American Academy Of Pediatrics - The Wonder Years: Helping Your Baby and Young Child Successfully Negotiate the Major Developmental Milestones

Congratulations! We assume that if youve bought this book or received it as a present, youve welcomed, or are about to welcome, a new son or daughter into your family. Your baby has spent the previous nine months developing in the uterus and has emerged as an infant with a limited number of reflex behaviors and an enormous desire and potential for acquiring skills in every area. Its now your job as parents to promote your babys abilities and to help your baby achieve his or her full potential.

Helping your child to acquire the necessary developmental skills is a matter both of knowing what to expect and when, and what you can do to encourage emerging abilities. The Wonder Years has been created to enlighten parents about both these matters. It covers the normal processes of acquiring movement, fine motor, mental, social, and sensory skills as well as bowel and bladder control. It looks at personality and emotions, and how your baby begins to reason and think. It also shows, through a variety of fun-filled activities, how easy and enjoyable it is to promote these aspects of development, and it demonstrates how parents can create an environment in which their child can flourish physically, mentally, and emotionally.

First pictures
Its hard not to interpret this 31-week-old fetus expression as a smile, though some scientists would say its a reflex movement. At 12 weeks gestation, this fetus not only is stepping on the surface of the uterus but he is able to bring his thumb to his mouth for sucking.

It was once thought that infants were like blank slates-born into this world with minds free of all thought, experience, and abilities. Ultrasound scanning and fetology (the study of fetuses), among other scientific disciplines, has shown this is not the case. We can now see that babies put their thumbs into their mouths to suck, reach for, and hold on to their umbilical cords, walk on the surface of the womb, and are capable of a great many facial expressions, including yawns. These actions show that fetuses are experimenting with touch sensations. Experiments also prove that they recognize and respond to music and other sounds. Today, doctors believe there is very little that separates a fetus of around 35 weeks gestation from a newborn.

Although its not possible to measure things like eyesight and hearing in the uterus, it is possible to do so with a newborn and its now been proven that babies are born with all their senses intact. As well as having a highly developed sense of touch, babies can see and hear, distinguish between different tastes, and have pronounced smell preferences.

Newborns also exhibit certain reflex behaviors (automatic physical responses triggered involuntarily by a specific stimulus) that are important to survival. Many of these remain in adulthood, such as the blink. Among the most important is the rooting reflex. This requires a baby to turn his head automatically to any touch on the cheek, and subsequent movements of his lips and tongue help him to take the nipple into his mouth. The sucking and swallowing that follow are also reflexes, as is gagging if he takes too much liquid in.

Rooting and walking
If you stroke a babys cheek or the area around her mouth, she will turn her head in the direction of the stroking and may start to suck on your finger. If you hold your baby in a standing position on a flat surface, she will lift each foot in turn.

Other adaptive reflexes, such as the grasp reflex (if you place a finger across a babys palm, he will close his fingers around it), may have been important in our evolutionary past but arent helpful today. In fact, the persistence of the grasp reflex can impede a child acquiring manipulative skills. Some reflexes, like the Moro reflex (if the head is suddenly allowed to fall back a short way, the infant throws out his arms and extends his body) or walking (see above) are useful for diagnostic purposes - their presence or lack can reveal potential problems.

In addition to crying, your newborn can make a variety of noises. For example, he may hiccup a lot. This happens because the muscles that control breathing havent perfected a steady rhythm. He also may sneeze frequently, which is generally due to light sensitivity rather than a respiratory problem, and he may sniffle, again not because he has a cold but because he has small nasal passages.

Generally, your baby will spend most of his time sleeping, although some babies are more wakeful than others. Crying is another common behavior. As you will learn, it is your newborns primary means of communication, and it can mean a variety of things: That your baby is hungry, cold or hot, tired, lonely, or frightened.

The books title reflects the fact that it is during the first five years of your childs life that he will develop from an infant, skilled only in primitive reflex behavior, into an individual who has mastered a wide range of physical activities, is dexterous, makes intelligent conversation, and is deemed ready to go to school. It is also during these years that you will often find yourself amazed and delighted by what and how quickly your baby learns.

To help you understand how your child masters a great variety of skills, the different aspects of development - movement, fine motor, sensory, mental, social and emotional, bowel and bladder control - are covered in individual chapters. Where some factor, such as play, is important to more than one area - in this case fine motor skills and social development - it is covered in both, with particular reference to specific aspects.

Each highly illustrated chapter starts with an overview of the approximate timing of events, and then covers in depth the major aspects of each skill. For example, in the fine motor skills chapter youll discover how manipulation begins with reaching, grasping, and holding, and leads to picking up and letting go until a child is sufficiently mature to draw and cut and even dress himself.

Throughout, Parental Participation features demonstrate activities that make the most of a babys acquired skills, while a variety of boxes - Time for a Check-Up, Baby Booster, and In the know - provide important information on behavior and items that aid or impede development.

A number of special features throughout these chapters focus on providing experiences for your child that can help support the development of artistic, athletic, and social skills, as well as ensuring his safety.

Two further chaptersDevelopmental Concerns and Factors Affecting Developmentcontain important information on behavior and circumstances that can affect the normal course of development. Finally, there is a range of useful weight and height charts.