Best Things to Do for Your Baby
Seven easy essentials for healthy development.
Think of the guiding principles below as developmental "vitamins and minerals," and apply them every day. Most are lots of fun, easy to learn, and natural to do. None require any special supplies, and all can be done anywhere, at almost any time.
Personalize them. Let them reflect your own interests, personality, culture, values, and traditions. Be creative. Be relaxed. Rest assured you can and will be exactly the best kind of parent you always have dreamed of being.
These essentials will help in all walks, ages, and stages of life. And their value extends beyond the first 18 months. Keep adapting them to your child's development and readiness for new advances and new stages of growth.
1. Encourage exploration with all the senses, in familiar and new places, with others and alone, safely and with joy.
2. Mentor basic skills, showing the whats and whens, the ins and outs of how things and people work.
3. Celebrate developmental advances: learning new skills, little and big, and becoming a unique individual.
4. Rehearse and extend new skills, showing your baby how to practice again and again, in the same and different ways, with new people and new things.
5. Protect from inappropriate disapproval, teasing, neglect, or punishment.
6. Communicate richly and responsively with sounds, songs, gestures, and words; bring your baby into the wonderful world of language and its many uses.
7. Guide and limit behavior to keep your child safe and to teach what's acceptable and what's not—the rules of being a cooperative, responsive, and caring person.
 | From Right from Birth: Building Your Child's Foundation for Life by Craig T. Ramey, Ph.D., and Sharon L. Ramey, Ph.D. Available wherever books are sold. Copyright © 1999 by Goddard Press, Inc. |
