Baby development

Kirsty in the August Club asked what people were doing to aid their babies' development. And I ended up writing a whole essay about it, so thought I'd share it here, too, so that I hadn't completely wasted over an hour of working time (i.e. Rosemary is asleep, so I should be working my butt off!).

Here it is:


We have a wonderful book called First Time Parents. It includes a big section on development, month by month, and includes a column on what the parents can do to aid development. We don't go overboard with it, but we do look at it every few weeks to see the kind of things Rosemary might be likely to do soon and how to help.

What we do at the moment is:

Physical development
Gross motor skills

• Make sure she gets tummy time - either on her playmat, changing mat, the bed or one of us. She prefers the latter, and that's when she lifts her head the most, as she wants to lift it to look at our faces.
• Sit her on our knee either facing us or facing outwards and only hold her very loosely, so that she does more of the holding still herself. I also sit her between my legs on the sofa or chair I'm sitting on sometimes, especially when watching TV, as she likes to look at the TV for a couple of minutes now and then. I also quite often sit her facing me on my desk or the table when out at a coffee shop.
• Let her stand on our laps when she's wanting to, or on the floor (mostly she likes the former). Also (though this one less and less as she develops more) when she's having tummy time on us, put our hands under her feet so she can push against them.
• Let her have time in different positions. She does spend the majority of her awake time in her bouncy chair, as she likes the way it allows her to interact with us. But I make sure that she also gets time lying on her back - under the gym or on her changing mat - lying on her front, 'sitting up', 'standing up'. Etc. etc.

Fine motor skills

• Provide her with things that she can grasp and that she might want to. For example, she has a small, soft, cuddly elephant (called Nellie) who she sleeps with and who comes with her to the chair and play mat. She recently grabbed the elephant and lifted it above her head an held it there for a bit (Chris actually caught this on video) and she's done so a few times. She also picked a book up yesterday - a plastic one that I'd given her more so she could chew on it, as I think she may be teething.
  
• We also give her the opportunity to grab our fingers or hands, and she has started pulling on my hair, though I must say I don't particularly encourage this!
• We play 'This little piggy went to market' with her fingers and toes, to encourage her to spread them out and think of them as separate entities. Until recently she's tended to keep her hands in very tight fists. She still does quite a lot, but lately she's been really exploring her hands. Chris calls it her 'Mr Burns' impression, because she rubs her hands together and feels her fingers with her other fingers. She does this all by herself, and it doesn't really need any input from us, only that we're putting graspable things near her, so that she can grasp them if and when she wants to.

Communication

• We talk to her all the time. And talk near her, of course.
• I sing to her a lot, which she loves (unfortunately, I'm pretty tone death, so she may well pick up some bad habits musically - but it's still worth doing for the communication aspects, and because she really loves it). We do a lot of action songs. I got a free CD with Mother and Baby magazine while pregnant and started off using that as a basis (and also an album of Nursery Rhymes downloaded from i-tunes).
• I still use a lot of baby talk with her as well, which is actually supposed to be useful, and why we have a natural tendency to talk in baby talk to babies. What I tend to do is repeat back the sounds that she makes. So if she says 'Coo', I'll say 'Coo, coo, yes. Coo, coo.' or if she says 'Ga', I'll say 'Ga? Really? Ga, ga.' and so on and so on. If any of the sounds either seem close to a word or are said at a point that could mean something, I'll repeat back the actual word. For example, she makes a sound that is very close to 'Hello', so I'll say 'Hello' back.
  
• I just received Joseph Garcia's Complete Guide to Babysigning which I ordered quite a while ago (should have bought it from Amazon, though I did get it cheaper!) and am starting to sign to her. I've actually been doing the 'Milk' sign for quite a while, since I learnt it during one of our post-natal classes. It will, of course, be quite a while before she'll have enough control over her hands and arms to make the signs, and quite possibly longer still before she wants to or is ready to, intellectually. However, I think it makes sense to start using the signs when talking to her now and learning them ourselves thoroughly, so that we will really understand them if and when she does start using them. From everything I've read about babysigning, I think it makes a huge amount of sense. I've seen very young children getting so frustrated because they are unable to get across what they want or need. The desire and need to communicate develops in most babies before their vocal chord (and tongue control, etc.) are developed enough to form all words, but their fine and gross motor skills are developed enough much earlier. I think the biggest challenge will be getting everyone else in her life to learn some of the signs, as well, such as her grandparents and aunt and great aunt. But just a few will be of great use, I think.
• I speak Spanish and French to her. I was just going to speak French to her, but she decided that she prefers Spanish, after I sung La Bamba to her one day. So I probably speak more Spanish to her now, than French, actually. I also throw in some other languages too, now and then. But that's just the odd word here and there. For example, there's a tradition in my family, when someone sneezes a number of times to say 'Bless you' in a variety of languages - English, French, German, Spanish, Esperanto... - and do this with her. With Spanish and French I will speak to her for a few minutes in the language. If any of you speak other languages, it's apparently (according to my health visitor, anyway, and I know I've read research in the past to support this) very useful in the first six months (and when in the womb, but it's a bit late for that now!) for babies to hear other languages, because that's when they're developing the ability to form vowel sounds and different languages use different vowel sounds. It's particularly useful for them to hear very different (non-western-European) languages, such as Mandarin, Japanese, Punjabi, Arabic, etc. etc. because these have some really different vowel sounds. And up to six months there's no problem with confusing them. After six months you have to think about the possibility of sticking to one or two languages (often this is done with OPOL - one parent one language), otherwise it could slow down their language development.

Intellectual development
Well, everything is intellectual development to a new baby! They are constantly learning, whether or not we're interacting with them. But these are the things we do at the moment to help it along:

• Reading. We read to her a lot. She has been a member of the local library since she was a few weeks old, and she also has a number of books that she owns - mostly that my mum has bought from charity stores and the like. I do a combination of different types of reading with her. The majority of the time it's a case of showing her a board book and pointing at the pictures and describing them. I talk a lot about colour and shape as well as the names for the pictures - e.g. 'Look at the big yellow sun. It's round.', 'Look at the big green bus. You've been on a bus. But the buses you've been on haven't been green.' 'And there's a big yellow dog. Like Wesley. Except Wesley is a big black dog.' and so on. Then there are some books that have stories in them (officially these are 'too old' for her but I say 'bah' to that!). Her favourite is 'Looking after gran' which is a Read at Home book from the Oxford University Press. It's about a gran who has a bright red motorbike and sidecar and who has to look after the family dog while they are on holiday. I don't know why she likes this so much, but it might be because it has a dog in it. Or perhaps it's just that the colours or shapes are particularly exciting to her. Anyway, I read this (and other story books) in different ways. Sometimes I just read it straight through, though I always point at relevant parts of the picture while reading. Sometimes I read the story and pause on each page, further describing what is happening in the picture. Sometimes I just go through telling the story in my own words, rather than the words on the page, talking about the characters and so on. And, finally, if I'm reading something myself, I'll sometimes read it out loud to her. This happens less these days, because I rarely get the time to read when she's awake. I manage about half an hour after she's gone to sleep while waiting to make sure she is going to sleep and that's it. When she was younger, though, I'd often read to her while she lay next to me on the bed, for example. And that was just because it's good for her to hear my voice.
• Counting. Obviously, it will be a long time before she understands the concept of counting or before she's able to count! But I still count things when I'm with her. When I'm dressing her, I count the poppers, '1 popper. 2 poppers. 3 poppers. That's 3 poppers. All done.' or her hands and feet, 'Where's your hand? That's one hand. Where's the other hand? And that's two hands.' I count the stairs as we go up and down them. And anything else I happen to think of when we're out and about.
• Colours. I frequently talk about the colours of objects we see. The dog is a 'big, black dog'. The trees are green. The leaves that have fallen off the trees at the moment are red and orange and brown. The tights are pink. The vest is dark blue. Etc. etc. Again, I'm fully aware that she won't understand these concepts for a long time, but I personally think it's useful to start early, even if it just means that I/we get into the habit of talking about these things, so that we're ready and good at it, when she's ready for it.
• General talking about what's going on. I talk to her all the time about what we're doing and where we are and so on. When we're out walking I tell her where we're walking, where we're going to, who we're going to see or might see, what we're walking past. And so on, and so on. At home, I talk about the room we're in or what we can see out of the window. I talk about the TV programme we're watching. I talk about what her daddy is doing or what the dog is doing. If I'm going to leave the room for a bit, I tell her why and how long I will be. All of this is stuff she almost certainly doesn't understand yet, again, but there's no harm in doing it, and probably the opposite.

Emotional development

• I tell her I love her a lot.
• I give her lots of kisses.
• She spends the vast majority of her time with me as, at this stage in her life, I am the most important person and the one she is going to attach to.
• I give her lots of cuddles and attention.
• I never leave her to cry. (Though, to be fair, she doesn't cry very often. Mostly when she's hungry still, though I think she has cried a couple of times when she's needed changing and we haven't realised.) The only time she has to be left to cry is when we're out and it's pouring with rain and we're not in town. If we're anywhere we can conveniently stop, I'll get her out of her buggy/the carrier and give her attention, let her feed, etc. Very occasionally I have to let her cry for a few minutes until we get home.
  
• I tell her she's beautiful, gorgeous, pretty, etc.I also tell her she's clever, smart, etc.I also tell her she's special, wonderful, and so on. (These all go towards self-esteem, though it's not like I don't believe them and want to say them, anyway!!)
  
• She gets positive enforcement for anything particularly amazing she does - such as lifting her elephant above her head. 'Well done. Aren't you clever? That's wonderful.' and so on.
  
• We encourage her to form attachments to toys - Nappy Monster and Nellie the Elephant are her two favourites at the moment.
• We talk about Mummy and Daddy, so she knows who we are. We do talk about oursleves in the third person. Which seems strange in terms of language development, but I've realised that it's much more to do with emotional development and it will change when necessary for language and intellectual development. At the moment, it's important for her to know that 'Mummy will be back soon.' or 'Daddy's going to change your nappy, now.' and so on. And I think it's more understandable than 'I' which would be used by everyone.

Hmm. Well, I've written an actual essay there, haven't I? I have edited loads of books about child care and find child development and learning theory fascinating. My sister works in child care as well. My mother worked for years tutoring children with behavioural problems. My sister is 12 years younger than me, so I was involved in her early care and education. All these things probably lead to my thinking about this a lot more than some other parents might, I suppose. I'm not trying to bring up some child prodigy or anything. I'm just trying to put as much of the theory I have read about into practice to give Rosemary the best start that I have it in my power to do, to the best of my knowledge. I know that babies pick up most of this themselves without huge amounts of input from us, or just with the natural input that we automatically make. I just feel, for me, it's really important to encourage development as far as I can (within reason, of course, and without over-stimulating, causing frustration, and so on). And I guess that my own upbringing leads me to concentrate further on intellectual and language development than physical development, so I'll need to watch out for that and ensure that her physical development is not neglected.