Babies Develop Better When They Are Cared For
Some time ago scientists and doctors believed that babies started learning at a later age. But today’s research shows that this is not true. Experts say that babies start learning from their birth, and even before that.
Babies are influenced by the world around them. The first method of communicating with the outside world is smiling and crying. They smile when their mother does something that a baby likes. They cry when they feel unpleasant or want something.
Babies learn even before they are born. They recognize new sounds when they are still in their mother’s womb. Researchers from the Netherlands found out that unborn babies can remember sounds. They played sounds to babies and watched their movements. They realized that the older unborn babies got the longer they were able to remember sounds.
Above all , mothers can influence how a baby develops in the first year after birth. American researchers studied about 1000 babies and mothers for three years. They found out that a mother’s health influenced the intelligence of children a lot. Children of women who suffered from depression did worse in intelligence tests than those children of happy mothers. Such children also showed more problems when communicating with people.
A baby’s weight at birth may also influence its intelligence. Doctors have found out that babies who did not weigh that much at birth are more likely to have physical and mental problems. 500 youngsters who weighed less than 2 kg at birth were tested in the past years. Results show that they did not do as well in movement and mental tests than babies who had a normal weight.
The first three years of a child’s development is most important when it comes to communication and language learning. The brain develops rapidly during this time. When a child sees things and hears sounds of many people it repeats them often. Children that do not develop language skills during this period may have problems when they get older.
At six months babies make sounds in their native language, after a year they are often able to say a few words. By the age of two they can create simple sentences. By the age of four the number of words a child can understand quickly increases and by the age of 5 it can understand some of the rules of its language.
Generally , parents who care for their child more and help develop language skills before they start school do better at school.
Related Topics
Words
- above all = especially
- age = how old something is
- birth = when a baby is born
- care = worry about, to take care of
- create = make, say
- depression = a feeling of unhappiness; you are nervous, sad and cannot lead a normal life
- develop = grow
- development = growth
- generally = usually, normally
- increase = go up
- influence = to change the way something develops or grows
- mental = about the brain
- method = way
- movement = how something moves
- native = your own
- Netherlands = small country in northwestern Europe
- physical = about the body
- rapidly = fast
- realize = find out
- recognize = know something that you have seen or heard before
- research = when you study a subject in order to find out new things about it
- result = outcome; what someone found out
- rule = here: the grammar of a language; how sentences are structured
- scientist = a person who is trained in science and works in a laboratory
- skill = when you can do something well
- suffer = to have pain, feel badly
- unpleasant = not good
- weight = how heavy something is
- womb = part of a woman’s body where her baby grows before it is born