Boosting your baby's brain development

Research shows that a child’s brain contains over 100 billion neurons at birth, which will continue to grow during his first years. Your baby’s brain neural connections need to be “wired together” to ensure proper cognitive development. For this reason, parents need to provide their children with enriching activities and experiences to boost their baby’s brain power. These are some simple things you can do for your baby during his first year.

Be attentive to your baby. If your baby shows interest in something, make sure you follow your attention to his interest and talk to him about it expressing joy. Let your baby know that his interests are important to you. Responding to his cries by nurturing him will make him feel emotionally secure. Use diaper time to attract your baby’s attention or even give him massages to calm him and bond with him. Being attentive to your baby helps develop trust. Your baby will be more willing to explore and learn if he feels secure with you. Those signals of emotional security are sent directly to the brain, contributing those neural connections to be wired.

Read to your baby. Pick books with colorful illustrations and point at the pictures and make sounds of the animals as you read along. By reading to your baby, you will be enhancing his “receptive language,” the ability to understand spoken words.

Choose appropriate developmental toys. As your baby explores with the world around him, pick toys that will help him enhance cause-effect, math, or other problem solving skills.

Sing songs to your baby. Help your baby incorporate sounds with body movements, specially hands and fingers during the early stages to enhance fine motor skills development. Songs will also help your baby develop rhythm and language acquisition.

Make mealtime enjoyable. As your baby learns to feed soft foods, say out loud the names of the food he’s eating (or playing with). Express joy as he attempts this task, regardless how messy it may get. This will help create positive emotional brain patterns.