Baby’s Intelligence: Importance of Infant Stimulation

Early childhood is considered the most important phase in life, laying foundation for physical, emotional, intellectual well being. Infant stimulation in healthy children is a therapy and not a formal teaching method. It is used in children from birth to age 6, with the aim of optimizing their cognitive, physical, emotional and social development.

In the first few years of life, more than one million neural connections are formed each second – a pace never repeated again.

What is Infant Stimulation?

They are activities that arouse or stimulate your baby’s sense of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. Infant stimulation improves your baby’s curiosity, attention span, memory, and nervous system development. Such babies reach developmental milestones faster, have better muscle coordination, and a more secure self image.

As parents focusing on eat, play, love – by hugging, cuddling, telling stories, playing and establishing loving and trusting contact with your child – is critical for healthy brain development.

A baby’s brain develops more than 1 million new neural connections every second! This is the one chance to shape a child’s ability to learn and grow.

Babies can tell the difference between light & dark before their birth. First three months, babies enjoy contrasting colors and patterns, especially black & white. Older infants like bright, bold colors: red, blue, green & yellow.

Touching is one of the best ways to stimulate your baby. It provides contact, reassurance, relaxation, and comfort. Babies like firm and gentle stroking. Touching a variety of textures will fascinate your baby.

Babies notice different tastes and smells. Let your baby taste and smell different things - one at a time in case of allergies. A newborn’s most highly developed sense is hearing - babies can hear and remember familiar sounds months before they’re born. Infants seem to prefer soft and high-pitched sounds, especially a female’s voice.

Interesting facts

• Infants have a biological need and desire to learn.

• The foundational networking of the brain’s synapses is nearly completed in first two years of life.

• The more age-appropriate and interesting experiences, both physical and social-emotional, that an infant participates in, the more circuitry is built for enhanced learning in the future.

• Infant stimulation can enhance curiosity, attentiveness, concentration and love of learning in the growing infant and toddler.

• Language stimulation is fundamental to all areas of cognitive development. Infants and children who are conversed with, read to, and otherwise engaged in lots of verbal interaction show more advanced linguistic skills than children who are not as verbally engaged by their caregivers.

Infants have a definite preference for the human face, voice, touch and smell over everything else. Therefore, the infant’s best toy is you, as you speak, move, touch and talk with them.

Conclusion

The early years of a child is the “prime time” for his/her brain development. Brain development during the early years of a baby results in how, and how well, one thinks and learns — both as children and as adults.

Sachin Tendulkar, one of the greatest batsmen of all time, and UNICEF have released this video to celebrate fatherhood and highlight the importance of love and on why early moments matter…