A baby’s brain needs ‘exercise,” just like adult brains need physical activity in order to grow and mature properly. Your infant can respond positively or negatively to stimulation. In contrast to their potentially harmful effects, positive stimuli strengthen the brain and improve cognitive abilities.
Exposure to hostile environments, unpleasant situations, or neglect all qualify as negative stimuli. First, ensure your little one is in a safe and caring environment.
From birth to age 3, a child’s brain undergoes rapid development. The maturation of a child’s brain has far-reaching consequences. Cognitive, communication, and language skills, as well as motor (physical), emotional, and social skills, are the 4 pillars of a well-rounded individual.
Table of Contents
At this age, infants begin responding to their environment, learning, thinking, and figuring out solutions to difficulties. The functions of a baby’s gray matter can be improved by exposing them to activities such as exploring their environment, listening to music, and playing sports.
In addition, the cells in the brain can only mature to their full potential if they receive proper nutrients. Consuming foods high in healthy fats, minerals, vitamins, and proteins helps maintain healthy brain cells and supports the creation of new neurons.
Ways to Boost Your Baby’s Brain Power
1. Prioritize sleep
Prioritizing sleep in your home and homeschooling can significantly impact your child’s cognitive performance. Your children’s minds are actively processing information while they sleep.
Their minds are working hard to understand the vast amounts of data they were exposed to throughout the day. Children’s brains have more time to process new information. This is because they sleep longer and deeper than adults do.
Getting the recommended amount of sleep each night has numerous positive effects on children as indicated below.
- Self-control improves
- Positively affects the overall mood of a baby
- Improved concentration
- Enhancement of memory
- Enhancement of cognitive abilities
- Strengthening of motor skills
2. Maintain your health
The brain of your unborn child is actively developing. Be careful to get enough of the vitamins and minerals that aid in infant brain development.
Zinc-rich foods are beneficial to a growing child’s brain. Avoid anything that could harm your unborn child, such as cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs. Fruits and vegetables are a necessity to proper development of your child’s brain.
3. Pick toys that are age-relevant and educational
Babies can learn and develop through play with these toys. Your child can begin to develop “if-then” and cause-and-effect reasoning with toys like a jack-in-the-box that winds up or blocks that can be stacked.
A baby can’t stack a large block on a smaller block without the larger block toppling over. When he places a smaller block on top of a larger one, he “wires in” that piece of data.
4. Be quick to respond to your baby’s cries
You may help the baby develop healthy neural pathways in the part of the brain associated with emotion by reassuring, nurturing, soothing, and cuddling your baby. The brain receives the message of emotional safety through calm holding, snuggling, and daily personal involvement with your infant.
5. Love
Your newborn has a real and pressing need for your love and attention in those first few weeks and months. Your infant has a biological need for your affection, not to manipulate or control you. A newborn cannot be “spoiled” if the screams are always met with comfort.
The baby will learn to trust you and have a healthy sense of self-worth if you respond to her screams consistently. They can relax and focus on learning about love and building connections. This is because they know their basic needs will be satisfied.
A newborn who is ignored in their first few months of life is more likely to develop introverted tendencies as an adult.
Instead of ignoring your baby’s screams, you should always respond to them by comforting them with your voice and touch.
6. Engage in hand-to-hand activities
Games like puppets, peek-a-boo, patty-cake and this little piggy will enthrall and capture the attention of your baby. Hands-on activities are more enjoyable for both you and your child. In addition, they also demonstrate to young children how we physically interact with the world.
7. Music
Music and singing to your unborn child have been demonstrated to aid in cognitive growth. Music with a steady beat is the most preferable type. Neurons eventually used for mathematical reasoning are stimulated by listening to Mozart’s music.
Making up ridiculous songs and melodies is a terrific way to entertain your kid. Create a soothing environment for feedings with recorded music, a musical box, and an exciting one for playing.
8. Communicate with your infant through sign language
Use sign language to reinforce what you’re saying to your infant while you’re talking. Both the parent’s and child’s cognitive and linguistic skills benefit from using hand and finger gestures. A baby’s intelligence and linguistic skills can benefit from learning sign language.
9. Encourage mirror play
You little one will be fascinated by the mirror. Put a mirror in their room and tell them to take some time to reflect on their appearance.
Sticking a sticker on someone’s face and watching for a response is another way to get their attention.
10. Encourage a love of reading at a young age
Pick books with plenty of bright images, and join in on your child’s excitement by pointing and making sounds (like animal noises) to correspond with the illustrations. Change the tenor of your voice, shorten or lengthen the stories, and spark conversation about books with toddlers. Reading not only develops the child brain but also build parent-child relationship.
11. Develop your child’s emotional intelligence while changing diapers
Touch your baby’s hair and stomach. Newborns who are not held frequently have reduced brain volumes compared to similarly aged newborns who are held frequently.
When changing your baby’s diaper, you’re about 12 to 18 inches from the baby’s eyes, the perfect distance for getting the baby’s attention.
12. Chat
Don’t murmur incoherently; use good grammar and a soothing tone when conversing with your infant. Since the baby was a 5-month-old fetus, the baby has been exposed to the mother’s voice, which the baby loves.
Make use of your strongest language and a varied vocabulary. Babies may seem too little to learn much, but don’t discount their potential. Exaggerating your facial emotions is another fun way to interact with your kid.
13. Massage the body
Massages can help your infant feel more secure and relaxed, lowering their stress levels. Babies benefit from constant, loving touch as they develop. Premature infants who receive massages thrice times a day are able to leave the hospital several days sooner than their counterparts who do not.
Keep yourself healthy during pregnancy, and know that some medicines might cause permanent damage to an unborn child’s brain. Pregnant women who take drugs often have children who develop learning disabilities and violent tendencies.
Research has also shown that mothers who smoke during pregnancy have children who perform worse in reading by the end of the fourth grade.
Conclusion
By surrounding your baby with language from an early age, you increase the likelihood that they will develop strong neural connections and pathways in their brain. As a result, planning, reasoning, and language skills will flourish.
All parents, without exception, want the best for their kids. We hope this is useful for parents looking to incorporate these kinds of things into their routines with their children.