Sharpen Your Child’s Senses

From day one, your precious newborn takes in the sights and sounds of your environment and is soothed by your loving touch. And while you may not be thinking of them this way, all of these first experiences are actually experiments with the senses.

Sight

What Baby Senses:

Newborns can focus about 12 to 18 inches front of them, but backgrounds are fuzzy. They like simple simple-and-white drawings and pictures with bold colours. As their eye muscles strengthen and vision becomes more coordinated, they can track moving objects.

How Mother’s Can Help:

Make eye contact whenever possible, especially during feedings, when baby is close to your face. Take a rattle or other colourful toy and move it slowly from side to side and up and down, about a foot from baby’s face, to give practice tracking. Keep bright objects around the room.

Smell:

What Baby Senses:

Within days of birth, newborns can recognize the scent of their mother’s milk. Like adults, they prefer sweet odours, such as chocolates, to bitter ones. They’re soothed by scents they associate with comfort – such as your own and those of their favorite stuffed toys – and can be repelled by unfamiliar ones, such as perfumes.

How Mother’s Can Help:

If you’re working, take a shirt that you’ve worn during burping or while carrying your baby during the day. Give it to a caregiver so that your baby can smell it when you can’t be there. Avoid over-washing love objects.

Hearing

What Baby Senses:

Young babies act alert when they hear strangers, but brighten when they hear mother’s voice. They’re very interested in the sounds you make and learn to recognize when you’re imitating their sounds. By the end of three months, they’ll look for the source of the sound if it’s not within view.

How Mother’s Can Help:

Talk to your baby as often as possible, imitating baby sounds. Sing low, soothing lullabies over and over, so they become recognizable and comforting. Shake a rattle or clap your hands, first directly in front of your baby and then a little to the side, and see if the baby tries to follow the sound.

Touch:

What Baby Senses:

Babies are born exquisitely sensitive to touch, and feel pressure and comfort when you gently stroke or pat them. Newborns reflexively move a limb that is touched and gradually gain awareness and control over their movements. They also learn to tell one texture from another.

How Mother’s Can Help:

Let the baby feel the warmth of your skin whenever possible. Give a light massage with lukewarm baby lotion; once the umbilical corddefine has healed, take a warm bath together. Introduce different textures. Graze each toe with cotton balls or brush soft fabrics over baby’s belly.