Emotional Development Milestones for baby (0-1 years)

This section of the site aims to explain you Emotional Development Milestones achieved by your baby in his first year.

Emotional & Social Development are crucial aspects in our life and its importance can be realized in following quotation:

“The child to be concerned about is the one who is actively unhappy, [in school]…. In the long run, a child’s emotional development has a far greater impact on his life than his school performance or the curriculum’s richness, so it is wise to do everything possible to change a situation in which a child is suffering excessively.”

By: Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century), U.S. educator, child development specialist.

This section emphasizes on the fact that your child’s personality is most actively molded by the attitudes of the parents or others who provide most of their care. Hence it is our fundamental responsibility to understand this process and help our kid achieve best in their life.

Baby’s Brain as potential

The first year of your baby’s life is all about building up connections through experience, and as certain events occur over and over again, the same groups of neurons are activated simultaneously and thus life becomes more predictable.

Your input is vital and a stimulating environment will help your baby’s brain to grow. At this stage as we know, baby’s brain is forming connections so events which are repeated over and over are stimulating and we need to make sure that those events are positive.

Some ideas for positive re-enforcements:

• When changing nappy or clothes or giving bath to baby sing some lively rhyme with action like “Teddy bear Teddy bear turn around” or “Row Row a boat”.
• Lie with your baby on bed and play with him, blow raspberries on tummy or pedal his legs, trust me he’ll cherish this time most with you.
• Try to visit a park daily, show your baby sky, birds , flowers, trees – there is nothing more stimulating than nature and it calms the kid. Let your kid appreciate this natural beauty around him.
• Take him along with you to supermarket or shopping spree and explain him everything. I know its not that easy but try to select a time when they’re wide awake and in a mood to enjoy a ride with you.
• Get a rocking chair so that when you are busy working at home, make him sit near you and talk to him as much as you can.

This is just list of ideas, and you can create many such ideas and you will learn by yourself while dealing with your baby, what stimulates him the most.

Let’s study Emotional Development Milestones for babies and toddlers in detail.