baby learning - Fifteen to Thirty-Six Months

What is your baby learning?

* Your child is learning to recognize himself or herself as a separate physical being.

* Prior to 18 months, young children do not seem to know that what they are seeing in the mirror is their own reflection. In one experiment, a researcher had mothers put a spot of rouge on their child s nose without the child knowing it. At 18 months, the child pointed to the mirror. By two years, the child touched his own nose as if he knew that the face in the mirror was his own face.

* Toddlers are able to store a memory and hours, days, even weeks later, that memory will be retrieved and guide their behavior. They watch how you pet a cat, and another time, when you re not around, they do the same thing. This capacity for "deferred imitation" explains in part how they learn so much so quickly!

* Toddlers also play symbolically, letting one thing stand for another. They pretend they are a tiny baby and crawl into a doll s bed; they pretend to be "Daddy" and give a doll a bath. They push a block on the floor, pretending that it s a dump truck. This rich, imaginative pretend play shows their minds at work and often reveals feelings that can t be expressed in words.

* The toddler years are traditionally known as the time when children declare that they are their "own person." They are eager to explore and experiment. They re leaving behind the dependency of infancy and feeling the independence of toddlerhood. What this means is that they want to take control and be separate from you. In terms of their emotional development, this is a healthy and inevitable step.

What are you, the parent, learning?

* Exercising authority. As a parent of a toddler, you may be wondering "how do I discipline?" First of all, think about discipline as teaching it s not equated with punishment. Your job (and it is a job with an assertive toddler) is to teach your child how to develop self-control, but you must also realize that this takes time. When your child is young, you will have to set limits, repeat them, and expect they won t work all the time. You ll also want to model the kind of behavior you do want (remember that your toddler will imitate you long after you ve acted in certain ways). Keep in mind, that children who have solid relationships with their parents care about doing what their parents want. So the nurturing, responsive relationship you establish with your baby is the foundation for socializing your toddler.

* Young children are adept at finding their parents hot buttons. This is a time to learn to deal with your own anger in a way that doesn t pass it on to your child.

Baby development - Fifteen to Thirty-Six Months

Your child is learning how to communicate feelings and thoughts with words. As your child uses language and moves about on his own, he seems like a substantively different person again. Between 15-36 months, he is a full-fledged toddler. He asserts his independence and his separateness from you. More and more, he s becoming his own person.

baby learning - Seven to Fifteen Months

What is your baby learning?

* Your baby is continuing to learn to recognize and to share his thoughts and feelings. By the end of this period, babies use more and more language to communicate. They want to try out their verbal skills and are busy naming and describing: "more" (when they want you to continue playing with them), "ba-ba" (when they want their bottle).
* Your baby is also learning to read the emotions of others. She will look to you for cues about how to respond in a situationÑespecially one that's unfamiliar (a new child care provider) or unusual (a balloon pops). It's the way that infants figure out how to respond to the world.
* During this stage, your baby will make giant leaps in language development. She or he will progress from making repeated sounds to saying simple words, like "baba" for bottle. Maybe even putting two words together: "Mommy sock" (your sock), or "nice doggie."
* Babies of this age are better able to remember the past. You'll see signs of your child's improved memory in her or his behavior: when you turn on the water in the bathtub, he'll get excited, knowing that his favorite playtime is about to begin.
* Your baby is learning how to separate and connect back to you and other important caregivers. As you go out the door, leaving your nine-month-old behind with a caregiver, he may begin to protest, trying to follow you or calling out for you. But with repeated separations, your child learns that you'll return and over time, separation anxiety diminishes

What are you, the parent, learning?

* Holding on and letting go. As your toddler begins to venture out in the world, you'll act as a secure base to which she'll return when she needs refueling. You'll work on finding the balance between holding on--protecting him, making his explorations safe--and letting go--encouraging him to explore and take risks.

Baby development - Seven to Fifteen Months

Your child makes the transition into toddlerhood and can now get around more independently. He crawls, then walks, and can move out into the world, away from you, in order to explore. Your child is learning about how to separate and reconnect and how to engage in two-way communication. Children will show a preference for familiar people and will look to their parents for encouragement and reassurance.

baby learning - Two to Seven Months

* The mutual exchanges that go on between babies and their caregivers help the babies learn to soothe or control themselves. There are circuits in the brain which are activated by this dance. These circuits are linked to those that regulate the body's physiology (like heartbeat) and the child's emotional state. Repeated, attuned experiences (so called because you are "tuning in" or sharing feelings with your child) allow children to develop brain circuits which can balance emotional and physical responses as they grow. The part of the brain that is responsible for regulating emotions is growing rapidly now. Remember that before about four months of age, babies are only able to focus their vision at about two feet in front of their eyes. Coincidentally, this is the same distance as between a baby's and mother's face during breastfeeding. During this early period of face-to-face interactions, it's helpful to be close enough so your baby can get a good look at your expressions.
* Your baby is learning the capacity for joy and pleasure. In fact, the parts of the brain responsible for experiencing and expressing emotion develop from the way caregivers interact with your infant. A nurturing environment is necessary for baby learning.

What are you, the parent, learning?

* Just as your baby is becoming attached to you, you are bonding with your baby.
* Facing feelings of attachment. You may wonder, "Can I take care of my child? Is my baby's behavior normal? Is what I'm doing the right thing?" A period of wonder and worry, of highs and lows, is a normal part of getting to know your new baby.
* Parents are often surprised at their reactions to their baby. They are more or less patient, more or less calm, feel more or less competent than anticipated. Just as the baby is beginning to develop a sense of self, so are parents. Post partum blues are experienced by many mothers in the first few months after birth. Changes in hormonal levels, lack of sleep, changes in lifestyle and perhaps the loss of an expectation--"that I was going to be a perfect parent, that parenthood was going to make me completely happy," can trigger depression. If you're feeling sad, you may want to ask yourself if you have an expectation that is unrealistic. If depression becomes severe and persistent, you may want to ask for help from your physician.

Baby development - Two to Seven Months

Two months is almost as clear a boundary in development as birth itself. More and more, your baby is establishing direct eye-to-eye contact, smiling and cooing. This period of intense sociability is often initiated by your baby when he or she is in an active, alert state. During this period, your interactions with your baby are like a "dance." When you engage in this dance, you are being nurturing and responsive to your baby--you are laying down the foundation of an "attachment" relationship.

Birth to Two Months

During this time, your newborn is dependent on you for feeding, warmth, and comfort and is also actively seeking stimulation through looking, hearing, and being touched. Your baby is beginning to form a rudimentary sense of "who I am."

brain development baby

The beginning of brain development starts soon after conception and continues throughout the prenatal period. The main thing that’s happening is the production of brain cells, called "neurons." During this time, the brain produces many more neurons than it needs, and by birth, excess cells have been shed. At birth, a baby’s brain has approximately 100 billion neurons--just about enough to last a lifetime. During the pre-natal period, neurons must find their way to exactly the right position on the cortex wall (where thinking and remembering occur); if they go astray, this can cause serious developmental problems (tobacco, alcohol and substance use, as well as radiation, are the most common causes of such problems).

early child development

Tactics to Help Early Child Development

In the meantime, parents can encourage dexterity with inexpensive homemade games and toys. Keep in mind that children learn by touch, and smell, and taste, as well as hearing and sight. So to help a young child learn to write, spread shaving cream on a tabletop and let him or her "draw" in it, Dr. Patterson advised. Old squeeze bottles make tub toys that improve hand strength. Even popping plastic bubble wrap can help improve finger coordination, as long as someone supervises for safety.

Happily, doing chores is also a skill-builder. Folding towels, putting silverware into the proper bins, and helping set the table all improve physical control. So do learning to spread butter with a knife and helping with baking by stirring, pouring and scooping. Sweeping the floor helps develop coordination on both sides of the body.

To help eye-hand coordination, cut an empty laundry detergent bottle in half and use the part with the handle to catch beanbags. Tape an empty paper towel roll upright on a board, and use it as a ring toss peg.

In addition, Dr. Patterson said, parents can check out toys from a library at the Cincinnati Center for Developmental Disorders at Children's Hospital Medical Center of Cincinnati to give the more expensive toys a test run before purchase.(early child development)

Baby's Development

From the sidelines of any preschool soccer game, it's easy to see the differences in children's physical abilities: Some 5-year-olds look like miniature pros -- kicking, feinting, shooting, scoring, with grace and ease. Others kick the dirt instead of the ball, trip rather than sprint, and send the ball into the cheering section instead of the net.

Both levels of ability are normal. But such wide variations prompt many parents to wonder whether their children's physical development is on track, or off.

Steps to Baby's Development

"Part of it is probably the person's innate 'wiring,' " said Bonnie Patterson, M.D., developmental pediatrician at the Cincinnati Center for Developmental Disorders of Children's Hospital Medical Center of Cincinnati. "The brain is an extremely complex organ we have barely begun to understand."

Developmental experts do know, however, the steps children go through from birth onward as they learn to control their bodies. "It's not a race, it's a progression. A child should reach each milestone in order, rather than at a particular age," said Dr. Patterson.

For example, babies develop from the head down. So, they should first develop head control, as they learn to turn their heads toward sounds. Then they begin gaining control of their trunks, learning how to roll over, for example. Most sit unassisted between about 6 and 7 months. Between 9 months and a year, babies learn to crawl. Then they pull themselves upright, learn to cruise, and finally, between about 9 and 14 months, walk. But children cannot walk if they have not first mastered sitting upright, Dr. Patterson pointed out.

After toddlerhood, children refine their early skills. The key for parents is to track the child's progress with their doctor, who will look for causes if the child falls behind normal ranges, she said.