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Infant stimulation includes activities that arouse or stimulate the baby’s sense of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. It can improve baby’s curiosity, attention span, memory and development of the nervous system. In addition to this, babies reach developmental milestones faster, have better muscle co-ordination and a more secure self image.
While providing stimulation activities make sure that more number of infants’ senses are involved in an integrated way. The quality and quantity of integrated stimulatory experiences provided to infants facilitates intellectual development of infants. Hence parents/caregivers must be energetic, sensitive, playful and expressive, while providing stimulatory activities by creating a multisensory environment.
The brain of the infant takes in the external world through its system of sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste that is learning with all senses.
- Feel / Touch: – It is the most predominant sensation at birth. Touch can be one of the best way to stimulate the baby. It provides contact, reassurance and relaxation. The sense of touch can be stimulated through play and close contacts, by playing with baby’s hands and fingers.
- Smell: It is also one of the sensory areas of stimulation.The mucous membranes of the nose registered smell, which has nearly unlimited variationsInfants appear to respond differently to various flavors and indicate by giving different facial expressions. Provide things to the infant that are nice to smell as well as not too nice to smell.
- Taste: The taste buds on the tongue detects four basic tastes; Sweet, Sour, bitter and salty. Give different food samples to the child depicting the above four tastes.
- Vision: Visual pathways develop in last trimester of pregnancy. During 1-3 months the child makes visual attempts through hand movements. By 3-6 months, increased visual attempts to tracking and discrimination. Give bright colored objects for visual fixation and tracking.
- Hearing: Music is a fine source of infant stimulation and relaxation.Bring the baby’s attention to every day sounds such as pressure cooker, tea kettle whistling, toilet flushing, phone ringing, dogs barking, birds chipping, operating fans, vehicles, food processing devices, television and computers. Games like peek-a-boo etc.
- Vestibular: Movement is a good stimulus. Equilibrium is enhanced with gentle rocking, dancing and swaying to music. Moving his body in different positions will help develop his sense of balance. Rock, sway and swing to help the baby sense of movement and balance.
- Oral: Oral stimulation exercises help child get used to being touched on the face and in the mouth. These exercises can also improve speaking and eating skills by lengthening and activating child’s face and mouth muscles. Hands and fingers on wet or dry cloth, child’s own hands or fabrics such as blankets, stuffed animals or clothing can be used for providing oral exercises. Tooth brush/ finger tip tooth brush also can be used. If child is uncomfortable end the programme with a positive feeling.
Materials used for infant stimulation
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Participants