As parents, you take steps to help your babies develop intellectual ability. When you do this, they will grow up to be smart people. Children with high IQ tend to do better at school and generally in life. They will also be able to learn and understand anything they want to. There are ways you can boost your baby’s mental development, and you’re about to learn 10 of them.
1. Make Conversations With Them
One of the most effective ways to boost a baby’s brainpower is by making conversations with them. It helps their speech knowledge as well as their intellectual capabilities. After some months of the birth of a child, the child begins to attempt speaking.
At this stage, you should start encouraging the child’s speech and vocabulary. You can do this by pronouncing little words with them. Start small and increase the difficulty as they grasp and respond.
2. Breastfeed Your Baby
If you want to boost your baby’s mental development, there is no way you will skip breastfeeding. Your breast contains all the essential nutrients to help a baby’s brain.
Breastfeeding your baby for three months improves their brain development by a lot. Breastfeeding also improves the cognitive development of the child to perform better in school.
The tissue that promotes brain cell communication gains its nutrients from breast milk. The brain’s part is associated with language, emotional function, and cognition needs breast milk (1).
The longer a baby is breastfed, the faster the brainpower grows. Breastfeed your baby for as long as you can, and you will reap the rewards.
3. Show Love and Care for Them
Neglecting your baby puts a lot of stress on the baby’s brain. It is not ideal for you to let your baby cry to sleep. Suppose this happens too often, your child’s trust level for you reduces. You should be able to shower your baby with love and affection.
Give them food on time and when they are hungry and pay close attention to their needs. Cuddling a crying child may help boost its mental development.
When you do not provide your baby with food, security, and comfort, their brain records it. If it happens too often, then this will weaken the baby’s brainpower.
A good foundation for positive mental health is a response to the baby’s need, love, and care.
4. Help them adevelop a Passion for Books
Expose your babies to colorful books from an early age. It will help them develop a passion for books. Read storybooks to them. Show them colorful pictures, and even make noises to get their attention.
Having different types of books available for your babies will cost you. But it will help your baby in so many ways you can’t even imagine.
Children exposed to books from an early stage tend to grow into smarter adults. Besides, books are also fun, inspiring, and will occupy their time.
5. Let Them Engage in Physical Activity
Physical activity is linked to brain development. It is necessary to make sure your baby gets at least an hour or more of physical activity. Get them to crawl, to play, or walk. Engage them in physical activities like playing or letting them chase you around.
Physical activities get a child’s brain cells making connections. Avoid strapping them in a position in prams, rockers, or car seats except when necessary. Allow your babies to move around with freedom, under your supervision.
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6. After Teaching Them New Things, Let Them Take A Nap
It’s good to teach babies how to play a new game, sing a new song, or read a new book. But let them take a nap immediately after the exercise.
Children who sleep after learning something new remember them better. Sleeping helps your baby’s brain absorb the new learning and imbibe it.
Sleep is the period when the brain stores new information for retrieval when they need it. Sleeping after learning helps the baby develop a more robust memory over time.
7. Make Contact With Your Baby
Touch is one of the five sense organs of the human body. A baby reacts more to touch than to hearing or seeing. Babies who are rarely touched have a smaller brain compared to others who get plenty of touching. Cuddling, petting, and stroking should be second only to feeding.
You have various opportunities to contact your baby. Like when you are changing their diapers. Or when you are bathing them or cuddling them to sleep. Having as much contact and touch as possible with your child is necessary.
Do this often and see how you get to boost your baby’s mental development. Sometimes, you might be working or busy. Then get a baby strap on and carry your kid with you. That connection with you helps build the emotional and mental aspects of their brain.
8. Sing to Them
Singing and playing music to your baby helps in the development of their brain. Body motions and finger play that you prove when singing helps your baby integrate sound. Music increases your baby’s learning of language patterns, rhythms, and rhymes (2).
Most children learn the alphabet faster by singing. Apart from the development of your baby’s brain, singing lullaby lowers heart rate. It also helps to release endorphins, which decreases pain and also reduces anxiety.
9. Provide Them With Play Materials and Toys
Toys are essential in improving the brainpower of a baby. Play materials help increase the reasoning ability of babies. Trying to stack up blocks with precision help babies develop problem-solving skills.
The different ways they try to solve the problem are also good for their brains. And when the baby succeeds, the information stays in the brain to better intelligence.
Choose toys that make them interact and explore.
10. Give Your Baby a Body Massage
Stress plays a lot in the functioning of the brain. So, giving your baby a body massage helps reduce stress levels. It also will boost your baby’s mental development and promote emotional security.
Babies who get touches tend to develop into smart, confident children and adults.
Bottom Line
When the surroundings a baby grows up in are right, and the timing is correct, amazing things will happen. They will learn new languages and play musical instruments.
They will also foster athletic abilities, consciences will be well trained, and love will be absolved.
Photo credits: by Tatiana Syrikova from Pexels.
