It’s the objective of every parent to give their babies the best start in life. And the biggest part of supporting early baby brain development is by stimulating their brain. It seems like a daunting task, but boosting your baby’s brain doesn’t need to be complicated, and can be as simple as your daily routine.
Here are tips to guide you to strengthen your baby’s memory and attention skills.
1. Consistency and routine
This tip applies when a baby is 0-3months old and is achieved by keeping their surroundings consistent and creating routines for them. Through those repetitive routines, your baby will remember their response and with time they’ll become automatic. Make their playtime predictable by keeping their toys in the same room and playing with them every day at the same time.
2. Play games that involve hands.
Activities such as peekaboo, this little piggy, etc. encourage your baby and capture her all attention. By using hands, it shows your child how to physically interact with our world, asides it being fun for both of you, it also motivates their brain connection internally.
3. Talk to your baby.
Exposure to language stimulates cognitive ability. Engage in conversations with your child by responding to their coos with delighted vocalization or parentese, for example, instead of just saying “hello baby or high baby” you can say, “hiiii pretty one” or “hellooo baaaabbyyy”
Talking to your child also teaches them about the rhythms of conversations, imitates your baby’s sound, and also encourages them to imitate yours.
4. Choose healthy diets
Give your child a physical healthy start even before they are born with some good nourishment. The right diet has a bigger role in brain development. Do not go for foods that hamper the baby’s brain; you can seek clinicians’ advice on this just to make sure you are on the right track. Brain nourished nutrition supports cognitive skills. During infancy and well into the preschool years.
5. Sing songs.
Songs enhance your toddlers’ learning patterns and help to boost brainpower. While singing songs to your baby involves your body and hands, this helps your child to integrate the sounds with small and large actions.
Choose toys that stimulate the baby’s brain.
Developmentally appropriate toys allow babies to explore and interact. Get toys that help your child to build the “if-then” reasoning. This simply means that if he can stack one block over the other, he can get to understand the connection and reasoning between them and when he cannot be able to stack them, he may start to. Connect the dots as to why the blocks are falling.
6. Stroking.
Parents and caregivers should stroke their baby’s tummy and hair more often for the growth of the baby’s brain. Study has it that babies who are not touched regularly have a brain that is smaller than normal for their age. Stroking also builds your baby’s love of her body.
7. Body Massage.
Frequently offers your baby a body massage. This helps to lower the infant’s stress levels and enhance her feeling of well-being and emotional security. Research shows that premature babies who are massaged at least three times daily are ready to leave the hospital days earlier than babies who do not receive massages.
Basically, boosting your child’s brainpower requires your rich input as a parent or caregiver. How you model them while still young will be very impactful at their later stage in life.
