my baby.
TRY THIS
During any given wonderful or terrible moment, you think, “I’ll remember this forever.” You won’t. That would require remembering nearly every single day of baby’s life. If you’re like me, you can barely remember what happened yesterday.
So, since pregnancy, I’ve kept a “One Line a Day” journal. One line per day is just about the right level of commitment. OK, one line every few days. Mine is a five-year journal: each page is devoted to one date, with space to write about each of the five years.
It’s neat to be reminded of what was happening on a certain date in previous years—and to wonder what my baby will glean from the journal when she’s all grown up.
Write down the values and life skills you hope your child exhibits as an adult, twenty or thirty years from now. How will you need to change in order to model those things?
The most important thing you can do with your newborn is to be sensitive to baby’s needs. Respond when baby tries to engage with you. Match those smiles, coos, and gazes. Comfort those cries. Cuddle up, skin to skin. Fall in love.
Babies’ minds are working, working, testing hypotheses, and making use of an incredible set of innate cognitive abilities.
A newborn less than one hour old can imitate. Even though he’s never seen a face before, including his own, a baby is born knowing how to stick out his tongue at you, if you stick out yours.
Babies shun the bad guy. Babies 6 and 10 months old watched a show in which one toy helps another toy up a hill. A third toy pushes it back down the hill. The researchers then brought in the helper toy and the hinderer toy for the babies to play with. Babies were much more likely to reach for the helper toy.
Babies can predict an action. When 9-month-olds reach for an object, their brain’s motor region is activated. And when 9-month-olds simply watch an adult reach for an object, that same motor region is activated. Watching the adult a second time, the babies’ motor region activates just prior to the adult reaching—in effect predicting the adult’s action.
Babies can make predictions based on probability. Infants 10 to 12 months old were tested to see whether they preferred a pink lollipop or a black one. Next, babies were shown two jars: one with more pink lollipops and one with more black. Researchers then plucked a lollipop from each jar (shielded now, so baby couldn’t tell which color lollipop was chosen) and covered each lollipop with a cup. About 80 percent of the time, the infants chose the cup most likely to contain their favorite color of lollipop.
Do something one time, and a 14-month-old can repeat it a week later in the same context. Researchers created a box that would light up when touched. As babies watched, experimenters leaned forward from the waist and touched their foreheads to the box. Brought back to the lab a week later, two-thirds of babies remembered. They leaned forward and touched their own foreheads to the box. The researchers tried longer delays, too—and some babies remembered four months later.
Babies will give you broccoli. An 18-month-old understands that your wants might differ from hers. In front of the child, an experimenter ate raw broccoli, making a happy face (“Mmm!”), and then goldfish crackers, making a disgusted face (“Yuck!”). Then the experimenter held out her hand to the child and said, “Could you give me some?” Even though they prefer crackers, 18-month-olds gave her raw broccoli—what the experimenter said she liked. The experiment also was done with 15-month-olds. Babies at that age always hand over crackers, which is what they like.
Babies are taking statistics. Babies take in everything from the environment around them—sounds, visual scenes, language—and calculate the frequency with which something occurs. In the case of language, babies use these statistics to determine which letter sounds to continue discriminating between and which to drop.
Babies are designed to learn. Babies absorb information from many sources at once, lighting up a host of neurotransmitters—many more than adult brains have—that leap into action for rapid learning. Then, like scientists, babies and young children create hypotheses and run experiments about the world and about human nature. Researcher Alison Gopnik calls young children “the research and development division of the human species.”
SEE WHAT BABY CAN DO
I’m continually impressed by the things my baby can do, say, remember, and repeat. Before babies can talk, you tend to assume they don’t understand anything you’re saying. They do. Dressing my baby in a shirt at 10 months old, I asked her to put her arm in the sleeve—and she did. When baby started talking, it was too late to take back some of the things my husband and I had said to her. “Butt balm for the butt!” she’d repeat during diaper changes.
If I give baby enough time, patiently waiting instead of jumping in to help, she’s often able to twist on a lid, snap a buckle, find a towel and wipe up a spill, or put away an item before moving on to the next thing. At 20 months old, I was surprised to learn she could finish the sentences of favorite books, if I paused. Reading Corduroy, about a small bear in green overalls who’s missing a button, I’d start, “I didn’t know I’d . . .” and she’d finish, “lost a button, said to self. I’ll go FIND it!”
It’s easy to underestimate a baby. Keep testing your baby’s boundaries—and prepare to be amazed.
Yes, you should anchor your furniture to the walls and lock away your cleaning supplies. But that’s not the kind of safety I’m talking about here.
Your baby’s strongest need is to feel safe with you.
Children are exquisitely sensitive to their environments. If you create an environment of safety, love, and emotional stability, good things happen:
• Baby’s brain develops a healthy stress-response system, efficiently deploying and then reducing stress hormones as needed.
• With stress hormones in balance, baby’s neural circuits for learning and reasoning are protected. The cardiovascular and immune systems can function properly.
• Life’s smaller stresses (“No shirt! I don’t want it!”) become chances for growth, because supportive relationships buffer the negative effects of stress.
• Baby sees your healthy responses to stressful experiences and gets practice responding in healthy ways.
In a home with high levels of conflict, on the other hand, baby’s stress-response system is damaged. The system is either forced into a state of constant high alert or dulled into reacting too mildly to stress. Baby is unable to form a trusting attachment with caregivers (see page). Later, the child is more likely to be aggressive and delinquent. You might think babies are too young to understand that their parents are fighting. But babies younger than 6 months old can tell something is wrong. Babies’ blood pressure and heart
