21 Unbelievable Facts About Your Baby’s Brain
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We are always fascinated with the cuteness of babies, the way they blabber and just how goofy they can make you. But what’s going inside their gray matter is something we are unaware of. A read here will be worth understanding the little noddle there:
- Did you know that the brain of a newborn is just one-fourths the size of an adult’s?
- The first three months of a baby’s life is synonymous to their ‘fourth trimester’ because that is just how needy these little ones are.
- A baby’s first social smile does not happen until he is 10 to 14 weeks old.
- A baby’s first phase of attachment begins when it is around five months.
- Babies apparently have an annoying cry to prevent parents from getting too emotionally attached to them in case the baby has a risk of dying. It is another thing that babies cry a lot to get the attention of their parents.
- Your baby’s prefrontal cortex region of the brain has not much control. It is that part of the brain, which is involved in learning the responses from caregivers, about hunger, fatigue or discomfort. So, if you thought you were going to bring in some discipline to your newborn, it would be in vain.
- All babies have a period of peak crying around 46 weeks of the gestational period no matter how much the parents are responsive to it. A baby that is born prematurely at 34 weeks will cry at its peek at around six weeks.
- Babies like to imitate the facial expressions of its caretakers. As they do so, it evokes emotions in them.
- The brain of a newborn human is more similar to that of Neanderthals and apes than to a fully-grown human.
- The growth of the brain doubles to 60% of its adult size by the time a baby reaches its first birthday. The brain develops to its full size by the time the child reaches kindergarten.
- Scientists also believe that the changes that occur in the infant’s brain reflect the changes that were brought about through millennia of evolution.
- The brains of babies are more wired when compared to those of adults. They also seem to have less inhibitory neurotransmitters. Therefore, their perception is more diffuse than that of adults.
- Babies have a very short attention span. They focus on things only momentarily. If they are interested in a thing, they babble, signalling the adults that the baby is ready to learn.
- Usually, parents respond to 50 to 60 percent of baby’s blabber. But it has been found that by responding to the baby 80 percent of the time, you might be helping him speed up its acquisition of a language. But learning declines after this threshold level.
- Babies apparently cry with intonations of their mother tongue, as suggested by recent research. It also suggests that social responses are predominant in a child’s ability to acquire a language.
- Babies learn more from things that respond to them than from things that don’t. Therefore, they are more likely to learn a thing from a living person who can teach than a robot or an infant DVD.
- Babies don’t like to be over-stimulated by too much interaction. They need to calm down as well. You could help them by bringing in the balance by dimming lights, rocking to swaddling the baby.
- If a baby is not only calmed down but is also brought to sleep, it would enhance its skill development at least for a year or until it is a bit older.
- Babies don’t pay much attention to background noises like adults do. They have a hard hearing. This perhaps explains why babies can keep wailing, and while it bothers us, it won’t bother them much. It also indicates that exposing babies to constant music or television in the background will make it hard for them to be receptive to important signals or real human voices or even pick up a language.
- Your baby needs to have at least three adult caretakers in a day. It is primary because your baby needs to know someone besides you parents so as to learn different facial expressions, and respond and develop the ability to socialize. It could be anyone, including a grandparent, an aunt or even a nanny. It helps babies to develop a perspective of others.
- By the time a baby is seven months old, it will use the mental processes of an adult to interpret other’s emotions.
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