| BRAIN WONDERS 9 - 12 MONTHS Your baby's rapid development during this period encompasses all areas of functioning. You may notice big strides in receptive language, motor development, learning and social relatedness. Babies' brains at this age are forming huge numbers of connections that allow for this development. Between six and nine months, your baby's head will grow relatively quickly compared with the rest of her body. Inside the skull, her brain is forming billions of connections with other cells within the brain and elsewhere in her body. Scientists explain that this process of making connections is key to a baby's development in every way: physical, intellectual, emotional, and social. With increasing physical coordination and the ability to sit for periods of time, your baby is no longer quite so dependent on others. She begins to see herself as separate and distinct from others. Her curiosity and increasing mobility make it necessary that she be closely supervised as she explores her world. Scientists are convinced that a baby's brain is not a tiny adult brain ready to grow in size. Although it has certain inherited characteristics, every baby's brain is influenced by the range of experiences he is exposed to. Not all parts of the brain develop at the same time. As a result babies do not grow in a smooth or steady fashion or on exact timetables. Child development experts watch for skills and abilities to appear within an overall time frame, not at a precise time. Moreover, some sections of a baby's brain and the skills associated with them develop later in infancy or during childhood and adolescence. As the baby matures, experts believe that everyday experiences affect what happens inside the baby's head. Parents who see that their babies' lives are filled with love, attention and interesting experiences provide a rich context for learning and development. What's Going On:Relationships and Emotions Your baby's personality is blossoming. She is developing ideas about who she is, who cares about her, and who is a stranger. She expresses positive and negative feelings. She enjoys being with the people who love her. She imitates the facial expressions of others. With this new sense of herself, she communicates when she needs help and she may even shout for attention. She knows the difference between adults and children. She is playful with friendly children and she smiles and reaches out to them. During this phase attachments to parents and loved ones deepen as the baby develops a powerful bond with the most significant persons in her life. This may bring on "separation protest" when mom or dad leave her sight. At the same time, she may become wary and/or fearful of strangers. This behavior indicates a maturation of the brain's memory center. As you know by now, your baby is unique in her emotional "tone" or temperament. You are now able to recognize and generally predict the way in which she will react to new faces or changes in her routine, her bath, bedtime, etc. This allows you to better prepare for and respond to her preferences. What You Can Do: Relationships and Emotions · Be warm, affectionate, and consistent. Hugs, kisses, skin-to-skin and body-to-body contact help her feel secure. · Give her toys that are safe to grab, bite, chew, throw, or drop. Balls and stacking cylinders are good choices. Stuffed animals are comforting. · Play hide and seek, go-and-fetch, and peek-a-boo games. These help her learn that people and objects disappear and return. · Be playful and make faces while you gaze in a mirror together. · Call her name from across the room and laugh, smile and wave to let her know you are near. · Give her the chance to be in the company of other children. · Let your baby entertain you. Clap when she performs and encourage her to repeat her "act." What's Going On:Patterns and Routines Just when you think that everything is finally going according to schedule, your baby's needs change. Suddenly, you must reorganize everyday routines and establish new patterns for him. Now, he can concentrate for longer periods of time and attend to more details. His memory is keener and he expects events to be repeated such as feedings, diaper changes, and naptime. At first he only remembers what happened to him in his immediate past. Soon, he will recall events he observes even if he is not the center of the action. In time you will notice that he imitates people or actions that he sees or remembers. He also begins to connect causes with effects. Seeing a toy might make him smile and wriggle because he associates it with playtime. His diapering schedule is changing because he stays dry for one or two hours. His sleep patterns may change. Many babies have trouble going to sleep during this phase. They are so excited by the new world they are discovering that they may protest being put down for a nap or going to sleep at the usual time at night. They may also wake up more frequently during the night, wanting familiar caregivers to play. Parents can respond to these sleep changes by encouraging their babies to get back to sleep on their own. What You Can Do: Patterns and Routines · Adjust your baby's schedule as he changes. Be flexible but opt for an orderly lifestyle with routines, consistency, and clear patterns at each new stage. · Make mealtimes, playtime, and bath times a regular time for talking, singing, and socializing. Try not to hurry through these activities as they constitute very important experiences for your baby. · Repeat favorite games, words, songs, sounds and actions until he tires of them. Play "so-big" games, "bye-bye," ball, and building games. · Read aloud to him from books, magazines, cereal boxes, signs, and words found throughout your home and community. · Encourage your baby to sleep for longer and longer periods at night. Help him comfort himself with his thumb, a pacifier, familiar music on tape, or a special loved object. What's Going On:Senses Babies rely on all their senses to learn about their world. They rely heavily on vision and hearing, but they also use touch, smell, and taste to gather information. Your baby learns about her world by using all her senses and by actively exploring the people and objects in her environment. Banging, dropping, poking, tasting, and smelling provide plenty of stimulation to her developing brain. As you will notice, some times your baby seems to want to repeat these things over and over again. This is the way she learns. By the seventh month, the part of your baby's brain that controls vision enables her to see as well as a teenager. She is visually alert almost half of her waking hours. She can use her eyes to follow objects at many distances and speeds. The part of her brain that controls hearing is fairly well developed, and she is learning to tell the source of the sounds she hears. She is very interested in human voices and can pay close attention to them when the environment is not too noisy. What You Can Do: Senses · Baby-proof your home now that she has increased dexterity, mobility, and curiosity. · Use crib exercisers that encourage her to push, pull, press, and move working parts. · Give her noise-making toys, including bells, music boxes, and rattles. · Select hard and soft toys of different textures. · Take her for a hearing test if she isn't responding to noises or voices as you expect. · Avoid choking hazards by putting out of reach any toys or objects that are smaller than 1 inch in any dimension. What's Going On:Gross Motor Coordination The progression of motor development during this period is influenced by your baby's developing brain. When babies are born, the areas of the brain that will eventually control and coordinate voluntary movements are not yet well developed. These motor areas of the brain mature in a head-to-toe sequence, meaning that brain areas controlling movement of the head and neck muscles mature before those controlling arm and trunk muscles, which in turn mature more rapidly than areas controlling the legs. This progression begins at birth, and by 6-12 months, has reached the areas controlling trunk and leg muscles, which are critical to most of the gross motor milestones of this period. The cortex of your baby's brain is making connections with distant parts of the body. Gradually, the newborn's uncontrolled jerkiness and early reflex actions give way to motor control. Not all muscle groups, however, will develop at the same time. Your baby will move through stages from sitting to walking. At each point, his brain systematically refines the circuits for particular moves from reaching to running. Your baby learns about the world by moving around in it. You will be able to mark his progress from creeping, twisting, rolling, and crawling, to walking by himself or while an adult holds his hand. Locomotion helps him change from being an observer most of the time to becoming a baby acting on his environment. Towards the end of this phase he might stand briefly with or without help. Cruising along the furniture or moving by making a series of side steps is common, too. Movement is important for an infant. The more a baby is allowed to practice her budding motor skills, the more fine-tuned the motor circuits in the brain become. Practice and exercise help your baby's movement progress from awkward and clumsy to skilled and coordinated. Exercise also helps strengthen the trunk and limb muscles that are crucial to these developing gross motor skills, so plenty of opportunity to practice moving about freely should be provided throughout the day. What You Can Do: Gross Motor Coordination · Before she is mobile, give her lots of practice and freedom to exercise her hands, arms, torso and legs by playing on the floor in safe surroundings. · Baby-proof the house using safety locks on kitchen cabinets, drawers, and closet doors. Move breakable objects or those that can be toppled out of reach. Put safety plugs in electric sockets. Remove small objects that could cause choking. · Supervise stair climbing/crawling. · Move in rhythm and dance together to music. What's Going On:Fine Motor Coordination This phase begins with the accomplishment of simple abilities such as holding a bottle and reaching out clumsily to grab an object to play with, to actually using a pincer grasp to get small items using her thumb and one or two fingers. She holds her rattle for several minutes. She learns to get objects using her palm and all her fingers. Watch new skills evolve as she clasps her hands and bangs objects together. She often holds an item in each of her hands at the same time. With an index finger, she points and pokes, hooks, and pulls objects. What You Can Do: Fine Motor Coordination · Place an appealing toy just outside his reach to encourage him to move toward it. · Urge him to grasp, manipulate, mouth, stack, shake, bang. Easy to operate pop-up toys will help him coordinate his eyes with his hands and help him connect what he does with something that happens. Soft balls, especially ones that wobble when they roll, can attract and hold your baby's interest. · Give bath toys that do more than float so that your baby can be busy with his hands pouring, making a water wheel turn or squirting water. · Allow him to begin having finger food. What's Going On:Language Development Your baby uses the syllables ma, mu, da, di and ba often and with use they become easier to understand. He soon groups up to four or more syllables together. Vowels and consonants are uttered randomly at first and sounds may come out in one breath. During the seventh month, he says "dada" or "mama." He has great fun imitating sounds or sounds in sequence using various sounds and inflections. His first words (mommy, daddy, bye-bye, ball, cookie) appear around eight months, a time when he shows that he understands simple instructions. He associates sounds with objects such as "Choo-choo" for the word "train." He imitates coughing or tongue clicks as well as other sounds in the environment. He will use sounds to emphasize his feelings or responses. Singing tones fascinate him. Some babies begin to carry out simple commands like retrieving a familiar object. At birth, babies can perceive many more speech sounds than adults - too many, in fact. The more you talk to babies, the better they become at focusing only on the sounds of their native language because the experience of hearing speech sounds strengthens some neural pathways at the expense of others. Between six and twelve months babies begin to lose some ability to detect differences in the speech sounds of a foreign language, but at the same time they become better at detecting the sounds of their native language. Before six months, babies can recognize familiar words, but will understand few of them. The link between sound and meaning begins in the second six months, perhaps reflecting early maturation of language areas in the brain. What You Can Do: Language Development Talk and sing to your baby during feeding, bathing, dressing. Describe what you're doing and seeing during play, walks, and car trips. Experts believe that the high-pitched singsong speech known as "parentese" is a useful way to help babies develop the basic building blocks of speech. · Talk with your child face to face. Show interest by imitating the sounds he makes. · Read aloud to your child every day. Your library and bookstore have guides to best books at different ages. · If you wish to expose him to a foreign language, begin early and do so regularly. · Encourage his play with books, especially ones made of thick cardboard or cloth where he can touch, mouth, or pat. He'll enjoy looking at bright colors, familiar objects (like balls or bottles), and other babies. |