Nurture the Nature of your Infant

When I was expecting for the first time, I often felt that my baby is whispering to me from my inside. This magical experience made me strong and I faced all the problems alone from the starting of my pregnancy to the delivery.

When my baby 'Jiya' was born and I hold her for the first time it was the most memorable and unforgettable moment of my life. I was totally changed person, a person filled with emotions, love and hope. 

As I cared for my baby I felt that our children's infancy give parents our universal and essential purpose in life.

If we want to nurture the best of our infant we should always remember these necessities:

Know Your Child

To take your child on the right path you should firstly recognize that 'who your child is?' You can see traits of your child's core nature, hopes, likes, dreams, temperament, etc in every stage of your child's life even before the birth. Every moment of his or her life will tell you about your child that what he or she is. You just need to recognize it. 

Let Your Child Know You

Be with your child with lots of cuddling, touching, kissing, hugging, singing, soothing, smiling. These are the steps for bonding and attachment between you and your child and getting to know your child's core nature is the natural result of this bonding and attachment. This bonding and attachment will develop your child's brain as well as will develop a new self in you, a self or 'Parent' that will help you to devote yourself fully towards your child. This attachment and bonding makes your child to know you.

Protect Your Child

Starting of parenthood is the starting of a lifelong journey of protecting this child from environmental hazardous and distracting social trends. Be a aware parent, open to new information about child's health development and child safety. Track every milestone, make growth chart, keep record of your child's achievements. But never let any information or activity enter to your family's life without deciding that this is right for your child.

There are seven essential pieces of information about brain and body development to know the core nature of your infant:

1) Child is not a blank slate

     Before starting to know the unique and wonderful core nature of your infant, you must remember that this child comes in the world with approximately all of its brain cells, but many of these cells are inactive, unless the child gets your love and attention, your touch and bonding.The way you care for this child activates connections between these cells. It's not wrong if we say that the child has all his or her assets inside him or her and its our touch, care, hugging, kisses, love, attachment, sooth which helps them to develop and to grow.

So never treat your child as a blank slate and don't try to write on it whatever you want. Just understand your child's core nature and let him or her go for that.

2) Your Love Affects the Development of Child's Brain Development

    Scientific research shows that your care for your child affects the development of the brain of your child. In the natural development, your baby's brain enjoy growing and being cared for by you and grows more synapses than it needs. Your child's mind, heart, body and soul explores, feels, loves and be loved and in all this makes internally important decisions about what is useful to his or her core nature and what is not.

So, as we love our children, our children's brain make the choices they need to make, according to their own nature. This will take the child into and through a healthy adulthood.

3) Attachment and Bonding Are Essential for Brain's Growth

    The brain sciences show that attachment and bonding are not just important but are essential as food, air, clothing and shelter. Lack of attachment and bonding will mean fewer synapses in certain areas of the baby's brain, such as the frontal and prefrontal cortices and this later will control behavior abilities like learning, emotions, social success etc. So, if the child gets too little love and attachment will later can suffer sadness, loneliness or anger.

4) Emotional Literacy 

    Each child shows his or her emotional style for example Crying. Every child has its own crying style. This crying is his or her natural cal for help.Its your baby's way to attain your empathy, attention, love and to be attached with you. 

And through your attentiveness and awareness you can feel the wonder of learning the meaning of these signals of your baby. You will be able to understand which crying signal is saying 'I need particular food', 'I want to sleep in your lap', 'I am scared of that insect'.

5) Recognize Your Baby's Sleep Need

    Just after the birth, babies usually sleep around 16-20 hours a day. This sleeping pattern varies child to child. Each child has his or her unique sleeping need. The sleeping hours will divide eventually into naps of about three to four hours. This schedule will shift to fit the core nature needs of your baby over the curse of the next months and then years.

Latest parenting styles don't give importance to the sleeping need. They don't find it ok to take so much sleep for a baby. But its necessary to fulfill the sleeping needs of a child for the proper development of the baby's brain. If your baby doesn't get the appropriate amount of sleep, attachment, love and bonding, it may affect the growth of its brain and may be later in life, healthy sleep patterns will be crucial to the child and adolescent too.

6) Importance of Mother Feed

    What your baby eats really does matter to his or her particular body, heart, mind and soul. Its quite normal that some infants can't eat as much as others can. If your child is not feeding on a regular schedule, ask your pediatrician about this.

Infancy is a crucial time for setting good eating habits for a lifetime. Researches shows that breast feed is good and appropriate for the infants till the age of six months. U.S. Breastfeeding Committee recently reported this fact that mothers who continue to breast feed when they return to work have a better attendance record at work than mothers who don't. Why? Because their babies get the colostrum and other natural chemicals in breast milk that lead to fewer illness in the babies and in turn, moms need not take as much time off work as moms whose kids don't breast feed.

7) Protect Your Child From Visual Toxins 

    Your child has a natural need to touch and to be touched, listen and be listened to, see and be seen. Television, videos and other screen stimulants can derail this brain development because these are not natural. The American Medical Association and every other medical association that has studied this issue agree with this that before a baby is two years old, the safest care of his or her brain is to avoid screen time. Unless you can prove to yourself scientifically that a baby video is good for your child, be wary of it.

These seven essential elements are signal of your child's cor nature, directing you to set a foundation for the future of your particular child's development. If you can move with your child by following these essentials, you will not only caring your child's health but also helping in building its personality, attitude, temperament of your child and will make your child to feel most alive in this wonderful world.