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Practical Tips for Boosting Cognitive Development in Babies

Primary caregivers (parents/families and early childhood professionals) are central to cognitive development in babies because they provide supportive relationships in which exploration and understanding of concepts are nurtured.

Within these relationships, infants and toddlers seek out experiences and interactions that spark their curiosity and wonder about the world. Primary caregivers can build on the natural inquisitiveness of infants and toddlers to purposefully plan for and support extended engagement with and increased understanding of basic foundational concepts. Cognitive development in babies is stimulated by these adults’ abilities to observe and follow children’s natural inclinations to learn about their world and to build on such teachable moments.  

Infant and toddler cognition includes understanding basic foundational scientific and mathematic concepts such as discovering how a pop-up toy works or listening and observing to see and hear what happens when they move a rattle. As young infants mature, they can rely upon their developing memory to help them make sense of the world. Primary caregivers can encourage, facilitate, and comment upon these early experiences to help young children begin to understand basic mathematical, spatial, and causal relationships.  

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Check out these 10 practical tips that primary caregivers can use to support optimal cognitive development:

  1. Position infants to independently explore objects – their own hands and feet, or even (your) the caregiver’s face. (C-1b) 
  2. Provide opportunities for babies to safely explore by using their senses – hearing, touching, and feeling different textures, seeing, smelling, or tasting. (C-1c) 
  3. Imitate the sounds, gestures, and facial expressions of babies to promote emerging imitation skills. (C-3a) 
  4. Provide support to young infants as they learn to control body movement and become mobile infants; for example, a caregiver can scaffold an infant’s ability to roll by laying close to him on the floor and encouraging him to roll in the caregiver’s direction with words and physical support. (C-4a) 
  5. Expand children’s exploration by describing and pointing out attributes or properties of living and nonliving things (e.g., textures, size, shape, or function) for example: Helping infants to cover their eyes and discover what can and cannot be perceived; helping a young toddler understand that a broken bone can heal but a broken toy cannot. (C-1e)
  6. Talk a lot! Talk about things that are in the environment but also things that are not present, like what their pet at home looks like or what they had for breakfast. (C-3b) 
  7. Ask a lot of questions too! As toddlers grow, encourage creative thinking by asking “what if” and “what happens next” questions. (C-3j) 
  8. Demonstrate both functional and novel ways to use or move objects and use descriptive words to explain why an action occurred (“You pushed the ball and it knocked down the tower”) or how objects can be used in new ways (“What would happen if…”). (C-1g) 
  9. Use spatial terms like up/down, on/off, and in/out to help support children’s understanding of conceptual terms. Model the actions physically if you can! (C-1j) 
  10. Join children’s play and activities, participating in response to children’s requests or cues (both verbal and nonverbal) without overly directing the play and with the goal of extending children’s interest and deepening their explorations. (C-1f)  

Learn more about remarkable milestones in early brain development.

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