Well begun is half done?

How many of us realise that this holds good for how we nurture our children in their formative years of infancy. I am sure you want your child to grow up to be a confident, happy, responsible, and friendly, be good in studies, be innovative so on and so forth.

Here are some ways to lay the foundation for these qualities in the first year of life.

To do this ask yourself what can we expect our baby to learn in the first year....

How do we understand our child?

How to help our baby and know what s/he wants?

To answer these questions just imagine how it would be if you were unable to talk, how can you let people know what you want?

How would you feel if you were left hungry, or in pain and no one to feed you or comfort you?

This is your baby who with limited communication, can express all these feelings only by crying.

To understand this little one you have to just listen. Soon you would be able to make out a cry for hunger from cry for comforting. By responding quickly to crying you make the baby comfortable and build trust. S/he realises that their needs will be met.

Start relating the cry to see whether it is a feeding time ,or does s/he need change of a diaper or is it a sleeping time or s/he wants to be rocked. May be they want to listen to you sing for them. You will know if a relaxed face is seen and they stop crying you are doing the right thing.

By about couple of months baby will smile at you expressing happiness. Soon by another few months they will coo and use gestures and very soon start to express wants by saying few words.Babies grow at an incredible speed. Each day you may notice a change which can be so fascinating.

It takes time for babies to express these feelings and learn to control their behaviour. Helping them calmly will help them to develop a calm personality. Anger, frustration shown at them will only bring in a child low confidence, suspicion and s/he may be a hostile person.

Next important skill is to build a good language skill in children. Many parents laugh when I tell them to talk to your child. They say "what is the point, my child does not understand"

How do you think babies learn to talk.They learn this when they listen to you talk to them and to others. So talk to them, sing for them, read to them on things important to them. A child understands much more before they talk. Babies start to babble first and say few words with meaning by the time they are a year old.

Help them develop their senses, with contrast colours to vision, music and action for speech, touch to develop fine motor skills.

Provide safe physical space to explore and play a lot of games for movement and fun.

Let us summaries For a sound start Respond quickly to babies cry Talk in a soothing voice use simple language and sing to your child. Play with your child; create excitement about their accomplishment with praise. Set and try to keep a schedule. Create a safe environment for the baby to explore. To know of exciting activities to do with your child and the songs you can sing and other activities read more... Track your child’s milestone and monitor growth and development till five years of age.