6 Things Your Baby Can Do But You Never Knew
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Your baby does not have to wear a graduation cap or spectacles to match up the posters depicting a genius baby. Your baby’s innocent face disguises a great mind that you are unaware of. Don’t be surprised at your little one’s mental abilities. Researchers have found that babies not only lap up information around them but also can astonish you with some amazing things you would never have imagined. Here are six of the astonishing feats that an adult may not realize a baby can do:
1. Babies are receptive to emotions
It’s true that they can identify a happy or a sad expression as was testified by the University of California at Berkeley study. A bunch of 14-month-old infants was shown two closed boxes. The kids watched an adult who peered into the boxes displaying pleasure for one, disgust for the other. When the babies were offered to choose between the boxes, most chose the ‘happy’ box.
Babies are receptive to emotions by the time they are a few months old. By the time they turn one, they know what a person might feel like. Also, babies could be concerned about you. In a study, it was found that 18-month-olds would try to retrieve a clothespin, and later throw it as if they didn’t want it. But when an adult would drop it, the baby would show empathy in crawling to retrieve it for him.
It’s important that you watch how you say things, as opposed to what you say. Your baby is constantly watching you, including your behavior such as being gentle in your words and acts of kindness towards friends and neighbors. Moreover, your child can tell when you are faking an emotion! Your baby would begin to show pleasure or displeasure by the sixth month.
2. Babies can talk with hands
Infants’ first mode of communication is sign language. They try to make signs even before they learn to speak. He would point at birds flying in the sky or a car that just vroomed past. By the ninth month, you could discern the words and phrase in his way. By the first birthday, your baby might know what to do with various objects as he watches adults use them.
Trying to speak in signs lays a framework for your baby’s mind and helps him pick up any language with ease in life. Babies who use sign language before they begin to speak have been found to score higher on intelligence tests, show greater self-confidence and cultivate a larger vocabulary in comparison to non-signing peers. You could tap into your child’s communication skills by introducing sign language as soon as he’s born. You could use signs for the five basic instincts viz., ‘eating’, ‘drinking’, ‘sleeping’, ‘wet’ and ‘more’. Gradually you could introduce and help expand his vocabulary by saying out aloud the corresponding words.
3. Your baby could be a mathematician already
Interesting! Apparently babies have the basic sense of subtraction. It comes from a study at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev where infants aged between six and nine months were the audience to a puppet show with two characters. One puppet was removed, and the curtain was closed. On re-opening, the same puppet remained. The experiment was repeated with a change in the ending – this time, the second puppet also appeared when the curtain reopened. The babies couldn’t help staring at the puppets indicating that they did their little math that two minus one doesn’t equal two.
In another study at the University of British Columbia, eight-month-olds were shown two boxes – one with lots of red balls and a few white balls; the other box had mostly white but a few red ones. When five balls (one red and four whites) were pulled out from each box and shown to the kids and were allowed to peer into the boxes, it turned out that they stared longer at the box containing mostly red balls. They figured out that mostly the white balls coming out from that box were a statistical mismatch. That’s quite some reasoning! It appears that your baby has the ability for mind games already. Let them explore their aptitude for reasoning through building blocks, discovery games and other toys that encourage creativity. As a matter of fact, by the 18th month, your baby is already receptive to contrasting preferences – he would know that you prefer eating celery although he doesn’t. It also turns out that your baby can build theories around your preferences already! He would be convinced you prefer bringing flowers from the garden instead of grass!
4. Your baby can speak a second language
There is an inherent ability to learn a second language during infancy. Studies confirm that being multilingual improves your baby’s memory, concentration, and flexible thinking. Earlier it used to be believed that one should wait until your child is three to introduce a second language. But a study conducted in 2009 at Italy’s International School for Advanced Studies showed that bilingual babies possess vocabularies from each language. They would know at least 50 words at 18 months in comparison to babies who are learning only one language. It might be a good idea to speak in the second language 30 percent of the times, so your baby could pick up the language.
5. Recognizing faces
Your baby could be a face-recognition expert by the time it is six months old! The University of Sheffield showed that six-month-olds are way more gifted than adults at recognizing individual faces among a group. Your baby recognizes your face by the first week after birth. It also turns out that the ability to pinpoint facial features starts to wane around nine months. However, some scholars don’t agree that it could wane. Instead, they believe that the child could learn to recognize faces from diverse ethnic groups with continued exposure and that it could pass into adulthood as well. It might be ideal to expose your child to images of various ethnicities and cultures through magazines, so he grows up with the sense of acceptance into adulthood as well.
6. Responding to music
A study published in Science suggests that three-month-olds could distinguish between one type of rhythm and another. It also turns out that babies respond to music by moving their arms and limbs as if they are trying to dance. Also, the fact that mothers rock infants to rhythmic beat while singing a lullaby, helps babies to learn about rhythm. Encourage your child’s interest in music through various channels and genres. Sing along as you look into his eyes. In fact, babies recognize your voice between the first and third weeks!
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