Cognitive Development

Your daughter is polishing up her thinking skills every time she touches, smells, sees, feels, and tastes her world. Between four and seven months, you’ll start to see evidence of all that she’s been learning. Watch your daughter closely as she examines a toy and you can almost picture the wheels in her head turning. You can see her thinking, “If I do this, then that will happen.” You can see this cause-and-effect thinking process when she intentionally kicks at an object to make it move. She will slam her open hand on a toy to make it squeak. And she’ll even drop her bottle on the floor just for the joy of knowing that you’ll retrieve it. Anticipation is an advanced thinking skill for a little one. You’ll see this intellectual feat when you wiggle your finger and move in slowly to tickle her tummy. After playing this game a few times she learns to anticipate the tickle and will squeal with delight before your finger touches her body. You’ll also see signs of this skill when she smiles and waves her arms and legs as you begin to prepare her bath. She knows the chance for some good splashing is on its way. This is also time for some major experimentation. Your daughter is starting to be interested in how things work and what they do. Watch as she pokes at a toy, bangs another, and shakes a third. She’s experimenting to find out which ones roll, which ones make noise, and which ones do nothing at all. Around six to seven months, she’ll start to remember how things work and she’ll know in advance that the rattle will make noise and that slapping her hand on her bath water will make a wonderful splash. You can help your daughter in her quest to learn all about her world. Because she learns so much by simply watching, give her a change of view every so often. Move her to different places around the room and the house so she can see different perspectives. Take her outside, bring her to the park, take a walk with her stroller. These experiences are all learning opportunities. You can also use your simple daily activities as teaching tools. Here are a few to get you started: Explain what you’re doing as you put the key in the lock to open the door. Point out that the water from the tap can fill up the container. Place your daughter’s toy under the blanket and ask, “Where is it?” She’ll eventually learn to look for it and will be delighted by her mastery of this fascinating game. When you hear a family member approaching, ask, “Who is coming?” When the person arrives, name him or her so your daughter learns both to anticipate and to name. Although your daughter won’t be talking for a while yet, she’s learning a lot about language. Her ability to understand words will be far greater than her speaking vocabulary, so don’t assume that because your daughter isn’t talking yet, there’s no point in talking to her. During these few months, you’ll notice that she will respond to certain familiar words. If you ask her where the dog is, she’ll look around for it. If you call her name, she will turn to you. If you ask her where Daddy is, she’ll look right at him. There’s lots of language development going on before your daughter says her first word. Between four and five months your daughter may make her first attempts to communicate by making the most delightful sound—I call it razzing. She’ll blow through her lips, often with saliva bubbles, to make a vibrating sound and then laugh at her accomplishment. If you razz her right back, she’s likely to keep the game going. Around six months, she’ll begin to imitate one-syllable sounds. This is when you’ll swear that your daughter called your name: ma or da. Soon she will put together two syllables and you’ll hear (over and over) her favorite sounds such as mama, dada,and baba, as well as repetitive syllables such as a-la-la. This is also the time when your daughter is learning what words mean. By seven months she will begin to understand specific words that she hears often, such as bottle or blanket. The way you talk to your daughter will directly affect how well her language skills develop. In fact, the more often you have “conversations” with your daughter, the more developed the language center of her brain will become. Try these strategies to improve your daughter’s language skills: Talk to her. As you rush through your day, talk out loud and tell your daughter what you’re doing. As you put on her shoes, say something like, Shoes go on your feet. Even if the words you say mean nothing to your daughter, she’s learning the sound, pitch, inflection, and rhythm of language. Talk back. When your daughter makes a sound, keep the conversation going. Look at her and mimic the sound back. Lether know you’re listening to her and enjoy her attempts at communication. Use precise words to label objects. Instead of using the general word toy, use the specific word such as ball or rattle. Match your tone of voice to your meaning. If you use a soft, singsong voice to tell your daughter Don’t touch that, it will be hard for her to understand what you mean. If you are giving a warning, she needs to hear a firm tone that matches the message. Be silly. Don’t worry that your daughter will pick up bad speech habits if you occasionally use baby talk, singsong words, or even silly, nonsense syllables. At this age, the most important thing is to enjoy the give and take of communication. Make it fun for your daughter to listen and learn. You don’t have to wait until your little girl is older to read her a bedtime story. Even infants love a good book. The all-time favorite in my house was Pat the Bunny. My babies loved it because each turn of the page gave them a new texture to feel. They would bang their little hands against the cardboard page and delight in the feel of the soft fur, and then more gently touch the scratchy paper. While you read to your daughter, for a short while she will carefully listen to the cadences of your words and phrases with rapt at tention. She is learning to speak by listening to your voice as its tone, pitch, and inflection changes. Reading picture books to your daughter also helps her learn about her world. She will enjoy looking at books with pictures of things she finds in her own world: babies, toys, familiar animals, and vehicles. As you show her these pictures, name them and when appropriate, make accompanying sounds. If you have a cat in your home, for example, get a picture book about a cat, and as you read it to your daughter, point to the picture and then to your family cat, name the animal—“cat”—and add a meow. There’s so much to learn and books are a great way to make that learning fun—even for infants. Play is the occupation of children. It is what allows them to grow intellectually as they learn to problem-solve (when figuring out where the teddy bear is hiding), to manipulate (when putting a toy held in one hand into the other hand), to learn cause and effect (when pushing a button makes the music play), and so on. So don’t wait for your daughter to be up and running around and making her own fun before you get down on the floor to play with her. Your baby girl loves a good time and is now ready to show off her developing sense of humor (as you’ll learn when she dumps her dish of food on the floor and laughs with glee). At this age, babies love the anticipation of a surprise. Try the gonna-get-you game by wiggling your finger in the air as you musically say, “IIIII’m gonna get you!” And then gently poke your daughter’s tummy and watch her squeal with delight.