Pay Attention!

Babies at this stage prefer to look at faces rather than scrambled objects with patterns, or blank walls. Second to faces, they prefer to look at words, even though they cannot read them, yet. Then, bullseye type patterns, then the color red, then the color white, then the color yellow.

Babies this age will spend up to 67% of their time sleeping.  11% of their time will be alert activity, trying to do things, or make things happen. 10% will be alert inactivity, just looking around.

7% of their time will be drowsy resting. 5% of their time will be crying to get attention. Social workers who visit the home watch to see that the parent responds to the child's vocalizations with a verbal response; and that the parent caresses or kisses the child at least once during the visit.

Babies need lots of attention!

Angelia Schwarz-Coleman
 Minister Works of Heart
 Executive Director Healing Families' Lives

Development

When your baby is a newborn, it will stay in the fetal position. This is the beginning of the sensorimotor stage when the child learns about the world through senses, actions, and direct experience.

 In this stage they are learning object permanence and stranger anxiety.  The child develops schemas or mental categories for objects that include knowledge about features or characteristics of the objects. One important feature is object permanence or the recognition that the object has a physical tangibility and it continues to exist even when the child does not have direct sensory experience with the object.

In the first month of life the child relies on reflexes. The infant is dependent on reflexes, rigid patterns of behavior, and they can learn. They will not search for an object that leaves their visual field.

Newborns have a lot to learn!

Angelia Schwarz-Coleman
 Minister-Works of Heart
 Executive Director-Healing Families' Lives