Development of Infants from Birth to Four Months

Chapter 10
The Child from Birth to Four Months
of Age
©2014 Cengage Learning.
All Rights Reserved.

Materials
• Infants benefit more from sensitive,
responsive interactions than from materials
• Materials for infants must be challenging and
safe
• Materials should catch attention and be
movable
• Materials may be homemade or commercially
made

Caregiver Strategies to Enhance
Development
• The ongoing process of observing, planning,
implementing, observing, is vital to being a
professional educator
• Formally and informally observe children on a
daily basis and make frequent adjustments in
curriculum according to their progress in
development, while honoring the uniqueness
of each child

Physical Development
• Young infants have a very rapid rate of
physical development, which varies widely
from infant to infant
• Physical development includes:
– Muscular control
– Movements
– Stability
– Sleep-wake cycle

Suggestions for Implementing Curriculum--
Physical Development
• Frequently change the infant’s position
• Provide space for movement
• Interact with infants when they make eye
contact
• Provide materials within vision and reach
• Physical development curriculum includes
strategies for encouraging infant’s seeing,
sleeping, and eating

Cognitive and Language Development
• Cognitive Development
– During the first months of life, every response to
sights, sounds, feelings, smells, and tastes makes
more connections in the brain
– Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stages of Cognitive
Development in the first 4 months:
• In Stage 1, the newborn’s behavior is reflexive
• During Stage 2, infants begin to coordinate
their senses

Suggestions for Implementing Curriculum-
Cognitive Development
• Provide positional changes for infant, carry
the infant, hold the infant, place the infant on
the floor
• Turn on musical toys for infant
• Place objects within reach of infant
• Sit face to face with infant, show pictures of
human faces
• Allow infant to focus on objects, slowly move

• Language Development
– Infants use noises, cries, gestures as their earliest
forms of productive communication
– Adults are able to read the cries of infants
– When infants hear someone talk to them, it
stimulates them to make sounds
– Effective dialogue stimulates the infant to engage
in more positive vocalizing

• Talk: Say words, sentences, and nursery rhymes;
read stories aloud and show the baby pictures of
different faces and designs
• Sing: Hum; sing words set to your own music,
nursery rhymes, lullabies, and songs; play African
drums or recorded bagpipe music
• Listen and respond: Infants will make sounds by
themselves for a few months
• Initiate conversation: Describe your actions
during routines

Emotional Development
• During the first months of life infants develop
their basic feelings of security
• Feelings of security and trust develop out of
relations with others
• Temperament, or the infant’s basic style of
behavior, gradually emerges in the first four
months
• Differing levels of sensory threshold and energy
are apparent in young infants

Emotional Development
• Use the 3 As during routines such as diapering
and feeding
– Use your relationship with the child.
– Focus your attention on the child’s needs
– Make meaningful physical contact
– Try to sense how the child is feeling—is the child excited,
happy, frustrated?
– Try to get in rhythm with the child. Let her lead you vocally
– When leaving the infant, tell her where you’ll be in the
room

Social Development
• Infants can and must develop attachment to
their primary caregivers in child care settings
to ensure healthy social and emotional
development
• Infants from birth to four months are
egocentric; they have only their point of view
• The most important plaything for infants is a
responsive caregiver

Social Development
• Respond quickly to the infant’s needs
• Initiate interactions by looking, holding,
stroking, talking, playing, carrying, and rocking
the infant
• While interacting, use positive communication
skills such as active listening and mirroring

Spotlight on Research
• Breastfeeding and Later Development
– Recent research has examined whether or not this
practice has benefits beyond physical development to
other areas, such as cognitive and social-emotional
development
– Mothers who breast-feed may be more attuned to their
infants’ emotional needs (Bai et al., 2009)
– The difficulty in drawing conclusions from this line of
research is that many women who breastfeed, especially
in the United States, tend to be more economically well-
off, have higher levels of education
– Practitioners need to evaluate their practices and policies
so that they provide another source of support for families
who want to breastfeed

Checkpoint Discussion Questions
• When do very young children become more
interested in interacting with toys or materials?
Why?
• List three more toys or materials (not explicitly
given as examples in the text) that can be used
with infants from birth to four months of age. List
the area(s) of development that each can
enhance?

Checkpoint Discussion Questions
• State two reasons why it is helpful to an infant’s
cognitive and language development to have a
caregiver talk to him or her.
• Select one emotional and one social skill. Explain
how a teacher would select caregiving strategies
that demonstrate responsiveness and are
appropriate for each skill.

Development of Infants from Birth to Four Months

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Development of Infants from Birth to Four Months