Category: Sensory-Motor

Baby Development 1st year, Sensory-Motor

Vision: The Art of Seeing

babyshastra

VISION: THE ART OF SEEING

 

Vision is constantly relied on to get information from the environment. Learning about our surroundings like colors, shapes, objects, people and their respective significance daily life is primarily based on vision in the first 2 years of life. It is also used as an ingredient for complex interactions like eye-hand coordination, eye-foot coordination, depth and distance perception and anticipatory protective responses, especially during sports.

During the first year, visual recognition of objects helps to build up visual-perceptual skills. These skills are essential in academics and daily skills like driving or organizing your home.

These are:

  1. Form consistency: Ability to recognize the same shape in any context. This helps with learning colors, shapes, numbers and alphabets.
  2. Discrimination: Ability to identify differences in a group of objects. This skill is useful for knowing the difference between zero and ‘o’ or finding matching socks in the drawer.
  3. Figure-ground perception: Ability to differentiate between foreground and background. Extremely important for stairs and threshold that are not well demarcated.
  4. Visual memory: Ability to remember what you have seen. This is used in our daily life to recognize directions based on neighborhood landmarks, people we have met a while ago or even where you’ve last put your keys!
  5. Visual sequencing: Ability to put a sequence based on visual cues. This is how reading sight words and spelling are learned.
  6. Visual closure: Ability to complete the rest of the picture based of a partial visual cue. Helps in speed reading as you fill in words by looking at some important ones only.
  7. Visual-Spatial relation: Ability to understand position of the object in relation to the environment. Useful in following directions like “bring the socks from the second drawer on the left” or “your shoes are under the red chair.”

 

Given the tremendous reliance on vision, let’s look at some strategies to help vision along.

0-3 months:    

 

  • Holding the baby close to rock, sing and cuddle are prefect times for the baby eyes to learn how to focus on your face and recognize facial features
  • Since contrasting colors grab more attention in early months, mobile toys with black and white or red colors are useful.
  • Allowing hand to mouth exploration is also part of the large eye-hand coordination process as this exploration leads to hand awareness and builds coordination in the arms.

3-6 months:

  • This is the peak time for eye-hand coordination development. Providing hanging toys like crib mobiles or on play mats is a good option to strengthen this skill.
  • Babies are also tracking and following people and objects in their vicinity. Tracking skills are building blocks for object permanence.
  • Mirrors can be used gradually around this time though cognitively recognizing a reflection comes a little later.

 

6-9 months:

  • Allowing play with objects of daily use and associating them with pictures in books is a good way to start building up visual memory.
  • Action songs so baby can imitate your hand/body movements.
  • Creeping and crawling to stimulate depth perception

 

 

9-12 months:

  • Games like pee-a-boo, rolling ball and finding hidden toys are great ways for visual scanning of the environment.
  • Naming and pointing objects
  • Doing obstacle courses, crawling up and down stairs are great ways to develop visuo-perceptual skills.

 

12- 18 months:

  • Ball games- rolling, catch, throw, kick.
  • Shape sorters, building blocks, simple one piece puzzles.
  • Sequencing stories from books or daily life.

 

18-24 months:

  • Games that incorporate eye-hand, eye-foot coordination like soccer, cricket.
  • Involving child in their daily routines like finding their own pair of socks or getting their spoons out of the drawer will improve their visual- perceptual skills.
  • With sufficient independence in fine motor skills, some simple crafts and coloring great ways to improve visual-perception.

 

 

 

Our eyes are the most used sensory organ and we rely on our vision not just for interaction with the environment but also at times to trust our instincts. We are very quick to believe in something visible! But seeing is just the starting point of believing, right?

“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.” – Helen Keller.

 

Puja

19/1/2015

 

Baby Development 1st year, Play, Sensory-Motor

Tummy Time: 3,2,1 Blast-Off!

babyshastra

TUMMY TIME: 3,2,1 BLAST-OFF!

Tummy time has become a hot word over the last few decades as a reaction to the “Back to Sleep” campaign started for SIDS prevention. In developmental terms though, tummy time is like the number “zero”- of highest significance but somehow not given its due. In this post, we are going to look at how tummy time is the foundation for a holistic development.

What is tummy time?

Tummy time means having the baby lying on their belly to play. On our support group a lot of new parents confuse the process with the end result. Tummy time is a position in which the process of strengthening is occurring and the end result of tummy time is the ability of the child to push up on their arms while holding the head freely.

By doing tummy time from early days, we are expecting this against gravity strengthening to trigger sensory processing, visual development, balance responses and upper back (shoulder) strengthening for reaching at 3-4 months. It also helps in maintaining head shape and preventing torticollis (twisted neck)

When should you start tummy time and for how long? 

It is recommended that babies sleep on their backs but they can be put on their tummy for play with adult supervision. Doing this consistently, a few minutes a day, a few times a day will help the baby develop muscles in their neck, back and trunk.

Tummy time can be started as soon as the stump of the umbilical cord falls off. The typical rule of thumb is at least 5 minutes per month of life. So a one month old can be on their tummies for at least 5 minutes and a two month old would need at least 10 minutes. If you have started tummy time consistently from the first week or so of life, there are high chances of the infant not resisting tummy time and enjoying the position for longer duration.

Click Here for a video of a mother talking about her experience with tummy time for her two sons.

How should tummy time be done?

Ideally, tummy time is done on the floor on a firm mat. The hard surface gives the right feedback and allows baby to push against gravity with full force.

Clink Here for a video showing five easy ways of doing tummy time.

Click here for a handout you can print and put up to remind all family members to do tummy time with the baby whenever awake.

The first picture is my son at 4 weeks old, tummy time during massage before bath. We started tummy time on day 13, once the umbilical cord fell off. We barely managed a minute or two in the first month because of the long sleep cycles. After about 2 months, the duration was increased as per his needs. (Second picture at 2.5 months)

Why is tummy time so important? 

Sensory: When the body is in prone, the body weight on shoulders, chest and arms is the first step to body awareness and mapping. The position also stimulates the calming center of the brain.  Most of you must have experienced as mothers that holding the baby close with arms and legs curled up and rocking calms the babies down faster. Even as adults, when we get really upset, we tend to cross our arms or curl up in bed. On the back, gravity doesn’t allow for that fetal position.

Motor: Most of the movements babies develop in the first year are initiated from prone position. Also, strengthening of muscles in infants and toddlers occurs when there are repeated movements against gravity. For strong core and neck muscles (which provide support for posture and fine movements later on) the against-gravity position is on their tummy.  A strong core is essential for any motor skill and coordination.

Vision: Tummy time helps with strengthening eye tracking muscles. It also helps with initiation of depth perception which is needed later for crawling, reaching, walking, stairs climbing, playground activities and academics.

Fingers: The ONLY time an infant gets to develop a basic strength in their palm + finger muscles is when they are trying to push themselves off the floor. All the other fine motor development like playing with toys in sitting, feeding with spoon, writing, craft skills are only developed well if there is basic strength in your fingers. Latest research is showing increased number of students with hand-writing problems.

Overall brain development: Tummy time leading to prone activities and movements are instrumental in developing coordination between the 2 halves of the brain. This connection is super essential for life skills. In social context when the skill of understanding body language when talking to someone or understanding sarcasm and other subtle language nuances stems from integration of both sides of your brain. Higher level functions like analysis of data, planning out chess strategies or musical aptitude are also part of bilateral integration. Not to forget all sporting activities and some daily activities when we multi-task!

Head shape and neck muscles: Getting pressure off the back of the head allows for good head shape to form. Also allows both side neck muscles to elongate proportionally preventing head shape defects. (Common terms are torticollis or plagiocephaly)

Muscle tone: Being on the back increases extensor tone leading to babies possibly arching their backs off the floor.

Other: Prone helps to relieve gas from the stomach.

Given the benefits of tummy time, I would definitely encourage parents to try as much as they can. Starting earlier does in fact help the baby like and enjoy the position but having parents engaged while doing it is a great bonding time for you as well.

 

Puja

22/1/2015

The website for more resources and handouts is www.pathways.org

Baby Development 1st year, Parenting, Sensory-Motor

Thumbsucking

babyshastra

Thumbsucking

All of us, at one time or the other have put our thumbs and rest of the fingers in our mouths. Most often this is restricted to eating as adults. However, babies and some toddlers do it more often during the day. Let’s take a quick look at the process of thumb sucking through a development perspective.

Why do we suck thumbs?

Sucking is the only independent function a baby is born with. A newborn is able to stop sucking at the breast when full or when the comfort need is met. This is the first self-initiated, self-directed and self-soothing behavior pattern that is reinforced from birth. Bringing hands to mouth is something babies are doing since the 5-6th month of pregnancy. The movement pathways of bringing the hand to mouth is so well travelled by the first few months of life that many babies do it without thought. (Read why this is essential in the first year of life here)

As kids grow older and face newer situations causing emotional turmoil, they revert back to this soothing behavior experienced from day one: bringing hands to mouth. The easiest method of this is thumb sucking. Many children also may also bite nails as a sign of nervous-ness.

When to worry?

Most children outgrow this habit in the first couple of years simply because they find other ways of self soothing and gaining reassurance in times of anxiety like talking to the caregiver or physically moving away from situations. Some kids who continue to exhibit these behaviors realize these are not socially acceptable and will get over by 3-4 years. However, a small percent of children do continue to thumb suck for a prolonged duration. Unfortunately parents often use this percent as a reference point and will panic about thumb sucking during infancy. Please note that thumb sucking is acceptable till 2 years.

If your child is able to function in the day without thumb sucking, then its not a problem.

How to resolve it?

  1. For toddlers, offer gentle redirection to other activities that require use of hands.
  2. For older kids, offer social stories about kids who suck their thumbs into toddlerhood. Here is a link to one such book.

http://www.daviddecidesaboutthumbsucking.com/

What not to do?

Constant bring attention to your child’s thumb sucking.

Bribing or punishing your child to stop.

 

Puja

27/6/17