It is vital for parents and practitioners to stimulate a baby's developing brain. Lena Engel explains how to create the right conditions for effective interaction.
Contrary to the widely accepted belief that babies just cry, feed, sleep and move their limbs erratically, recent research into brain development in newborns and very young babies indicates that they also think and make decisions about how to respond to their environment.
The theory
This thinking process in babies is manifested in several ways, and healthy brain development depends on the extent of the adults' interaction and support. Once practitioners, parents and carers become aware of babies' brain development and the crucial role that they play in stimulating young minds, they are more likely to exploit every opportunity that presents itself by responding positively and creatively to the baby's needs.
Information about early brain development is well explained in the book How Babies Think. This book makes understandable some complex scientific discoveries and offers helpful advice on how parents and carers can enjoy and support their children's developing brain.
The authors also reveal how sophisticated babies are right from birth and how crucial it is for parents and carers to respect their babies' individuality and uniqueness.
The research emphasises that most babies appear to be pre-programmed to become social and communicating beings. The brain is the mechanism of control to achieve this end and the success of the progress of brain development depends principally on the supportive interaction of parents and carers. As with all other skills, thinking practice improves the baby's brain growth and the ability to learn, communicate and respond to experiences.
Initial strong attachment and good bonding with parents and carers creates the ideal conditions for babies to become socially responsive and to stimulate their interest in learning about the world around them. For this reason, the role of the adult is not only to protect, but also to communicate at every opportunity with the baby. This responsibility should be taken seriously because it involves a great deal of commitment and understanding. So, the task of caring for small babies should be regarded as one of the most important and difficult jobs to tackle, and one that requires qualified and experienced practitioners.
The practitioner role
The first positive step for practitioners is to ask parents about their baby, to show interest in its personality, likes and dislikes and its daily routine at home. Always listen carefully to what parents tell you because they have the greatest knowledge about their baby and are likely to feel emotional strain at the thought of leaving their baby with new carers.
Use the information provided to inform your initial planning. Try not to alter significantly the baby's daily routine, as a consistent approach will be less likely to upset and confuse the young mind.
During daily routines
Use daily routines to engage or disengage attention, depending on whether you want the baby to rest or interact with you and other people.
- During wakeful periods the baby will be playful and seek attention and confirmation from adults. This should take the form of lots of one-to-one interaction, eye contact, touching and conversation. In dialogue give sufficient time for the baby to respond to you. Show interest and delight in the efforts made to communicate to you and always indicate with your eyes and your facial movements that you are involved fully in this interchange.
- Nappy changing, washing and feeding create excellent opportunities for individual attention and dialogue. Practitioners should ensure that they value these moments of interaction and stimulate the baby's interest. This may be by singing to the baby, or explaining what you are doing and describing the objects you are using and telling the baby what will be happening later.
Habitual experiences of this kind help build consistency and expand memory as the baby's understanding of vocabulary and meaning increases.
Outdoors
Both indoors and outside you should promote learning and interactive experiences with the baby:
- Place the wakeful baby in a bouncy, lay-back seat from where it can observe the natural environment. Babies usually love the company of other children from whom they learn a great deal about how to behave and how to enjoy themselves.
- Hang objects such as cones, feathers, used envelopes, and scarves from washing lines, or the branches of trees, so that the baby can watch them blow in the breeze.
- Take the baby for walks and engage in conversation about where you are going and what you will be doing together when you get there.
- Go to the park where you can participate with the baby in exhilarating physical sensations on slides, roundabouts and swings.
The baby's brain will be stimulated by the variety of sensations offered together with thoughtful adult support. The baby can read and enjoy your expressions of excitement as conveyed through your verbal and physical reactions. The baby will wish to copy these physical expressions in their own way.
Adult approval is crucial to confirm the baby's sense of what is right and wrong to enjoy. Babies will learn apprehension of experiences, fears that will become imprinted on its memory. This is the way in which the brain programmes and organises the information it receives. The brain makes connections and expands its repertoire through positive experiences. However, developmental growth is restricted by negative or limited experiences.
Resources
Babies seem programmed to respond to facial features and expressions. From birth, babies gaze with interest at their parents and carers and are able to begin to copy some of the movements that they see. For example, even a few minutes after birth, a baby can copy facial expressions such as a tongue pushing slowly in and out of the mouth.
Experiments using shapes and designs that resemble faces have supported the theory that babies are most interested in observing and learning from human expressions. The attention span of babies has been measured to discover how long they focus on facial images compared with other sorts of patterns.
Results conclude that babies have natural pre-dispositions to enjoy and to concentrate for the longest periods on images of faces. So practitioners should try to display and show pictures of people in the baby's immediate environment.
- Hang mobiles over cots and play areas with faces of people from all over the world.
- Make books with the help of parents: 'Baby-on-a-string' books can be created by taking photographs of familiar rooms and objects related to the baby's daily routine. Glue these photos on to cardboard, cover them with sticky back plastic and make a small hole in the top right hand corner of each one to attach them together with ribbon.
- Similarly, mount an image of the baby that has been cut from a photograph. Thread a longer piece of ribbon through its top corner and attach it to the rest of the book. Now you should be able to share the book with the baby and move its own picture from one photograph to another so that it appears that it is in each of the settings portrayed. Talk about each aspect of the photo as you move the baby from one familiar space to another and remind the baby what it does in each of these rooms. This will give the baby a sense of belonging and will stimulate links with past experience and the ability to remember visual and social activity.
- Create 'lollipop' faces. Collect interesting photographs of faces from magazines. Mount them on card and cover them with sticky back plastic. Attach each photograph firmly to the back of a wooden spoon. Show these to the baby and encourage the baby to hold them. Make comments about the faces and the expressions illustrated in the photos.
Also, make your own images of faces using simple materials such as buttons and felt, which can be cut to form features such as noses, eyebrows and mouths. Create different expressions to suggest surprise, fear or fright. Cover these with clear sticky back plastic and attach them to wooden spoons in the same way. Babies learn to differentiate between expressions and, with adult support, begin to empathise with different feelings and emotions.
Further information
- How Babies Think by Alison Gopnik, Andrew Meltzoff and Patricia Khul (Phoenix, £7.99).
- For more information on brain development and its implications for working with under-threes, see Nursery World's series Birth to Three, in particular, Part two - 'Feeling secure' (19 February, 2004), Part five - 'Moving and doing' (20 May 2004), Part 6 - 'Self-awareness' (17 June, 2004)