Watch and Learn

Your baby is learning by watching everything and everyone in his environment. It's important to give baby opportunities to imitate, or copy what he sees. Your baby is curious and wants to explore the world around him. Help baby to learn by allowing him to have new experiences. With your help, your baby will enjoy seeing, touching, hearing and smelling and tasting all that the world has to offer!

Brain Science for Your Baby

An important milestone in baby brain development is the development of "object permanence". Object permanence is the idea that objects exist even when they're out of sight. Babies now remember what they've seen! Object permanence was described by Jean Piaget, who studied how children learn. Piaget thought of young children as "little professors" who learn by manipulating objects, watching what happens, and remembering the results.

Your baby is all about exploring right now. And the brain is "wired" to like new (novel) experience. Babies this age move rapidly from one activity to the next. They explore everything they find. These "experiments" build connections (synapses) between brain cells. See how this works here

A Baby Buffer Prescription for Your Baby

Give baby lots of opportunities to explore and touch objects their environment.

Encourage baby to explore objects in different ways (e.g., banging spoons, rolling balls, banging blocks together, drumming on a plastic container with a wooden spoon). Baby will enjoy the different sounds!

Provide toys or objects that have a response to baby's actions (e.g., a rattle that makes a noise when you shake it, a stuffed animal that squeaks when you squeeze it)

A baby Buffer Prescription for You

Talk to your doctor about a healthy diet, sleep and exercise program for you. When you take care of yourself, you are best able to take care of your baby!

Talk to your doctor about how to adjust to the change of parenting a new baby to enable you to positively talk to your baby with your words and actions every day.

What Your Baby Can Do - Developmental Milestones

Your baby is changing quickly during this period. Know what to look for to make sure your baby is growing and changing in a healthy way. Click on the links below for information from the CDC on what your baby can do now.

What your baby should be doing at 6 months

What your baby should be doing at 9 months

What your baby should be doing at 12 months

Gene's Research Tip of the Week

So, which is it; Nature or Nurture? Well in 2014, many think it is both! It seems that our genetic DNA (the Nature part) can be turned on or turned off by the rest of the world around us (the Nurture part). Read more here

Baby Buffer Blog

Written by, Barbara Unell

One of the most exciting milestones in your child's life is when he starts to want to do things on his own. He not only tries to put his spoon to his mouth when he wants to eat, for example, but he also wants to do so himself. "Me do it", as some children say, means doing an activity without help from you!

Showing this normal and healthy desire to be independent is good news. But it can also be frustrating for you, when you are in a hurry and it takes your child longer to do something than if you did it for him. You want him to feed himself now, for example, because you have to get to work or to an appointment. But your timetable and his are often not the same! What do you do to keep yourself calm?

Read the full blog here

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