Infant Stimulation

Why Infant Stimulation?

Before the advent of knowledge that made Infant Stimulation an acceptable scientific baby care program, it used to be that newborns were seen as little sleeping bundles who needed no interaction except the occasional feeding and cleaning up and putting back to sleep. However, modern day science has found that a baby in the womb actually is a growing, developing, learning individual, and that baby continues to gather, assimilate, and adapt to stimuli and information from birth.

As soon as baby is a fetus in her mother’s womb, her brain cells begin to grow. Her brain will be composed of around 200 billion neurons which connect with each other and allow the transmission of electrical and biochemical signals from cell to cell. The more neural connections baby has in her brain, the greater her intellectual capacity to make, communicate, and process information. In effect, the more connections baby develops, the better her capacity for complex thinking. Every time your infant is given a hug, or rocked to sleep, or sang to, or touches your face, electric charges pass through her brain establishing the different neural circuits they passed through. The more these neural circuits are used, the more established they become, and baby’s capacity to process and respond to information improves every time. Thus the birth of the infant stimulation program.

Landmark studies have shown that infants who have been left to lie on their backs with little adult interaction in extreme circumstances become developmentally delayed and incapable of motor skills or cognitive skills of normal children in their age group. Dr. Wayne Dennis, formerly a professor of psychology at the City University of New York, studied children living in three orphanages in Tehran. Infants who had been kept on their backs in individual cribs, been fed with propped up bottles, were hardly moved or touched or talked to, experienced serious developmental delays. Of the children who reached the age of one or two, less than half could sit up and only one could walk. This is in comparison to most normal, healthy children in the United States who can sit on their own by nine months of age. On the other hand, children who were believed to be retarded who stayed in another orphanage were given more personal care and attention, were held during feedings, and given toys to play with. Because of this contact and stimulation, these children who were considered retarded developed more skills than the normal, healthy children at the other facilities. A simple matter of close personal care and attention made the difference between normal physical and mental development and severe developmental delays. Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine also showed that children who don’t play much or are rarely touched develop brains that are 20 to 30 percent smaller than normal children their age. It then becomes clear that a nurturing, stimulating physical, emotional, and mental environment for a baby makes for a brighter, happier child. Thus the development of an infant stimulation philosophy.

But there’s more. Research has now shown that infant stimulation – the stimulation of your infant's brain - should occur during the first three years of life. After this critical stage, the development of baby’s brain will be almost complete, and the opportunity to have prepared baby with the capacity for greater learning will close. Indeed, the process of a baby’s brain development is highly accelerated during the first three years. Babies start developing brain cells as early as three weeks after conception. By the end of the second trimester of pregnancy, the 200 billion neurons that interconnect with each other forming about one quadrillion neural connections will have been formed. The brain then enters a growth spurt that will last until about age two, where the neurons increase in size, form thousands of connections called synapses, and enter a process of pruning and neural organization. In fact, a newborn will have more neurons and neural connections than an adult does. Whatever connections remain unused during those critical first years of childhood, however, will wither and be pruned away. Thus the possibilities for stimulating your infant's intelligence and keeping as many synaptic connections as possible are endless.

Consider that a baby is born with a brain that is 25 percent of the weight of an adult brain. By six months, baby’s brain is 50 percent of its adult weight. At 1 year, baby’s brain is 70 percent of its adult weight, and at 3 years, baby’s brain is more or less fully developed at more than 90 percent of its adult weight. The sheer volume of learning that takes place during the first year alone and the two years that follow form a very strong case for structuring an interactive program with your baby to make sure that he is given as much opportunity as possible to develop his many skills and abilities. This will give him a headstart in learning and make his formal educational experience when he heads for the doors of kindergarten, a much easier transition and a more enjoyable experience. An infant stimulation will give you the opportunity to maintain close, loving contact with your baby in an environment that nurtures his physical, emotional, and intellectual growth.