The Mind of the Baby

Unleashing Your Child's Potential

By Marie-Helen Goyetche

Do you know exactly what your baby will have learned from the time she is born through kindergarten? Your smart baby will have mastered how to walk, talk and eat alone. She will master the toilet, make friends and will be able to ask questions and deduce answers.

In fact, children between the ages of newborn to 3 learn more through daily interactions than in any other age bracket. This research was published in The Scientist in the Crib: Minds, Brains and How Children Learn (William Morrow, 1999). The book was co-written by Alison Gopnik, a leading cognitive psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, Andrew Meltzoff, a pioneer in infant psychology at the University of Washington, and Patricia K. Kuhl, a well-known figure on language development.

According to the authors, one of the first things your baby will learn is to get your attention. To do this either because he's hungry, has a soiled diaper or is tired – your baby will cry.

"Roxanne will scream if she hurts herself. When she's tired she'll whine. She has a happy reaction when her mother enters the room," says Dennis, dad of 8-month-old Roxanne. "But when I get home from work, Roxanne is all ready to play. She won't let me look at anything else, she wants me all to herself."

In the process of learning this, your baby is learning about human emotion. Your baby will know how to act to make you laugh and get your approval, and will discover things that make you mad just by observing your reaction.

"Just by making eye contact, Justin knows if he can continue what he's doing," says Caroline of her 2-year-old son. "He will touch things I won't allow him to. I know that he knows he's not to touch them. He's trying to see if I changed my mind."

The way a 3-year-old child sees information, registers it and learns from it, she is learning twice as fast as an adult will. Ever heard the expression, "Children soak up information like a sponge"? Many children younger than 3 are exposed to a second language and never tell themselves they can't do it. They learn it by seeing, doing and trying.