Is your Baby Brain Smart?

Are you neglecting your baby? Or increasing their intelligence?

How to increase emotional intelligence in your baby isn’t always obvious so here is a little golden nugget of one way you could be missing an opportunity…

Eye contact is a simple but effective way to strengthen babies brain development, providing a pre verbal sense of self. This means knowing what we like, what we don’t like, and who we are, ensuring an inherent confidence within ourselves. And when we have a strong sense of self life is easier….

Intelligence achieved through eye contact sounds simple enough but sadly our little babies are experiencing less and less eye contact, so instead of a smart brain it’s unsurprisingly more about the smart phone.

One of the quickest ways to rectify this neglect of brain activity it to maintain positive eye contact during feeding, yet this is now when mothers are checking in online, missing a good 10-20 minutes of eye contact each feed!

During some feeds the mother and baby fail to make eye contact at all, as mums eye moves away from baby onto the phone.  Over a period of time this adds up to hours and hours of missed brain activity stimulation and development in the prefrontal cortex.

It isn’t intentional, however it is still a neglect to meet our babies potential. Hard as that may be to hear, it may feel like taking a bullet. However with all the will in the world, at some point we will all neglect our children, an unintended act that we must learn more about if we are to avoid.

Researchers won’t fully know the impact lack of eye contact is having on human development until the change has occurred, but predictions appear negative.

But not only do babies miss out so do mothers, when on the phone the brain is stimulated, activating a low level stress response. Where as when you make eye contact and connect, you calm the mind and meet your babies rhythm.

And you know when you do connect, I mean really connect where everything else falls to the background, you’ll get that lovely surge of oxytocin. 💓 so welcome yourself back to the here and now and enjoy a moment of calm with your babe.