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Parents strive to provide their baby with the best conditions for development. And, of course, they want to see him as a successful person in the future. But often, out of ignorance, they make mistakes that hinder the child’s ability to think and form interhemispheric connections. How to avoid it? Speech therapist Yulia Gaidova shares her recommendations.
At the heart of the process of acquiring new knowledge, skills and abilities is an orienting reflex — an innate biological and social cognitive need. Or, more simply, interest — “what is it?”.
The very process of cognition takes place through all types of analyzers: motor, tactile, auditory, visual, olfactory, gustatory — from the very moment the child is born. The baby learns the world by crawling, touching, tasting, feeling, feeling, hearing. Thus, the brain receives information about the external environment, prepares for more complex processes, such as speech.
Preparation for the pronunciation of sounds and words
The first basic need that the baby fulfills is food. But at the same time, in the process of breastfeeding, he also trains a large muscle on his face — a circular one. See How long effort a baby puts in to suck milk! Thus, muscle training takes place, which prepares the child for pronouncing sounds in the future.
The kid, who does not yet have babble words, grows up listening to his parents. Therefore, it is very important that adults talk to him as much as possible. By four months, the child has a “coo”, then babble, then the first words appear.
Walkers or crawlers?
Nature intended for the child to crawl. But many parents tend to put him in a walker right away to ensure mobility, bypassing the stage of moving on all fours. But is it worth it? No. Crawling helps form interhemispheric connections, because it provides reciprocity (a reflex mechanism for regulating movements that ensures the contraction of one group of muscles while relaxing another, acting in the opposite direction) of action — a very important mechanism for brain development.
Moving on all fours, the baby probes all the space around with his hands. He sees when, where and how he crawls — that is, crawling eventually develops the skill of orienting the body in space.
Timely rejection of homogeneous food
Here the child stood up and, little by little, with the help of his mother, begins to walk. Gradually, he is transferred from breastfeeding to feeding with other foods. Unfortunately, modern parents believe that the child can choke, choke, and give the baby homogenized food for a very long time.
But this approach only hurts, because eating solid food is also muscle training. Initially, the facial muscles and muscles of the articulatory apparatus of the infant were trained through breastfeeding. The next stage is chewing and swallowing solid food.
Normally, a child without gross pathology, having passed these physiological stages, masters all the sounds of the native language by the age of five, except for the sounds of late ontogenesis (L and R).
The bike is the perfect trainer
What else can help the baby in development? One of the effective, important and necessary ways is a bicycle. After all, it is the perfect training for the brain. Imagine How long work a child’s brain is doing at the same time: you need to sit up straight, hold the steering wheel, maintain balance, know where to go.
And at the same time, also pedal, that is, perform, as mentioned above, reciprocal actions. See what kind of training is done only thanks to the bike.
Active games are the key to the harmonious development of the child
Modern children live in a different information field. Our generation, in order to know the world, had to visit the library, go to the forest, explore, get answers to questions through questioning or empirically. Now the child just needs to press two buttons — and all the information will appear on his computer screen.
Therefore, an increasing number of children need corrective assistance. Jumping, running, climbing, hide and seek, Cossack robbers — all these games are directly aimed at the development of the brain, albeit unconsciously. Therefore, it is very important for modern parents to engage primarily in motor practices.
Why? Because when we move, impulses from the muscles come first to the frontal lobe (the center of general motor skills) and spread to nearby areas of the cortex, activating the speech motor center (Broca’s center), which is also located in the frontal lobe.
The ability to communicate, express one’s thoughts, possession of coherent speech is very important for the successful socialization of a child. Therefore, it is necessary to pay close attention to the development of this skill.