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As parents, you can work together to enhance their experiences. However, overstimulation can make babies fussy and cause temporary irritability and dysregulation. Following simple activities at home, such as introducing new toys, flavours, and smells, and letting the kids explore their surroundings, can benefit motor and cognitive growth.
Sensory Development Month by Month
Most of the baby’s senses rapidly develop in the first year, paving the way for growth and learning. Here is how each baby's senses grow each month.
| Age | Visual Sills | Auditory Skills | Tactile Skills | Taste Skills and Olfactory |
| Newborn - 1 month | Baby can focus up to 15 inches and detect high-contrast patterns | Recognise human voice, and sudden and loud voices and sounds can startle newborns due to the exaggerated Moro reflex | Rooting and grasping reflexes strengthen, and skin-to-skin contact soothes stress hormones | Newborns show a natural preference for sweet taste and find comfort in familiar scents de |
| 2 and 3 months | Begins to track moving objects, and colour discrimination starts to improve by 3 to 4 months | Turn towards familiar sounds and respond to voices and music with coo and smile | Gently lift their head while nursing and lift their hands to their mouth | Likes breast milk and avoids sour or bitter taste, and identifies mothers' familiar scents |
| 4 - 6 months | Depth perception and colour vision become clear to support hand-eye coordination | Begins to recognise tone and rhythm in speech and music | Begins to recognise different textures | Ready to explore new tastes, and with gradual and repeated exposure to different tastes and textures, babies develop flavour preferences |
| 7 - 9 months | As crawling begins, hand and eye coordination increases | Recognise words and names | Grasp gets refined, and tactile exploration begins | Taste and texture exploration strengthens |
| 10 - 12 months | Better depth perception and visual acuity | Recognise complex sound | Grasp gets firmer | Preferences for flavour increase and recognise different scents |
Touch: Textures and Skin-to-Skin Contact
Baby craves for mother's touch. Touch is the first thing a baby experiences after coming out. A mother's warm embrace is crucial for a baby to regulate its temperature and feel secure in this new world. Touch has a profound influence on physical growth, brain development, motor skills, and emotional bonding.
Around 7 to 8 weeks of pregnancy, early tactile receptors begin to form, and the baby’s response to touch gradually progresses throughout pregnancy and after birth. The following are a few tactile activities you can follow:
- Skin-to-skin: This exchange between caregiver and newborn helps regulate heart rate, breathing, and temperature, reduces stress, and modulates the pain response.
- Varied Textures: Introduce soft, bumpy, rough, and smooth texture toys, mats, and cushions to encourage sensory development and motor control.
- Massage and Stroking: Massaging infants has been proven to have positive cognitive outcomes.
Sight: Visual Tracking and Focus
The baby's sight begins to develop from birth, strengthening visual tracking and focus. By four months, baby eye movement patterns develop, which is crucial for integrating visual memory and motor skills. Visual tracking supports coordination between the visual cortex and motor pathways.
Here is a list of ways you can engage and improve visual stimulation:
- Face-to-face: Maintain a 10-inch distance from your baby and engage with them face-to-face for engaged eye contact and tracking.
- Introduce colourful objects: Pick objects of different shapes and colours and move from side to side to encourage eye movement.
- Tracking games: Move the object back and forth, circles, or roll for visual tracking practice.
- Hide and seek: this helps stimulate anticipatory eye movement and visual memory.
- Reading: Read books with pictures and numbers for language development, attention, and cognitive association.
Hearing: Sounds and Music
Auditory development is critical for language acquisition, brain development and social skills. Auditory stimulation starts inside the womb as the baby is constantly exposed to the mother's voice, heartbeat, pulses, and inhaling and exhaling. Babies can recognise their mother's voice in the first month after childbirth and can recognise their native language.
- Babies love their mother's voice over a stranger's voice, so talk, sing songs, and engage with the baby.
- Gentle and varied music supports both auditory and motor development, promoting learning, emotional regulation, and memory formation.
- Use an infant-directed speech to capture a baby's attention and support early language learning.
- Pause to allow the baby to respond with babbles and coos.
- Use sound toys, bells, and rattles to improve auditory-motor coordination.
Smell: Increased Bonding
Smell plays a critical role in enhancing the maternal-infant bond and supports neurological development. Slowly introducing familiar smells can influence the baby’s brain activity, emotional connection, and nursing experience. Babies who smell their mother's breast milk experience enhanced sucking and soothing.
A baby's olfactory system begins in the womb as foetal nasal receptors are exposed to familiar amniotic scents. This prenatal odour exposure also influences the baby’s preferences and feeding practices. You can stimulate a baby's smell by:
- Encouraging skin-to-skin contact for the baby to get used to the mother’s smell.
- Add a gentle-smelling blanket, dress, and socks.
- Use mild shampoo, soap, and lotion that have a natural and soft smell.
- Take the baby to the garden or market, where they can be introduced to multiple scents.
- Avoid perfumes, strong fragrances, and room spray as they can irritate the airways.
Taste: Introducing Flavours
Feeding patterns and early flavour exposure highly influence babies’ taste development. Early exposure to flavour sets the stage for lifelong food and eating preferences. Newborns need at least 6 months of exclusive breastfeeding and should gradually be introduced to solid foods.
Here are ways you can help your baby experience flavours:
- Exclusively breastfeed for 6 months, as breastmilk carries flavours from a parent’s diet, and this early exposure to varied flavours through breastmilk may influence later acceptance.
- Take care of your maternal diet and ensure it has varied tastes and textures
- Repeatedly expose the kid to mild flavours
- Gradually introducing complementary foods after 6 months and repeated exposure after weaning matter most
- Avoid honey and nuts for those under 1 year old.
Parents' support in new sensory development plays a major role. You can create a sensory-rich environment by incorporating textured toys and mats to promote sensory-motor development. To support auditory development, include soft furnishings that naturally absorb ambient noise, thereby creating a calm auditory environment.
Avoid using bright lights that hurt your eyes - opt for natural and adjustable lighting instead. Spritz a gentle perfume and avoid synthetic scents to help support smell recognition and prevent overstimulation. To introduce varied flavours, opt for age-appropriate flavours suggested by paediatricians. Supportive surroundings combined with encouraging parents can help babies thrive by easily achieving their developmental milestones.
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FAQs on How to Stimulate Your Baby’s Senses: Science-Backed Tips For Parents
- How do I know if my baby has sensory processing disorder?
Sensory Processing Disorder is not an official medical diagnosis. However, if a child shows negative reactions, including itching, rubbing, and irritation to loud sounds, bright lights, different food textures and flavours, consult a paediatrician or developmental specialist for evaluation. - What triggers sensory processing?
Sensory responses vary widely among infants. Bright light, strong smells, new textures, unexpected touch, and loud noises may startle some babies.
