3 Ways Your Baby Benefits When Kissed. #1 Will Surprise You
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Kissing her baby is the most natural thing to do for a mother. No one asks or teaches a mother to kiss her baby. In fact, it is quite an expected act of love on a mother’s part. Mothers kiss their babies because they love them. Kissing bonds the mother and the child emotionally. But did you know the long-term benefits that a mother can offer by kissing her baby? You will be surprised:
1. Kissing Your Baby Could help It Build Immunity
When you kiss your newborn, you take in the pathogens that might be thriving on your baby’s skin. The pathogens reach your secondary lymphoid organs such as tonsils where memory B cells which are specific for those pathogens are restimulated. A breastfeeding mother would use those B cells to produce antibodies against those pathogens which are then passed on to the baby to fight the pathogens on its body. Indeed, kissing is quite a sweet way to boost your baby’s immune system.
2. Kissing Your Baby Could Improve Its IQ Levels
One should never ignore one’s baby when it’s crying or seeking attention. While some adults might advise to let the baby keep crying because they think it will help the baby grow emotionally strong or independent, they don’t know what harm they could bring upon the baby.
Research by Harlow in 1950s and more recently by Kim Bard of the University of Portsmouth in England have proven it otherwise. They experimented with chimps by depriving them of attachment, and it turned out that they were intellectually inferior to those chimps that received motherly love.
In yet another study by the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, the brain images revealed that a mother’s love influences the baby’s brain morphologically. The learning and memory center of the brain that is also associated with stress responses is called Hippocampus. The hippocampus in children who were nurtured well was found to be 10% larger than those children who were not nurtured.
Your baby’s brain is not hard-wired and is very flexible. It can be moulded by inputs that also could have affiliation to survive in a specific culture that it is growing in.
In her book Why Love Matters, Sue Gerhardt explains how loving one’s baby benefits its growth. She believes that:
- Loving your baby and showing it through touches or by responding to baby’s signals help its brain mature without letting it get stressed out.
- Your little human feels secured, and it enables the brain to develop in various aspects.
- Your baby develops a robust stress response.
- You help your baby to hold more information in the prefrontal cortex, learn restraint over impulses, and help to adjust in social relationships.
- Kissing helps your little one get exposed to positive experiences of love.
- Loving and kissing can help it build more neuronal connections in the brain thereby making your baby smart.
3. Your Baby Learns To Be Empathetic
Expressing love to your baby through kissing, touching or cuddling can help build its unique personality. It not only develops physical health, but also the emotional health. Most babies that are nurtured grow out to be sensitive to the needs of others, they interact well with other children, build successful relationships and are more accomplished academically when compared to kids whose mothers did not give them the same kind of care. The benefits extend to adulthood, and when it’s time for them to raise their kids, they make them empathetic and instil the ability to understand others too.
So while kissing your baby has many benefits, you need to remember that you are inadvertently doing something good for your baby that is going to stay for a lifetime. So go ahead, kiss your baby as often as possible.
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