Give Your Baby The Best Brain Possible
Your baby’s brain started to take shape as soon as you became pregnant. By the time you felt the first kicks, that brain had all its parts. When you took care of yourself by eating well and getting prenatal care, you helped it grow healthy. But now that your baby is in your arms, his or her brain is still just beginning. In order to become the best brain possible, it needs to be fed – with breast milk, ideally, or formula, and with information.
- Feed your baby’s brain with words and music. You can start even before birth by talking, singing, and reading out loud.
- Right from birth, babies stare at the faces of the people who care for them. They learn best from the people they love.
- By nine or ten months, babies already know the sounds of their home language. Their brains tune in to the sounds they hear every day.
- Baby brains grow best when information glows back and forth. They have to listen, and also be listened to. They need people to talk with them, not computers and TVs that talk at them.
- Babies often want the same book over and over. They have a drive to learn. Learning makes the brain grow.
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When you hold your baby and have fun together with picture books, your baby learns to love books. That is a love that can last forever.
Robert Needlman, MD
Behavioral-Developmental Pediatrician MetroHealth Medical Center
Co-Author, Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care
© 2008 Cuyahoga County Public Library
