The baby's first year is exciting. 365 days, 52 weeks, 12 months in which your child will make impressive progress. A year in which we will see how many hours of sleep are lost, yes, but also how the baby especially gives us many joys. These are great advances that your baby will achieve the first year.
In an accelerated way, we see how a child wrapped in affection and confidence learns to recognize us, to smile at us, to love us, to say his first words, to take new foods ... To do little or almost nothing of newborns (at least with the naked eye) , they experience a great evolution in these first months, fundamental in their development.
These are the new acquisitions in the first twelve months of the baby that represent great advances in its evolution:
The movement: a great discovery
The advancement in the baby's motor skills is most evident during the first year. From its fragility of newborn, the baby is gradually gaining strength and muscle tone. Psychomotor development in the first years of life is fascinating. Since they are born, babies are developing their motor system at a joint and fast pace, all your movements and the way you manipulate your environment.
In the motor development of babies and children, milestones can be distinguished between gross and fine motor skills practically from birth.
In Babies and more This way the baby gains weight month by month during his first year of lifeWe can say that gross motor development He is the first to make his appearance, from the moment the baby begins to hold his head. Sitting unsupported, crawling, walking, running, jumping, climbing stairs ... are other achievements of gross motor skills that, over the years, the child will acquire and learn. From zero to four months, the baby can: raise his head and keep his hands open. From four to eight months, he keeps his head and chest raised; it rolls on the belly and is supine; he puts objects in his mouth; put your hands together From eight to twelve months, he sits without help; stands up with a support; he begins to crawl, crawls, slides on the ground when he learns to overcome obstacles, which is a great advance for his autonomy; it is turned upside down by changing position when facing up; deliberately drop objects to pick up others.
For its part, fine motor development It becomes clear a little later, when the baby discovers the hands, moves them observing them and begins to try to take the objects and manipulate their environment. Every time you are more interested in the objects around you wanting to take them and manipulate them with your hands, which will favor this development. Fine motor skills will include tasks starting at four months such as clapping, the clamp's ability to pick up objects; after eight months he makes parts towers, passes objects from one hand to another; cover or uncover objects; Give a toy Later it will reach a high degree of complexity.
The first capacities corresponding to gross and fine motor skills are usually acquired simply in relation to the environment (as long as the baby has no sensory or physical problems). However, we can act to facilitate certain achievements or teach others through early stimulation exercises.
Baby's senses
The baby throughout the first year sharpens his senses in a surprising way. The first stimuli come to the effect in the womb (light, sound, taste ...) and at birth the world opens up as an exciting box of surprises. Hearing is almost perfect at birth, and what used to be gurgling and deaf, distant sounds are amplified. At first the baby recognizes the mother's voice and will soon learn to recognize new voices and sounds, initiating linguistic recognition for speech development (next section). He loves music, so we can stimulate it thanks to multiple activities with music for babies.
Unlike the ear, sight takes longer to develop: it is the least developed sense in the newborn. At first, the baby has a very short and blurred vision, can perceive changes in the intensity of the light (perceives flashes, reflections, when a light is turned on from total darkness ...) and can set contrast points. After 10 weeks there is a remarkable advance in the baby's visual ability: discover his hands. It is able to perceive the smallest details quite well, and can focus almost at any distance. Between four and six months the color vision develops and the baby recognizes objects and looks for them with the eyes, being able to see more distance. You will go from seeing just about 20-30 centimeters of newborn (enough to see mom's face to the breast) until six to seven months, when you are able to focus, follow the objects with your eyes and explore them at a distance.
As for the touchIt is the most important sense for the baby when it comes to exploring their surroundings. At birth he needs skin-to-skin contact and then he will continue to need it, to the chest, with kisses, caresses, massages, baths ... Thanks to this they discover multiple sensations. Little by little, the baby not only receives the stimuli of cold and heat, but they will begin to explore with their hands, feet and mouth everything that is within their reach.
In Babies and more The 15 greatest concerns of parents during the baby's first year (but there could be many more ...)Regarding taste, before birth the fetus already receives the flavors of the maternal diet through amniotic fluid, so it has different taste experiences. And although at first exclusively taste mom's milk, through it the baby will receive different taste stimuli, since breast milk contains hundreds of different flavors that come from the mother's diet. After six months, the flavors and textures diversify with complementary feeding.
We end with smell, which in people does not have much importance but that will constitute a source of stimuli in the baby, expanding the range of smells from birth and learn to recognize mom because they smell it.
The baby communicates: expression advances
It is a mistake to think that babies communicate only with words. Before learning to speak, they already tell us many things, they communicate in many different ways: with crying, with their eyes, with gestures ... And, while assimilating spoken language, they will use these other forms of expression to achieve understand.
From the first month and baby he learns to express himself by rehearsing crying, movements of arms and legs ... Later he begins to emit babbling and imitate basic sounds that he learns from his surroundings. The first words, which really are imitations of "easy" syllables for them and without specific meaning, such as "pa-pa", "ma-ma", "da-da". "ga-ga" ... arrive around eight-nine months. At 11-12 months, they already associate these words with their referents (dad, mom, water ...).  If there is no developmental problem, the baby will increase exponentially his linguistic ability throughout the second year. But there are certain mistakes that we should avoid if we want to help the baby's linguistic development and, in the same way, there are ways to stimulate the baby's linguistic development.
In Babies and more How and how much do children grow up? The four stages of growthAll these advances in your motor skills, in your senses, in your expression ... they give the baby great autonomy at a psychological level, because for him they are also great achievements: pick up objects, ask and understand, move freely through space ... They begin to explore the world in a more complex and exciting way, in a learning process and unstoppable curiosity.
In short, these are the great advances that your baby will achieve during the first year of life. In these twelve months, everything that surrounds the child will have a vital importance in the formation of his personality. Therefore, let's not forget that the affection, attention and all the stimuli he receives from us are fundamental for his physical and emotional development, since the child's personality begins to be forged.
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