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Remember those first couple of days after your baby is born, when you hold him or her close to your chest and gaze lovingly down into their eyes? Did you ever wonder (like I did) what exactly your baby was capable of seeing?
After a little bit of research, and finding some rather conflicting accounts, I managed to come up with a few answers that were relatively consistent among sources.
Newborn babies prefer to look at:
* Things that are moving
* Outer edges and/or contours
* Patterns, particularly those that are slightly complex
* Symmetrical patterns
* Anything resembling the human face
* Patterns involving curves.
Did you know?
· The preference for human faces is quite strong among babies, but the areas of the face they prefer to look at changes with age. For example:
- 1-month-old babies tend to look at the outer edges of the face, like the chin and hairline.
- 2 month olds tend to focus instead on the eyes and the mouth, which is something that helps them develop facial recognition of the common people around them.
· Newborns visual acuity begins at around 20/150 10/600 and they do not reach full 20/20 vision until they are between the ages of 6 and 12 months.
Can babies see in colour?
The answer to this one I am afraid is pretty unclear, and results of the different studies I have read are at best conflicting, but some commonalities that are generally agreed upon are as follows:
· The photo pigments in the eye that we need for colour vision are usually present in babies at around 3 months.
· Colour vision is fairly mature and in place by around 6 months.
Depth perception?
Again, there is some disparity in when researchers believe that babies have the ability to perceive depth. Some research suggests the age of six months, where others think perhaps as early as one month. A study done in 1999 by Bornstein and Arterberry suggests that babies dont use picture like cues on their own as a way of judging depth until they are around 7 months old.
Psychologists generally agree though (from what I have read) that by around 3-4 months, babies using the difference between the images that are projected on their different eyes.
If you are in South Australia, a good place to go for infant info (if you don't have ready access to developmental books) is the Child and Youth Health website.
Recently, I was reading through some old research and assignments that I had laying around my spare room; and it really got me thinking about parenting and how complex it is. When I think about it, I am fairly new to the game of parenting, but I like to think that I am reasonably good at it!
Not once however, have I given any thought to what type of parenting category that I might fit into or even that there could be recognised, universal parenting styles that we all fall into, and so I was fascinated when I found information to the following effect:
According to some recent psychological research, there are two major factors that determine styles of parenting, and the relationship between parent and child. These quite broad categories are parental warmth and parental control. Surprisingly, what much of this research has found is that too much of either factor can be detrimental to children.
From a psychological perspective, different parenting styles generally fall into one of four broad categories. (Trust us psychs to want to put things in boxes  ).
These four categories are: Authoritative, Authoritarian, Permissive and Rejecting/Neglecting.
Authoritarian: Summarised as Cold with control, people who parent within the authoritarian vein are those who have firm control over their children; but in a way that can be cold, and somewhat unresponsive to the child.
Often authoritarian parents will seek to dominate, and are likely to administer punishment before stopping to consider the childs point of view. Authoritarian parents are often fond of the phase If you want to live under my roof, then you will at ALL times abide by my rules.
What research shows about children who are raised in an extreme authoritarian environment is that they tend not to perform as well at school, and often behave aggressively or display large amounts of hostility. These children also report that they feel trapped or are afraid of confronting/discussing things with parents.
Rejecting/Neglecting: This style of parenting has two sub-categories; those that fall into the rejecting category, or those who are deemed to be neglecting. Rejecting parents are often hard on their children and are more actively involved in rejecting them, whereas neglecting parents often ignore their children and just do not pay any heed to the general responsibilities that come with parenting.
Permissive: Permissive parents tend to have little or no control over their children and can be summarised as being warm, yet lax. According to some research, this type of parent will often fail to set boundaries for their child, and avoid confrontation with them because they would prefer to be seen as the childs friend rather than as a figure of authority. Children that are raised in this type of environment are found to be more impulsive, less independent and confident.
Authoritative: summarised as warm with control, the authoritative parenting style is akin to the middle ground of all four parenting categories. Parenting in this style includes setting clear boundaries for children, but using more supportive methods of discipline that can involve discussion and explanation. The key here is that there is a good flow of communication. Another important factor to note about this parenting style is consistency (which as I understand it, is quite important for children).
The question is which are you? Are you a mixture of different categories, or do you not fit any at all.
NB: I neither agree nor disagree with the information in this post, I am merely reporting and commenting on some research that I read and found interesting. To create this post, I used a variety of books and journal articles; if you would like specific details let me know.
We are all familiar with social networking sites today, like MySpace, Facebook and Hi5; but how many of us actually know the fine print?
According to ninemsn today; when you give your personal information to Facebook, you have given them an 'irrevocable and perpetual...world wide license' to use your personal information.
Personally I find this just a little alarming, given that a lot of the users on these sites are minors! Now I'm not a lawyer, and I certain don't have very much legal knowledge, but I would be very curious to see as to whether a minor could be held to this sort of contract! (If anyone knows, let me know!)
What disturbs me even more than this though, is that unlike other social networking sites like MySpace, you can't seem to opt out of facebook. You can, it is true 'deactivate' site, but as the ninemsn story reported, that doesn't delete your person information, it's still stored on that giant database!
Oh and for those of you who've bothered to do the search, yes I'm aware that I happen to have a MySpace page, and no: I too didn't read the fine print... After reading this however, I am certainly going to be a lot more careful, are you?
In the last post, I discussed Encopresis and how it affects some children. This time I am going to take a look at the treatment of encopresis and some coping strategies for parents with children suffering from Encopresis.
What to do if you suspect your child has Encopresis:
[ Click here to read more ]
Parenting is a messy job. There is no avoiding that fact; it is just the way it is. In the first year, we spend our days changing soiled nappies, wiping up the occasional spills and refulxy possets or even cleaning up the splattered mess of unwanted vegetables smeared all over the fridge and not to mention the hands and face of our dearly loved child(ren). (My 7-month old son has taken to doing this recently, particularly with the dreaded pumpkin!)
What happens though, when you have gone through all of the hard work involved with toilet training, and a little later your child starts regressing and you find yourself returning to the days of cleaning soiled underpants? Well, one possibility is that your child may be suffering from Encopresis
[ Click here to read more ]
Newspaper Mama Revisited: Peter Combe in focus.
I had hoped yesterday afternoon, to be belting out the lyrics to all the favourite songs I danced around the lounge room to as a child, whilst also watching the smiles on the faces of my husband and son. Yes, I had hoped to be at the Peter Combe concert that took place at The Gov, 3.30pm SA time yesterday afternoon (I had actually organised to review the concert for Parenting-prattle); but alas, it was not to be. Instead, the afternoon was spent sweltering under a barely working fan, rocking my sick baby back and forth in my arms, wondering when I was going to get a moment to sleep
[ Click here to read more ]
Children climbing the walls, jumping on furniture, exited voices getting louder and louder as your sanity goes out of the window is Mozart making our children wild? The answer to this question sadly, is no.
[ Click here to read more ]
In the last post, I mentioned the process of synaptic pruning and the idea that synapses not stimulated by environmental input are lost. Which got me thinking about the awesome power that lies within our hands as parents we can control which connections our childs brain maintains, by the experiences and environment that we expose them to.
So after reeling a little from this thought, I decided to do a little more thinking, and a little more reading to see whether I was being overly melodramatic, or whether there was some truth in that thought
[ Click here to read more ]
Brocas Area, Neurons and Grey matter later, weve seen the structure of the brain and the central nervous system, and have a rough idea of how the processes going on in there. So now what we want to know is how does it apply to our children, and how many of these processes are they capable of?
Well on a physical level, the answer is quite a lot!! At around the fourth week of pregnancy a human embryo will fold over to form a neural tube that will later become the central nervous system (i.e.: the brain and spinal cord). Neurons then begin to form by the neural tube at around the seventh week of pregnancy
[ Click here to read more ]
We all know that a babys head is much larger in proportion to its body than an adult, and as kids get older, their bodies become more proportionate, so
whats going on inside of these large heads? Well
the truth of the matter is: there are many, many theories surrounding the area, and not one of them by itself is wholly correct, HOWEVER it is useful to know about them so that we can have a broad overview and insight into whats happening inside our cheeky little monkeys minds
.
Before I go into various theorists and what they propose, I thought it might be useful to take a look at the structure of the brain, and how it forms! (Lets face it, not all of us are roaming around with a conceptual map of the brain! J
[ Click here to read more ]
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Comment by CatherineW
on Welcome to my life as an Australian expat...