As a mom you know that the time you spend playing, interacting and bonding with your babies can have a significant effect on them for a lifetime. This is especially true during the first three years of your toddler’s life when their tiny brain starts developing. Ever noticed how the simplest gestures like singing a lullaby or holding your baby in your arms evokes happy emotions from your baby? This is because as soon as they are born they use their sense of sight, smell, touch and sound to learn about their environment. The nurturing that you provide during everyday rituals have a profound impact on your baby's reactions and development.
One of the daily rituals that you may not even realize is a great learning opportunity for your baby is bath time, and your interaction with your baby during bath time is key to this learning. The bath is a place where touch and smell contributes to your baby’s development. For example, simply talking back and forth with baby during bath time can help with language development, or playing music during bath time can stimulate memory. Bath time, therefore, is so much more than a time to just to clean your baby.
One of the daily rituals that you may not even realize is a great learning opportunity for your baby is bath time, and your interaction with your baby during bath time is key to this learning. The bath is a place where touch and smell contributes to your baby’s development. For example, simply talking back and forth with baby during bath time can help with language development, or playing music during bath time can stimulate memory. Bath time, therefore, is so much more than a time to just to clean your baby.
As a baby care expert, Johnson & Johnson India is now advancing new research that explores the science behind happy, healthy baby development. The research shows that the time you spend with your baby during bath time can be more than a time to connect and bond. It can be an opportunity to
stimulate your baby’s senses, which is critical to your baby’s development. To inspire parents like you and me to adopt healthier and happier baby care practices, they have shared findings of how touch and smell, even during bath time, play a key role in creating multi-sensorial experiences.
Actress and young mom to two kids Tara Sharma shares her baby bath time story HERE
The Positive Effects of Touch
A baby’s first emotional bonds are built from physical contact, or touch. In India giving a baby a massage is common practice but most parents are unaware of the power of touch and its benefits. The sense of touch can begin when the baby is still in the womb and a mom gently rubs her belly during pregnancy. Touch benefits can be felt immediately after birth, too. A simple but powerful way to increase the impact of touch is through a baby massage, before or after a bath. Routine touch and
massage during your baby’s formative years is instrumental to development and can lead to improved physiological, cognitive, emotional and social development. It can help babies develop self-confidence and the ability to relate to others. The consistent and nurturing touch of a parent has benefits beyond the moment.
Smell Contributes to Lasting Memories
Newborns use the sense of smell right from birth to familiarize themselves with their environment, more than any other sense. Your baby’s brain starts to make learned associations between scent and the emotional connects within the first few weeks itself. In fact, your baby can recognize you by smell alone. Smell triggers more emotionally vibrant memories than other senses. For some of us, a home cooked meal or the smell of rain might immediately bring back a happy memory. Similarly, the smell of a lotion or bath product can create lasting memories for your baby. They provide a rich experience of thoughts, memories and feelings. Pleasant smells, when paired with your loving touch, creates powerful positive memories that will last your baby a lifetime.
While bath might seem like just a daily activity with your baby, it can be so much more powerful. Bath time helps create a lasting emotional connection between you and your baby by providing an opportunity to nurture your baby’s ability to learn, think, love and grow.
As a personal experience, I have a daily twenty to thirty minutes of fun time in the bath with my babies - a seven year old and a one year old. On weekdays, this is a morning or before bed time ritual, where I use this time to talk to my elder one about her day and her thoughts and all that she wants to share with me. This is also the time when my younger one learns new words,rhymes and actions. It is also the time when the sisters splash each other with water and play with their bath toys together, bonding as a team. Weekends are even more fun, with daddy joining in too. For me, this is not just a time of cleaning up my babies or spending some time with them, it is also a great way for me to take a wonderful break in between my hectic work schedule and get back to being a kid all over again! It's So Much More....right?
- Debolina Raja Gupta
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And like I always believe in and say:
'Heal the world we live in
Save it for our children' - MJ
Happy Parenting!!!!
Be good to your little one, and to the millions of little ones out there who truly need every bit of love and compassion they can get.....Be a grown up...save the little ones.... Debolina Raja Gupta
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