Every parent desires to give their child a head start in life, and a huge part of this is ensuring the proper healthy development of a child brain and cognitive abilities. At birth, a baby’s brain contains as many neurons as there are stars in a milky way, and during their first years, they will form trillions of brain cell connections through loving and emotional connections as well as experiences. These simple activities will help nurture the development of your little ones and build their brainpower.
Respond To Baby Talk: Research has shown that babies can hear and respond to words and emotions even from the womb, so mothers should start positive reinforcement of love and other feelings early on. When your baby is born, turn up the baby talk, as they grow talk to them about daily routines; “time to take a bath” or “it is playtime”. Respond to their gentle coos and babbles with delighted vocalizations and exaggerated joyful facial expressions, imitate the sounds they make (goo-gaa) and encourage them to do the same to the sounds you make. This will stimulate the area of the brain responsible for understanding speech and conversations, and language production.
Respond to Your Baby’s Actions: It is important to be able to match your child’s temperament and help them adjust to the different situations that may arise. Some children adjust easily to change in situations while some are shy and others might be impulsive. This is an opportunity to show acceptance as you help a shy child to build confidence, and let an impulsive or active child channel that energy positively. When they are pointing confusedly, be sure to respond by following their fingers with your gaze. You can also chip in a word or two of what they are pointing towards for clarity. Reassuring, consistent and predictable responses to your child’s actions can be found to be very useful in a developing brain.
Be Attentive: Playtime is not always the opportunity to catch up on Instagram or watch movies. It is the time that children will learn the most about their environment and try to explore how things work. For example, picking up the rattle to confirm where the sound is coming from. When your child starts playing,get down with the child and play a little too. Playtime can be a time to learn exploration and discovery, and it is an opportunity to interact with them and help them to feel much more emotionally secure as their knowledge of your attention will build trust in them.
Play Games That Involve the Hands: Games can be played at any time, and interactive games that involve the hands like peekaboo, puppets, or Legos are usually much more fun for you and especially your baby. This will show children how we use our hands to interact with our everyday lives, and of course, it is another learning opportunity for your baby. In addition, interactive play that allows your child to make a mess like playing with water and sand will teach your child the properties of liquids. Interacting with your baby is a solid way to foster brain development right from an early age.
Choose Interactive Toys: Toys that will help your child to explore and interact are good ways to teach him/her cause and effect, and reason an “if then” situation. For example, if a child builds Legos too high and they fall, the next time he is going to try and figure out why they fell until he successfully stacks them on top of each other. Also when playing with a toy car, if they drive the car into a wall, next to them they are on the same play route, they will try to navigate their ride on cars to ensure it doesn’t go into the wall.
Read Books To Them: Read to them and make them active participants in the reading. This will expose them to new words and interactive sounds. You can choose books with bright colourful and large images or drawings, and do not forget to share in your child’s delight as you read. Making noises that correspond with the images in the book like “vroom” when you see a car and “glub glub” when you see a fish will help the child to know what sounds to expect from the objects in real life. Remember to modulate your voice to match the characters and situations in the book like using a deeper voice to depict a man and using a calmer voice when pleasing for something. Comprehension of spoken words and actions is important to a child’s brain development.
Utilize Meal Time: There is something similar that all babies do sitting in their high chairs during mealtime, they try to grasp something (food, cups, spoons, etc.) and throw it down. This is not just an attempt to mess up mummy’s kitchen, but right there, they are working on their grasp, which is an important fine motor skill, and learning object permanence; that is they understand that objects continue to exist even when they throw them off the table and cannot be seen. Mealtime can also be used to teach a baby new concepts like the difference between hot and cold. Saying the names of food aloudand expressing pleasure as your baby eats, no matter how messy will create a positive mental association with food and mealtime.
The early years of an infant are the most important years of development. Physical, emotional and cognitive intelligence is nurtured into a child right from the onset.Of course, while all these are important when the child is born, the real development begins in the early weeks and months after conception, so keep a healthy lifestyle when pregnant and be conscious of drugs that you ingest as some drugs can hurt the neurological development in a baby’s brain. Activities that develop a child’s brain will also aid the development of other aspects of a child.