As we touched on above your baby’s development will begin at the head and work its way down. You can expect your baby to first develop control over the neck muscles before progressing to the torso, and then the leg muscles. You might notice now that your baby will be able to turn over and sit up independently and perhaps even crawl a about a little. You can now sit her on your knee and bounce her up and down gently – it’s a good way to promote her balance skills. At the age of eight months old you will find that she can probably now stand up using her own resources (although she may need to use chairs/upright objects to help her do this).

When it comes to actually walking, babies can usually expect to start this between the ages of nine to fifteen months of age. Most will start at about thirteen months. If you find that your baby is unable to walk but can do other things such as crawling, standing, or sitting upright, then do not worry as this is really quite normal. In fact some babies even miss the crawling stage completely and go on to walking (this may be very late – as much as seventeen months for example).

Picture by tkwright.com

Cognitive development for your baby means the learning process of memory, language, thinking and reasoning. Your baby is learning to recognize the sound of your voice. She is also learning to focus her vision from the periphery or the corner of her eyes to the center. Language development is more than uttering sounds (“babble”), or mama/dada.

Listening, understanding, and knowing the names of people and things are all components of language development. During this stage, your baby is also developing bonds of love and trust with you. The way you cuddle, hold, and play with your baby will set the basis for how he will interact with you and others.

For more information on developmental milestones and warning signs of possible developmental delays, visit Learn the Signs. Act Early.

Positive Parenting

* Talk to your baby. It is soothing to hear your voice.
* When your baby makes sounds, answer him by repeating and adding words. This will help him learn to use language.
* Read to your baby. This helps her develop and understand language and sounds.
* Sing to your baby.
* Play music. This helps your baby develop a love for music and math.
* Praise your baby and give him lots of loving attention.
* Spend time cuddling and holding your baby. This helps her feel cared for and secure.
* The best time to play with your baby is when he’s alert and relaxed. Watch your baby closely for signs of being tired or fussy so that you can take a break.
* Parenting can be hard work! Take care of yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally. It is easier to enjoy your new baby and be a positive, loving parent when you are feeling good yourself.

Child Safety First
Now that your newborn is at home, it is time to make sure that your home is a safe place. Look around your home for household items that might present a possible danger to your baby. As a parent, it is your responsibility to ensure that you create a safe environment for your baby. It is also important that you take the necessary steps to make sure that you are mentally and emotionally ready for your new baby. Here are a few tips to keep your baby safe during her first year of life.

* It is important that you never shake your newborn baby. Newborn babies have very weak neck muscles that are not yet able to support their heads. If you shake your baby you can damage his brain and delay normal development.
* To prevent SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome), it is recommended that you always put your baby to sleep on her back. For more information on SIDS, visit National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
* Place your baby in a car safety seat every time he rides in the car. The safest place for his safety seat is in the back seat of the car. Children who are less than one year OR are less than 20 pounds should be placed in a rear-facing care seat.
* To prevent your baby from choking, cut her food into small bites. Don’t allow your baby to play with anything that may cover her face or is easy for her to swallow.
* Never carry hot liquids or food near your baby or while holding him.
* Immunizations (shots) are important to protect your child’s health and safety. Because children are susceptible to many potentially serious diseases, it is important that your child receive the proper immunizations. Please consult your local health care provider to ensure that your child is up-to-date on her childhood immunizations. You may visit the CDC immunization website, to obtain a copy of the recommended immunization schedule for U.S. children Read More About Infants >

How Does My Baby Communicate?

Most babies say their first words toward the beginning of this period, though some start even sooner and others don’t start talking until they are nearly 2 years old. If your baby is preoccupied with learning to walk, he or she may push talking to the back burner; this is not unusual and nothing to be alarmed about.

Your baby may have learned fragments of dozens of words that probably won’t be recognizable yet. When he or she gets around to talking, though, your baby will probably progress quickly. He or she will soon be able to point at something familiar and say its name, and recognize names of familiar people, objects, and body parts. By 2 years, he or she may use phrases and even two- to four-word sentences, although your doctor will only expect to hear that your child is putting two words together.

No matter when your child says his or her first words, it’s a sure bet he or she will be understanding much of what you say well before that. Your child should be able to respond to commands (”Roll the ball to Mommy”) and should be fully aware of the names of familiar objects and family members.

You will undoubtedly find yourself struggling with your toddler to do as you say, only to have him or her ignore you or scream in protest. Your child is merely testing your limits and his or her degree of control. By 18 months, he or she will probably have mastered saying “no” with authority, and by age 2 he or she may throw a tantrum when he or she is unwilling to do something you ask. Your child will also show signs of possessiveness, and you’ll frequently hear “mine” or see tears if something is taken away or you show attention toward someone else.

What Should I Do?

Your baby is listening to everything you say, and he or she is storing it away at an incredible rate. Instead of using “baby” words, teach your child the correct names for people, places, and things. Speak slowly and clearly, and keep it simple.

Your baby may still be communicating with gestures such as pointing to something he or she wants. Gestures are OK, but you should use a running commentary such as, “Do you want a drink?” (when he or she points to the refrigerator), then wait for a response. Then say, “What do you want? Apple juice? OK, let’s get some apple juice.” Such behavior encourages your baby to respond and participate in conversations. But don’t frustrate your baby by withholding food or drink waiting for a response.

Between 15 and 18 months, your baby will probably begin to enjoy language games that ask him or her to identify things, such as: “Where’s your ear?” and “Where is Mommy?” Your child’s vocabulary will grow quickly, but his pronunciation isn’t likely to keep pace. Resist the temptation to correct your baby’s pronunciation; most babies mispronounce their words. Instead, emphasize the correct pronunciation in your response.

Should I Be Concerned?

Some babies don’t talk until their second birthday and choose instead to get by with the use of gestures and sounds. Vocabulary varies widely at this age, too; some babies say dozens of words, others only a few.

Most babies this age have these communication milestones in common:

* Speak about 15 words by 18 months
* Put two words together to form a sentence by age 2
* Follow simple directions by age 2

Hearing problems may become more apparent during this stage because of the emergence of speech. Don’t hesitate to report any concerns you have to your doctor immediately, especially if you feel your child is not babbling or responding to your speech patterns. Sometimes chronic ear infections can leave children with excessive fluid buildup that can interfere with normal hearing. Special tests can check for hearing loss.

Some parents worry that a toddler who is not speaking may have autism. Children with autism and related conditions may have delayed speech or other problems with communication, but poor social interactions, and limited or restricted interests or patterns of behavior are also hallmarks of this disorder. If you have any questions or concerns about your child’ development, talk with your child’s doctor.>>Communication and Your 1- to 2-year-old

How Language is Acquired

Parents should start talking to their little baby from the day he is born. Some mothers are by nature quiet and reserved. Others have the unfortunate idea that it is foolish to talk to their babies, knowing that they do not understand. The mother, who does not talk continually while feeding, bathing and dressing her baby, is laying the foundation for a late talker.

The baby learns language in one way only, and that is by hearing language as the parents talk and talk to it. The more a parent can talk to a child, often repeating the same words, the same phrases, the same structures over and over, the sooner the child will learn language.

An important thing to note here is that by the time a baby is about nine months old he should be able to understand simple words and commands.

He may perhaps also be able to say a few simple words already. Invariably, however, one finds that the baby understands much more than he is able to say. In fact, this remains so of any person throughout his life. One is always able to understand more of any language, even one’s mother tongue, than one is able to use in active speech. This is even more so of any second or third languages that a person is able to speak.

This shows that we have two more or less separate masses of language knowledge, our PASSIVE knowledge (also called receptive language) on one hand, and our ACTIVE (expressive language) on the other. When we listen or read, we make use of our passive vocabulary, and when we speak or write, of our active vocabulary.

An important thing to note here is that the child’s passive vocabulary came into being through constant and continual repetition of words, phrases or structures. Once a word, phrase or structure has been repeated often enough, it also becomes part of the baby’s active vocabulary. This shows that the active vocabulary can only be improved VIA the passive. Research has shown that a child who is just beginning to talk must hear a word about 500 times before it will become part of his active vocabulary. Long before that it will already form part of his passive vocabulary. This means that parents should create as many opportunities as possible in which their baby can hear them talk.

Motor skills are a key development stage for babies as it enables them to  become more independent. As soon as a baby is born he will begin the process  of developing the motor skills that are vital for her to manipulate and interact  with his environment. The ways in which different babies develop their motor skills can have a big effect on their outlook towards the environment that they  are a part of. In fact the development of your baby’s motor skills and her  experiences and ability to take on new skills are very closely linked. As her  motor skills grow, so will your baby’s ability to interact in a deeper way with  her environment.

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The scientists found that for every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs and videos, infants understood an average of six to eight fewer words than infants who did not watch them. Baby DVDs and videos had no positive or negative effect on the vocabularies on toddlers 17 to 24 months of age. The study was published today in the Journal of Pediatrics.
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Made-for-baby videos may harm language development: study
“Despite marketing claims, parents who want to give their infants a boost in learning language probably should limit the amount of time they expose their children to DVDs and videos such as Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby,” said a statement about the study.

Many parents think they’re helping their baby’s language by letting them watch a Baby Einstein DVD, but the opposite might be the case, according to a study out Tuesday.

The study found that with every hour per day spent viewing baby DVDs and videos, infants between the ages of eight and 16 months learned about 10 per cent fewer new vocabulary words compared to babies who never watched the targeted programming.

As well, the study showed that babies in the same age range who watched other types of programming such as children’s educational shows, children’s non-educational shows, kids movies or adult television learned more words, versus babies watching infant-geared shows.

For toddlers aged 17 to 24 months, the article found that baby DVDs and videos had neither a positive nor a negative effect.

The paper was published online Wednesday in the Journal of Pediatrics. It was done by researchers at the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Hospital Research Institute who quizzed 1,008 Minnesota and Washington parents about their babies’ viewing habits. They also completed a standard evaluation for measuring infant language development.

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ScienceDaily (Feb. 20, 2006) — Cognitive neuroscientists have shown that babies have an abstract numerical sense, as demonstrated by their ability to match the number of voices they hear to the number of faces they expect to see. This numerical perception across senses demonstrates that babies have a truly abstract sense of numerical concepts — and not just one that is a function of a particular sense — even before they learn to speak. Previous experiments on this topic have yielded conflicting and equivocal results, said the researchers.

The researchers, Kerry Jordan and Elizabeth Brannon of DukeUniversity, published their findings the week of Feb. 13-17, 2006, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Jordan is a graduate student and Brannon is an assistant professor in Duke’s Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. The research was sponsored by The National Institute of Mental Health, The National Science Foundation and the John Merck Fund.

In their study, Jordan and Brannon used the same basic experimental design that they had previously used to demonstrate that monkeys show numerical perception across senses. In those experiments, the researchers, collaborating with colleagues at the Max Planck Society, presented the monkeys with the sound of two or three animals making a natural “coo” sound. At the same time they gave the monkeys a choice to look at video images of either two or three monkeys cooing. The researchers found that the monkeys overwhelmingly chose to look at video images that matched the number of monkeys they were hearing.

Similarly, in the study with seven-month-old infants, the Duke researchers presented the babies with the voices of two or three women saying “look.” Simultaneously, the babies could choose between looking at video images of two or three women saying the word. As they had found with the monkeys, the researchers found that the babies spent significantly more time looking at the video image that matched the number of women talking. According to Brannon, similar experiments by other researchers had not shown definitive results because of problems in their design.

“First of all, they had used arbitrary stimuli such as a number of objects or sounds like drumbeats, rather than ecologically relevant stimuli. We don’t know for sure this was a problem but it seems likely” said Brannon. “Also, those experiments presented the sounds successively and so the duration of the sound sequence was a potential problem.” Finally, said Brannon, previous experiments used the same subjects for multiple trials, which meant that the subjects could have learned to associate such non-numerical factors as the length of a sequence of drumbeats or the intensity of sound with numerical size. In contrast, Jordan and Brannon gave each baby only a single trial, so that the babies had no opportunity to learn anything about the stimuli.

“As a result of our experiments, we conclude that the babies are showing an internal representation of ‘two-ness’ or ‘three-ness’ that is separate from sensory modalities and, thus, reflects an abstract internal process,” said Brannon. “These results support the idea that there is a shared system between preverbal infants and nonverbal animals for representing numbers.”

The researchers said that further studies will test both babies and monkeys on their perception of larger numbers, to further explore the details of their numerical abilities. They will also explore whether monkeys can explicitly match the number of a sequence of sounds and a number of objects using a touch screen task in which a monkey has to choose between two visual arrays. Such experiments, they said, will help determine the psychological importance of where monkeys and babies look in their numerical matching paradigm.

Such studies have broad implications for understanding the evolutionary origins of numerical ability and how that ability has developed in humans, they said.

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Name Recognition

Your baby’s name is important to him, and he needs to hear it frequently to learn it belongs to him. A name that’s difficult to say can be shortened or simplified, or your baby may do that on his own when he begins to speak. There’s no need to correct his mistakes or mispronunciations – he’ll eventually do that on his own.

Additionaly to using your baby’s name frequently, play the “Name Game” with your baby. Sing the song (Baby, baby, bo-baby, banana-fana fo faby, me-my-mo-maby – baby!) or make up your own version. Show your baby pictures of other people when you sing their names, then point to your baby when you sing his name. Play Peek-A-Boo by covering your baby’s head, then asking, “Where’s (Your baby’s name)?” Pull off the cloth and say, “There’s (baby)!”

Talk to Her.

Children listen to learn. The more they hear, the greater their vocabulary and the greater their IQ. One Chicago researcher found that 2-year-old children of talkative mothers said twice as many words as the children of mothers who cared for their babies silently. However, only “live” language, not television, helps children develop language skills. Experts believe this is because children need to hear language in relation to what is happening around them, or it just becomes noise.

Even though your child may be surrounded by conversation from birth, it is important that you talk directly to him long before he can talk back to you. Before a child says her first word, she must hear that word many times and understand its meaning. The natural way for your baby to learn the meanings of words is for him to listen to you talk in relation to the events going on around you, and learn to associate the words you say with the actions, objects or thoughts you describe.

Six months. Your baby may now be using consonant-vowel combinations. It’s quite possible that he has discovered his mirror reflection and is probably having conversations with himself. Your baby’s language is becoming much more precise.

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Baby talk

Every parent can find it frustrating when their baby cries and they can’t quite work out why. Of course, a little parental instinct, common sense and a lot of luck has gone a long way for countless years, but now eager mums, dads and carers are queuing in their thousands for classes in the newly popular means of communication: baby signing.

The technique, originally explored by American child development researcher Joseph Garcia, enables hearing children as young as six months to use simple symbols and gestures to communicate their basic needs and emotions with their parents. If your baby wants his teddy, needs to go to bed or simply feels like telling you he’s seen a bird in the sky, there are simple signs with which he can now communicate it to you.

Whether you think it’s a fad, a bit of fun or an essential development tool, it looks like baby signing is here to stay, with classes springing up all over the UK and even dictionaries of key signs on sale. Advocates of the system sing signing’s benefits, claiming it reduces babies’ frustration, strengthens the bond between child and parent and encourages a child to speak earlier than usual. Some even claim that signing leads to a higher than average literacy level and a wider vocabulary.

From five to seven months your baby will begin understanding the language that is your family’s native tongue. They begin to imitate these sounds with simple sounds and coos. Learning to understand these coos can help you bond and relate to your baby. This is a great milestone for your newborn baby. They now understand the meaning to the word “Mommy” and “Daddy.” Now is the time to talk to your baby as much as possible. Saying the word as you point to the object will help your baby familiarize the concept of language.