Teaching your Baby by Ni Stony

As a parent you are going to be very proud if you child develops skills fast and is bride and clever. But nothing comes from nothing. If you not investing lots and lots of time in your child's development and leave it on other people - playgroups and schools - to educate your child, your child will always be behind development of other children.

As early as in the womb you should talk to your child. If you feel funny to talk out loud, you can just have mind conversations with your baby. You can massage you baby to give you baby the sense of touch. My baby used to get its little popo out my tummy to get as much as possible massage. Up to now he is still getting massages and he loves it, even asks sometimes for it.

When your baby is born the most important is not to give it away to other people. Take it in your arm. From the moment your baby is opening its eyes it will look at you and learn. It will smile when you smile, it will be grumpy when you grumpy. From now on stimulate your baby constantly when it is awake. Talk to your baby. Tell your baby what you doing with it. "I am going to prepare a bath for you now. You going to love it." - "This is a flower, take it in your hand. Look it smells so beautiful." - "We going to visit some friends, they have a dog. It makes woof! It is so funny you will see."

Any talking should be made in a normal clear language. Are you bilingual in your family? Great. Teach your baby right from the beginning to talk in many languages. Don't worry that you overwhelming your baby. You cannot overwhelm your baby with any kind of input you doing. Just listen carefully to the signs your baby gives you. If it gets to much it will take away the attention or just get tired and wants to sleep. But in general the more input in touch, color, shapes and sound your baby gets the faster its brain will develop.

Start reading to your baby as early as 2 months. Get picture books with shapes, animals and sparkles. As early as 4 month your baby is able to point out dogs, horses and colors if you you started with 2 months. Read at least 1 hour a day with your baby. Later you can increase the reading time unlimited. Speech development with increase incredible. I found that most children who can talk very well at the age of 1 1/2 years had their parents reading a lot to them. Your child never will get bored with a book. Every time you are reading a book again, your child will learn something new from it. If you reading every day about 4 - 5 books you should have at least around 20 books at home. While reading a book explain your child where the fairy is or that the dog is running in the picture. Later in real life, point out situations from the books you reading. "Look, there is a running dog." - "This is an apple tree, it got red apples, like the one in the Snow White book."

Keep your language friendly and don't make your child afraid of anything. In my family monsters are soooo funny, snakes are clever and spiders have just lots of legs. Never use anything to make your child afraid."If you don't eat, than the monster will come and eat you!". How terrible!

We have this funny story about thunderstorms. As we all know Zeus - the ruler of Olympus - was making thunder and lightning. Well, when he makes the thunder he is playing a big jimbe drum. The lightning is his light show. It does not always work, but it helps. Zeus is the papa of Hercules and they are just "real" people. For a child it is much easier to understand such things via their own fantasy reality.

Encourage your child to be open to other children. Make your child going over to other children in a restaurant to play. Encourage your baby as soon as it can walk to invite other babies to play. I use to put a little shuffle and a bucket in the hand of my son and sent him over to other kids on the beach. It worked and still does. Sadly often the other kids are so afraid of him that they refuse to play and just stare at him. I feel than very sad for him being so rejected in a way. He does not understand yet, that it is not his fault. But I believe it is a part of learning too. Normally I just tell him than that they are just tired and don't want to play.

Teach your baby to do things by itself. Never overtake things as long as your child is still working on developing its skills. While playing, first show how your child how to do it, than let your child do it by itself. If it fails, just tell you child to do it again. Make sure your baby is not getting parked somewhere and sits their without doing anything. I see these super borred babies very often. They just never get a proper input, for this they just sitting like an old grandfather with their brains swithched off. But they need their brains to work out as much as possible, so their little cells in the brain get activated and they getting clever and open people. I often see the local babies carried around for months, never able to explore the world by theirself. Their mothers never really talk to them. As they grow they sit around and do the same - Looking holes in the air.

We used to not pick up our son when he was falling down. We let him work it out by himself. Even if he gave a cry, we just made sure no major damage was done and just overlooked the failure. We never would tell him he did a mistake or is stupid. Teach your child to get dressed by itself as early as it can walk. Teach your child all the body parts daily while getting dressed. Once your child is sick it will be able to tell you where it has pain. "Is it your tummy which is hurting?" - "Something in your mouth?" - "Are your ears hurting too?" Even a sick baby - once it learned its body parts - can tell you where it has the pain. As your baby what it want to do. My son used to shake his shoulders if he meant no or would push me with his hand. Even they cannot talk at the age of 1 month or less, they can tell you what they need and what if you teach them so. Never think a baby does not understand. It does. Babies are so much more clever than we think. The feel the same as we. Never think a baby does not feel pain yet. Any kind of needle put in them hurts them even more than us. Additional they don't understand what is suddenly happening to them. I think it hurts them so much that they cannot cope with it anymore and just fall in a state of shock. This is why I hear often: "But she did not even cry when we made her the holes in her ears.." Yes, she was so shocked that she just closed up. Your child will remember and will react on something later and you might not get why, but it was the word you spoke, the action you took and the feeling he had....

Raise your baby that it will become a clever, confident and happy person for all it's life!