Know your baby I

Bits of Knowledge About Babies

In order to Know your baby, you have to observe the following aspects:

• Care for the baby with love;

• The baby’s intelligence manifests before language and thought;

• The baby assimilates and adapts until accustomed. Example: The baby repeatedly tries to place keys in lock and leaves it only once s/he has learned how;

• Affection: the baby learns through tenderness;

• There is no such thing as a purely intellectual action. Affection plus intelligence are indissociated;

• The baby is always making new constructions even while s/he reads;

• “Teach” the baby all about the environment in which s/he lives, “teaching” her also to read, to listen, to speak, and to write;

• We do not teach the babies; we intermediate. It is the baby who learns;

• At each stage of her development, the baby requires the means to intervene competently in her world around and within;

• Play and playthings are the baby’s main development medium. S/he learns with the culture s/he lives in;

• Every time the baby learns, s/he´s developing;

• One stage of a child’s development may be similar to another’s but the individual systems of learning are different;

• Observe the baby playing and give her what s/he needs;

• The child lives a new world everyday and needs us to show it to her;

• Development Psychology’s most recent positions have considered the baby as an active subject from birth;

• When the baby’s born, s/he possesses all the potential qualities of a human being. But we cannot treat her as an adult. We have only to mediate the development of these qualities.

Eliane Leao, PhD

2006 Know your baby