Parenting Tips For Infants: 3 1/2 To 5 1/2 Months

"To be or not to be? That is the question." - Hamlet

To be!: 3 ½ to 5 1/2 months

Stair Lift Story

With apologies to Will Shakespeare for my loose translation. You and your child have begun a journey of discovery together. The experiences that you offer will determine either he/she travels straight through a barren wilderness or a rich and sharp landscape where fresh horizons continually beckon.

The journey will shape your child irrevocably. At the end of the first three years either vital connections between neurons in the brain have been or have not been made. We have no option but 'to be' any way we are free to select for our children to what degree they 'will be' and what they can become.

"When I look into the time to come it's so sharp it burns my eyes." - Oprah Winfrey

Isn't that the way we want our children to view the world?

Parenting Tips For Infants: 3½ To 5½ Months - Characteristics

• Your child will now come to be increasingly interested in his surroundings
• Watch and stare at movements and changes in scenery.
• Will come to be more strict when grasping objects and explore them with her hands.
• She will now be able to tell your voice from man else and will listen intently to sounds and voices
• Now he is able to lift his head and chest using his forearms for preserve and can turn from side to side and roll over
• She is able to sit with support.

Parenting Tips For Infants: 3½ To 5½ Months - Language Development

What you can do:

He will benefit from listening to a range of separate sounds so try and contribute opportunities each day.

To help him find sounds that are within his immediate surroundings ring a soft bell directly to the side of his head about 45 cm away from his ear and see if he can turns towards it.

Help him to recognise and react to his own name by oftentimes saying it to him slowly in a loving way.

Recite nursery rhymes or sing songs to him while you undertake those routine everyday chores that babies create!

This will help him identify and react certainly to your voice.

Don't make the mistake of reasoning that because he doesn't talk yet he won't understand. In fact he is starting to associate singular sounds with actions and objects (Nouns and verbs being the easiest vocabulary to finally introduce to your child.)

Parents often looked very disbelieving when, having asked how best they can help their child at home, are told naturally to take time to read to them making it an enjoyable experience.

I think some parents wanted to teach the theory of relativity. Pay close attentiveness to the sounds your baby makes and try to imitate them. He may now be happy to spend some time alone 'practising' his sounds when he wakes up. You may even begin to 'recognise' some of the sounds he now makes like aah, ee and ooo. Acknowledge to them enthusiastically and with clear pleasure.

Parenting Tips For Infants: 3½ To 5½ Months - Intellectual Development

What you can do.

Continue to do what you have already been doing.

When she is lying on the blanket give her some safe and sharp toys to explore with her hands..

She will want to put things in her mouth.

Encourage her to do this with safe toys.

You can now introduce inflatable toys which your child will delight in watching and kicking!

Take your baby with you on short shopping trips to allow him to sense and enjoy separate environments.

Use a mirror to show him his face and facial expressions. Play with him.

The more experiences you contribute the more you stimulate the vast network of neurons in your child's brain creating and reinforcing the learning pathways. It is these connections that will form the basis for all time to come learning and reasoning ability. Just as highways link city to city so these pathways associate one cell to another within the brain. And as with road networks there are all the time more prominent places, like large cities. The brain also has 'more prominent places' or processing centers, eight in all. We call them intelligences - linguistic, visual, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal (social), intrapersonal (introspective) and naturalist intelligence (Howard Gardner).

Learning intelligences, how you recognise them and how they impact on how we learn will form the basis of another course.

Parenting Tips For Infants: 3½ To 5½ Months - Social/Emotional Development

Always Acknowledge enthusiastically when you baby accomplishes whatever be it sounds or actions.

Maintain close interaction with him - rocking, cuddling etc.

Always hold him when feeding from a bottle and never let him hold his own bottle in bed.

Have fun! Tickle him and join in with his laughter.

Play with your baby by showing him how to use a range safe toys or gadgets and delight in his efforts to grasp and explore them.

Peek a boo is a great game to help encourage him to react and show delight when interacting with house members and friends.

Try and anticipate his needs by recognising the separate cries he makes so he knows he can rely on you to meet them.

Don't wait until he is asleep before putting him to bed. Do it when he is obviously tired so he can get used to falling asleep on his own - something we singularly failed to do as parents with embarrassing consequences!

I often fell asleep reading a story while my child son clambered out of bed - quietly not to wake me -and went down stairs to fill in his mum he'd got me to sleep again.

If your baby does awaken at night then allow him time to calm himself and go back to sleep.

He she won't all the time need feeding or changing but if he persists after 5 to 10 minutes it's best to check!

The prominent thing is to help him learn how to get back to sleep on his own.

Parenting Tips For Infants: 3½ To 5½ Months - Motor Development

How you can help

Your baby is going to need free, open spaces to roll, move and wriggle arms and legs.

If you hold objects slightly above and in front of him while he is lying on his stomach he will lift his head and chest using his forearms for support.

Lay him on his side as this will encourage him to roll onto his stomach or his back.

He will now enjoy sitting supported on your lap or leaning up against pillows.

This strengthens his upper and lower torso.

Encourage him to explore toys with both hands.

Exercising the body is good for the mind. We have now discovered that citizen who practice their fingers usually like concert pianists oftentimes stay alert into old age. Children need to learn fetch spatial awareness and this means a baby must have opportunities to use his body freely.

In another course we see how spatial awareness can be used very effectively to heighten memory recall.

It's what the Romans did! I'm digressing, time to get back to your baby.

If you place toys within his reach he will be encouraged to reach out and grasp them.

Put pressure against your baby's feet with your hands and encourage him to push against you.

Hold him in a standing position for 30 to 45 seconds and allow him to preserve his weight on his legs.

Lay your baby on the floor with his feet near a crib, gym or noisy objects on a string tied between legs of furniture to request kicking practice.

Parenting Tips For Infants: 3 1/2 To 5 1/2 Months