mittens and brighter child

written by Mommy on 18/01 /08

As a typical anxious mom, I have been deligently reading books on parenting. My lastest baby manual, “How to Raise a Brighter Child”. Yah, I am on my way into raising a super baby….haha.

Anyway, it enlighted me in quite a few ways. For example, it believes that “developmental landmarks in early childhood can be speeded up by changes in the environment….major gains can be achieved by relatively small changes in an infant’s surroundings.”. I begin to review my baby’s environment and her daily activities. Feeding, diaper changing, cuddling, some playing. I realised my baby’s hands are still mittened ( which is a grieve mistake according to the book, since “baby needs great freedom and opportunity to touch, to move about, to manipulate objects…..from constricting clothing and from a confining bassinet.”), and most of the time, I only watched her play.

So I decide to do a small experiment. Her mittens were removed. She is still placed on her gym playpen with some toys hanging above her, but this time, I guided her hands to reach out to bat the objects and opened her hands to let her touch and feel them. Interestingly, she started paying much more attentions to the hanging objects, and her fist wasn’t tightly clasped anymore. On the second day, she begin kicking excititngly when I laid her onto the playmat, before her usual staring and uncoordinated hands movement. About a week has passed with this daily activity (which I myself am getting bored with), something remarkable happened today. She stared intensively at the hanging toy for a minute or so, then reach out her hand and bat at it. This was repeated a few times until her started to feel tired, perhaps frustrated and begin crying again.

Now I am convinced that stimulation does speed up a child’s development. But to what extent should I push her to her next developmental milestone. Should I interfere with the child’s natural development at all? Do I really want to give the child a good head-start, or am I just anxious to satisfied my own ego. I guess !