Brain Development

At birth, your baby’s brain contains 100 billion neurons. During his first years, he will grow trillions of brain-cell connections, called neural synapses. Pretty impressive, right?
🌸The rule for brain wiring is to use it or lose it. Synapses that are not “wired together” through stimulation are pruned and lost during a child’s school years. Although an infant’s brain does have some neurological hard-wiring, such as the ability to learn any language, it is more pliable and more vulnerable than a grown-up’s brain. And, amazingly, a toddler’s brain has twice as many neural connections as an adult’s.
Here’s how you can help 👇
🌸Turn up the baby talk. Respond to infant coos with delighted vocalizations, and slowly draw out your syllables in a high-pitched voice as you exclaim phrases like “pretty baby.” This way of speaking is called parentese, and the exaggerated facial expressions and drawn-out vowels help your child absorb all the sounds of our language.
🌸Play games that involve hands. Activities like patty-cake, peekaboo, this little piggy engage your baby and capture her attention. Using your hands shows young children how we physically interact with our world.
🌸Be attentive. When your young child points, be sure to follow with your gaze and remark on items or events of interest to her. This “joint attention” confirms how important her interests and observations are to you.
🌸Foster an early passion for books. Choose books with large and colourful pictures, and share your baby’s delight in pointing at certain images. Simplify or elaborate on story lines, and encourage toddlers to talk about books
Remember that building your baby’s receptive language (understanding spoken words) is more important than developing his expressive language (speaking) in infancy.
🤰Our ante-natal course provides you with evidenced-based information on how the parents brain adapts to the birth of a child too. So even if you are worried that you ‘aren’t maternal’ do not worry, we will show you how this has no impact on how much you love your baby!🥰🧠
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