10 Ways to Stimulate Your Baby’s Senses
As your baby grows, he learns to coordinate his five senses – sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste – and his ability to do so is integral in enabling him to explore his world. Here are some ways to stimulate his five senses:
1. Face-to-face contact is essential.
Aside from enhancing your baby’s senses of touch, sight, and hearing, you are also creating a strong bond with him, and reassuring him of your love.
2. Encourage physical activity
An inactive baby (especially the young couch potato) may need some prodding from you. For instance, you may have to get down on all fours to encourage him to crawl. Or you can put a favorite toy slightly out of reach so he can reach out for it.
3. Let playtime be playtime
Physical activity does not mean structured gym or swimming classes. A baby’s natural activity consists of crawling, walking, running, and so forth. There is no need for formal exercise classes. In fact, structured exercise classes have led to not a few cases of muscle strains and bone fractures in infants.
If you want to leave your baby in a play gym, make sure that he is attended at all times and that the gym supervisors are proficient at emergency procedures.
As for swimming classes, kids under the age of 1 should not take organized swimming lessons. Wait until your child is four years old.
4. Choose toys that work on the different senses
If you want to splurge on one nice plaything for your baby for his birthday, activity boards, shape sorters, and dexterity toys are great choices. Toys that need a lot of hand movements, such as pushing, pulling, spinning, dialing, and pressing, not only stimulate your baby’s senses of sight, hearing, and touch, but also help develop his motor skills.
5. Train the babysitter
If you regularly work outside the home, teach the babysitter appropriate ways of stimulating your baby’s different senses. Introduce exercises and games.
6. Be patient with your baby
Your baby is slowly growing and learning, and even though his skills have improved, he certainly still has a long way to go before he masters them. His attention span is still short, so if he wriggles out of your lap before you finish your story, don’t be frustrated. Give him a hug, and go on to another activity.
7. Take him to see the world
If your baby sees nothing but his own room, or the TV set, all the time, he will become bored. More alarmingly, the brain pathways needed to enhance learning are not being created and reinforced. Take your baby around the neighborhood, to the zoo, to the supermarket, to the museum, to the park, to the pet store even! Make him see various sights, hear various sounds, smell various odors, taste various tastes, and touch various textures.
8. Beware of over-stimulating your baby
When his attention wanders, when he looks bored, when he yawns, when he cries, he may be too tired for any kind of activity. Let him rest – let him sleep.
9. Avoid TV for infants
TV viewing is not recommended for babies under one year. Though it is tempting for busy parents to plunk their child in front of the TV set, resist the urge to do so. Too much TV exposure has been linked to eyestrain, passivity, and possibly, desensitization to violence.
10. Let him be creative
Enhance your baby’s creativity by allowing him to scribble and doodle on paper. Don’t worry about form and just allow him to be spontaneous. Be careful: nontoxic crayons are good, but do not allow pencils or pens at this stage because the sharp points may injure your baby. Let him play with clay, let him dabble with watercolor.
