YOUR SENSORY BABY

You play a crucial role in helping all your baby’s senses develop to their full potential

The period from conception to two years of age is a period of 1 001 days – often spoken of as the 1 001 critical days that provide the platform for all future development, health and relationships.

Pregnancy provides the platform for the development of the 100 billion brain cells your baby is born with that are largely unconnected at birth. These brain cells need to be connected to other brain cells (through synapses) in order to make sense of the world, and it is sensory input that creates the connections and pathways in the brain. Interestingly, these are all the brain cells your child will have – it’s the connections between them that make all the difference in his healthy development.

 THE SCIENCE

Multisensory stimulation increases the number of connections between synapses in the brain, which promotes brain development. When a synaptic pathway is stimulated it is reinforced, which means that what a baby feels, smells, tastes, hears, and sees will help to promote the long term survival of synaptic connections during brain development. In this way your baby’s brain and physical development are enhanced. On the other hand, the synapses that are not stimulated are pruned and lost – so when it comes to brain cells, it is literally a case of “use it or lose it”!

 HOW THE SENSES ENHANCE DEVELOPMENT

To master the world around him, a baby needs to develop intelligence, motor skills and emotional engagement and it is through the senses that the baby refines these areas: Did you know that when you moisturise your baby’s skin with clinically proven mild and hypoallergenic JOHNSON’S® Moisturising Lotion you encourage the development of her proprioception? Your touch combined with JOHNSON’S® Moisturising Lotion teaches her about her body, how it feels and where it starts and ends. Moreover, touch is the most fundamental form of stimulation and is essential for bonding, and her emotional and social development TOUCH is the first sense to develop in utero and by birth is the most advanced sense. In addition to affecting emotional bonding and calmness, a baby uses the sense of touch to learn about his world. The sense of touch moves along specific tracts to the brain. The one tract affects mood – it helps the baby stay calm (with deep pressure and vibration stimulation) or causes him to be irritable (with pain and change of temperature).

The other tract carries discriminatory touch, which teaches your baby about what he is touching. It also creates a sense of our bodies, which is the foundation for spatial reasoning. This affects nonverbal intelligence, reading and writing and even planning and coordinating movement. From all this it is clear that stimulating the sense of touch has a far reaching impact.

MOVEMENT is perceived by the vestibular system in the inner ear and has three main consequences for development.

1

baby’s vestibular system is activated. This sends direct messages to the spinal cord and activates appropriate tone for the task.

3Did you knowk thattht theth memoriesi activated by smell are more emotionally vibrant than those triggered by the other senses? JOHNSON’S® Bedtime Bath with soothing Naturalcalm™ aromas helps relax your baby and is clinically proven to help your baby sleep better when used as part of a nightly routine. The combination of your touch and the JOHNSON’S® scents help create a multi-sensorial experience that your baby will come to associate with nurturing care. nurtured in an empathetic and caring way too, and is a complicated area. But the senses undeniably play a critical role in this development.

HEARING Language is the foundation of communication and involves not only speaking but understanding language too. This skill is best stimulated through the auditory sense. When hearing is connected to seeing in the context of fun and emotional engagement, your baby’s language development explodes.

SENSORY ENGAGEMENT HOLDS THE KEY

It is through sensory stimulation that your baby’s brain connects synapses and he develops skills. But sensory stimulation itself is not actually the magic ingredient, otherwise simply showing a baby a DVD of a word or playing a stimulation game on a tablet would lead to enhanced skills. In fact, we know the opposite is true – watching a stimulating DVD actually hampers verbal development. So what can we do? The fact is that stimulation has to be meaningful, emotionally engaging (so with a loved caregiver) and in the context of real life.

For this reason, scheduled stimulation, fancy toys and technology are not always the best way to go. The way your baby’s brain makes connections is in the presence of stimulation and engagement. One without the other does very little to enhance neural connections and learning. So the overwhelming principles to keep in mind are to engage with your baby and offer sensory experiences through all the sensory channels.

The amazing thing about real life is that simple activities such as bath time, feeds, nappy change, play time and sleep time provide you with the perfect opportunity to stimulate all these amazing senses. These daily rituals are the perfect means for sensory engagement:

BATH TIME There are few times in a baby’s day when his entire naked skin can be stimulated with touch. Simply kicking around in water is a wonderful touch experience and stimulates the sensory of proprioception too. Being stroked or washed with different textured sponges and facecloths teaches your baby about his body parts in space,

which has awesome repercussions for motor planning too.

Kicking freely in water, splashing and banging toys in the water gives great muscle feedback to the brain. Moving and swaying in the buoyant water also develops body awareness, muscles and coordination through vestibular stimulation.

Seeing your facial expressions and hearing you talk is the perfect opportunity for your baby to learn language, emotional tone and cause and effect. Bath time provides this one on one engagement in a very focussed way. FEEDING TIME Feeding a baby and toddler provides the opportunity for stimulating the senses of smell and taste, which also provide a great learning experience. On top of this, talking to your child during a meal stimulates intelligence and language.