to some extent! Enriched environments bolster brain, senses and skills development in babies.

In view of this, much research has focused on discovering the optimum stimuli for babies during playtime, for example using toys, books, aimed at developing an infant’s visual, listening, motor and cognitive skills.

Recent research shows the first three years of life are critical to your baby's brain development. During these years the brain triples its weight and establishes about 1000 trillion nerve connections — that's twice as many as adults have.

Encourage little ones to discover their mobility and explore their senses whilst feeling happy and secure in your arms.

Have fun together looking into your baby's eyes. Laughing together when your baby is playing in your arms will encourage its social skills. Create a loving bond between you and your little one. This strong attachment between you and your baby is the basis for life-long happiness and self-confidence in relationships.

Babies are designed to learn about the world around them and they learn by playing with the things in that world, most of all by spending time with the people who love them. So what can you do as parent to give you little one the best possible start?

Love

• The more your baby is cuddled and held, the more secure and independent he/she will be when he/she is older. These touching experiences grow the brain and the body through the release of important hormones. They are as critical as nutrients and vitamins. Touching babies also helps their digestion and relieves stress.

Stimulate the Senses

• What babies see, touch, hear and smell causes brain connections to be made, especially if the experiences happen in a loving, consistent, predictable manner. Neurons for vision begin forming during the first few months of life. Activities that stimulate a baby's sight will insure good visual development.

• Babies also need a large variety of physical experiences to become familiar with their world. So choose toys with many different textures so that your little one can touch and experience them all.

Motor Skills Development

There are a lot of activities that you can do with your child to help enhance their fine and gross motor skills. Many people don’t realize how these skills affect a child. The development of fine and gross motor skills allows them to perform better in other, more academic and physical ways.

FINE MOTOR SKILLS

Fine motor skills are those skills that allow you to develop the ability to do such things as write and manipulate small objects. Try these simple activities to help your children along the way.

1. Painting.

2. Puzzles.

3. Play dough.

4. Blocks

GROSS MOTOR SKILLS

Gross motor skills are big motor skills; they require balance and coordination. Try some of these activities.

1. Running

2. Climbing

3. Hopping

4. Ball play

• Repeating motor skills over and over strengthens baby's neural circuits that go from the brain's thinking areas to the motor areas and out to the nerves that move muscles. With muscles and coordination working together, babies can begin to develop more demanding skills, like walking.

• Your baby is developing his small motor skills when he squeezes the squeaker or music button of the toy for example. Just reaching for an object helps the brain develop hand-eye coordination. Exercising small muscles has a positive effect on the motor areas of the brain

Music & Movement

• Early music experiences increase and enhance spatial-temporal reasoning and the learning of mathematical concepts. In addition, songs, movement and musical games of childhood are neurological exercises that help children learn speech patterns and motor skills. Connecting rhythm, movement, and bonding produce lots of brain wiring that likely will help babies in their future development.

• Turn on the music and dance with baby! Watch him giggle with delight.

What will good communication teach children?

Parents who think out loud with their children will see them develop a similar train of thought. They will learn to talk and think in a more sophisticated way. If parents express emotions and feelings, their children will learn it's all right to do the same.

When your children want to talk or ask questions, encourage them. If you are dismissive or always say you are too busy, they may express frustration and stop wanting to share their thoughts and feelings.

Offering explanations will help children work matters out for themselves. Take time to point out how things are connected, for example, in terms of cause and effect.

If the family has a problem that concerns your child, involve them in the discussion. Try to find possible solutions together with him or her.
When discussing options, also talk about consequences. The possible outcome will influence your final decision. Be open to the child's suggestions. Let them take part in the negotiations and the decision.

A child who experiences this kind of communication will become very confident and learn the rules of good communication and will ever be open to new ideas and also learn to accommodate the views and opinions of others and in turn learn the art of co-operative living.

What's your Parenting Quotient?

The first two things that a new born recognizes is its mother's touch and the father's voice, which the baby had been experiencing while in the mother's womb. Thus the baby feels most secured  when carried and curdled by parents than any other person. The child grows up admiring the world around him which mostly comprises of his parents and grandparents till the age of two years. 

Consequently kids take their parents to be their most influential role models. They emulate their parents in several respects. Parents who pay compliments, show respect, kindness, honesty, friendliness, hospitality and generosity to their children will encourage them to behave in the same way.

Parents need to be conscious about the nature of their own activities. If the father eats chips while watching TV, obviously the child will also pick up the same. Or if the father chooses to eat fruits and read a book the child would pick up this too. It's upto the parents what path they want their child to follow.

Parents should express their unconditional love for their children as well as provide them with the continued support they need to become self assured and happy. It is equally important for parents to set reasonable expectations for their children and tell them in plain words what they expect from them.

At My Little Genius program, we help you to calculate your PQ: the parenting quotient. And based on your score, we help you to do a better parenting! To know more on how you can grow to be a sensitive and responsible parent, write to us at mylittlegenius.india@gmail.com

A Happy and Successful Parenting!