Nurturing an Infant

Nurturing an infant means that you have to be nurtured or you have to nurture yourself regularly. It would be ideal for you to as much as possible have the most conducive feelings and attitude while nurturing any baby. It takes a positive spirit, love, warmth, and patience. Your environment as a parent or guardian has a substantial effect on your well-being, temperament, and energy for nurturing an infant. Maintaining a calm heart and peaceful yet engaging frame of mind will allow you to give your baby the attention that will be needed for consistent nurturing. Making others around you aware of the gravity of how your well-being will affect the baby may do much to allow others to avoid causing you any undue stress and to be more accommodating.

Make eye contact often with your baby to make a definite connection with the child early on in its life. Making eye contact lets it know that you are interested in it and that you are attentive to it and its needs. Eye contact helps the child to see that you are really there for it and not just around. Of course the baby does not think these things deliberately, for has not developed or matured enough, but the experiences that the baby has with you gives it a sense of what is going on as you influence its feelings and thoughts that are maturing. Introduce the baby to a variety of colors instead of a few basic ones to stimulate its mind and imagination. This will also help it to associate certain things with certain colors. Remember that the baby not only observes your eyes but also your facial expressions. While not showing the extreme ranges of adult emotions, allow the baby to see the subtle and more subdued emotions that you naturally feel. Moreover, display positive and reassuring facial expressions before the infant. The infant as it develops will get to know you, partially, by your emotional responses and it will imitate you in its developing personality. Often when you do something in the sight of the baby, describe it verbally so as to teach it the name of things and activities. The more you do this the faster the child will develop intellectually and mentally.

The visual sight of you looking back into eyes of your baby and the facial expressions and body language has a big impact on the development of the child. Smile at your baby often to teach it the joy of smiling. Smiling releases beneficial chemicals through the body of you and the baby, which can help it to develop into a happy child that may influence others to be happy. It also contributes to the health of the baby. The baby should never see you discipline, upset with, or arguing with others, whether they be a child, an adult, or animal. As a matter of fact animals, including pets, should not be allowed around infants for health (emotional, mental, and physical) and safety reasons. When the baby refuses to listen do not show any happiness yet show no anger, just slight disappointment. This will help the infant to discern what you do and do not approve. Help it to gradually develop a sense of good and bad, right and wrong. A baby should never be exposed to portrayals of anger, horror, the uncanny, and violence from movies, TV, or other visual mediums. By the way neither should you expose yourself to such things. This would be counterproductive to good nurturing, for both you and the baby.

What the baby hears is the next important aspect of its development for you to consider. It is most important for you, the parent, to govern how you speak to the child, but it is also important that the environment around the child is also beneficial for good nurturing. Read, sing, and talk to it often to help the baby intellectually and teach it communication skills, both listening and speech. Angry speech and loud sounds should be avoided within hearing range of any baby. Sounds that are unnerving or disturbing should also be prevented around an infant child. The tone and inflection in your voice has an affect on the child as it grows and learns. The baby should feel and sense the warmth and love in your calming and reassuring voice. As the baby attempts to talk by making sounds respond by talking to it, as if you are communicating back and forth. This pleases the baby and introduces it to the dynamics of a conversation, which is a dialog. Nurturing an infant involves providing the most pleasant experiences for the baby. Things that are pleasurable to the eyes, ears, smell, touch, and taste, provide the most nurturing environment for any child. The baby will develop and grow associating your nurturing it with feelings of pleasure which will have a long lasting impression upon its mind and heart as it grows.

Nurturing an infant also includes the aspect of touch. Babies do well when they are handled in the most gentle of ways. A gentle pat, a soft rub, and a warm embrace is good for the well-being of the baby. Picking it up, cuddling it, laying it down should be a pleasant experience for the baby. Hug, kiss, snuggle, and play with it regularly, physical contact is very important. This helps the baby feel loved and secure as it develops. When a child grows up in love it will be more able to show love to others. Remember that a baby is learning each and every moment while it develops into a baby that can support its own weight, to a baby that begins to crawl. It emotional and mental health is directly affected by the environment in which it grows up in, so nurture it with this in mind. The object is for the personality of your child to develop to it fullest conceivable potential. When taking the sense of touch into consideration, choose toys that are made safe for babies, soft and pliable.  

Practice giving and taking items with the baby maybe even eat some of the baby’s food with it. This teaches the baby to share with others, it learns to be unselfishness. Teach the baby a giving spirit by holding your hand out for what it has, so as to teach the baby to become willing share things with others. To see if your baby will willingly give you what it has and show it appreciation for the gift without your prompting it. Watch to see if it will show you appreciation when it receives something from you, a smile, bouncing or dancing, a appreciative glance in your eye. This gives you an indication of how it is developing as an individual, as a person.

Teach the baby at every opportunity in the home and outside the home. Make learning fun and enjoyable and the baby will associate enjoyment with learning and being taught. Reward the baby and or show appreciation when the baby follows your direction. When the baby resists or does not follow your direction, give it some firm yet gentle encouragement, but be reasonable, infants do not yet know the difference between what you want it to do or not to do. For example, ask and indicate that you want the baby to come to you and show gratitude for the obedience of the baby. Babies do not know right from wrong. It is for you to gently teach the baby gradually as it grows into a child and adult.

 PLACES FOR NURTURING  In the house  Outside the house

 Sitting down (noon, at rest, relaxation)

Walking along (twilight, traveling)

Lying down (evening, sleep time)

Getting up (morning, awake time)

 PERSONAL CONDITIONS FOR NURTURING

 Evident of vigilant nurturing in how and what you feel

Evident of vigilant nurturing in how and what you think

Which becomes obvious and evident in what you say and

 in what you do toward your baby