Inside A Baby’s Mind

 

 

 

Scientists today know more about infancy than ever before, and what they have discovered is simply amazing. What goes on in a baby’s mind when he is gazing at the mother’s face? How does a baby feel when he is hungry?

In the past, parents could only guess what a baby is thinking, but advances in scientific observation have made us know more about the early years than ever.

 

SIX WEEKS OLD:

 

The baby is in his first week in the world, concerned only with his own feelings. He can see well, though not yet perfectly. He is already aware of colours, shapes and intensities. He has been born with strong preferences. Among these, intensity tops the list. He is able to calculate distances. He divides all space into two distinct areas; a near world within arm’s reach and a far world beyond. At this stage, babies stare at things transfixed. Warm intense colours like yellow appear to come forward. Cooler colours such as blue seem to recede. Bright colours are very captivating. Normally,  parents try to divert their baby’s gaze towards themselves by shaking him or making silly faces because many misinterpret this gaze aversion as rejection.

When hunger grows in the baby’s nervous system, it’s like a storm. At first, it is weak and inconstant. He probably experiences the pangs as a general irritability. Everything is affected; his movements, breathing, attention, and feelings. As his hunger grows, his breathing becomes faster, stronger and jagged. Soon he begins to whimper but his breathing and crying is not coordinated. Sometimes his cry lasts too long and leaves him out of breath. The world seems to be disintegrating. When the hunger pang intensifies, the pain pushes the nervous system to shift gears. Just a relatively small amount of milk blunts the hunger storm. Picking up, soothing and feeding the baby has the most powerful calming effect.

 

FOUR MONTHS OLD:

 

Mother and child are locked up in a long silent gaze. Mother smiles and baby smiles back. The baby is undergoing a dramatic leap in development at this stage. His smile emerges and he begins to vocalize and makes eye to eye contact. For the baby, the face becomes the most attractive and fascinating object and his vision is endowed with certain preferences like cheeks, eyebrows and lips. By simply looking at the mother, he can start an encounter because she will usually look back. He has become an expert in starting or stopping some face to face interactions. Babies act as if the eyes were indeed windows to the soul by maintaining an intense eye interaction. A mother’s face becomes the dominant presence in a child’s world. He learns to captivate her features and movements thoroughly. If she deviates far from the expected, the child gets disturbed. If she wipes all expression from her face, preoccupied by troubles with her husband, for instance, or her career, the child’s smile dies away and he frowns instead. He may make repeated attempts to re-ignite the mother by smiling and gesturing. If he fails, he will turn away, looking unhappy and confused. Psychological problems can develop from a child’s trying to cope with a depressed, anxious or violent parent. By the third or fourth month, psychologists have discovered that an infant begins to realize that he is a separate being from his mother. In short, he is starting to structure his social world. The child begins to relate not only with the mother, but the father and all the familiar people intimately involved in his everyday life.

 

TWELVE MONTHS OLD:

 

At this stage, the child is now making two discoveries. The first is that he has his own private world with desires, feelings, thoughts, memories and intentions that are not visible to others unless he attempts to reveal them and the second, that it is possible to share his thoughts and desires with someone else. The infant has discovered the ability to use his mind and he does so by looking at an object that he is interested in and looking at the mother to enlist her help. If his mother is holding something he’s interested in, he indicates his interest by stretching out his hand towards the prize. He looks back and forth from the object of his interest to his mother’s face and then, vocalizes by crying or whimpering.