5 Ways to Interact with Baby For Growth and Development

Everyone knows that babies develop at different rates. A lot of growth and development, however, takes place during the first year. Your baby will start cutting teeth, crawling, grasping, standing, and eventually walking. The best way to encourage your baby's growth and development is to give baby lots of attention and care and also provide baby with stimulating activities. Here are a few tips to help your baby advance.

1. Encourage physical activity

By getting baby to crawl around the house following your movements you can create your own baby obstacle course and show baby to crawl over, under and around different items like pillows and toys to help boost his motor skills. You can even lie on the floor and let baby climb on you and crawl around you to help with his coordination. Even putting on some music and having your own dance party with baby can get baby to move and have fun at the same time.

2. Promote eye contact.

The easiest way to start out with baby is to make eye contact and gaze into your baby's face. Babies recognize faces very early and mom's is the first he will remember. You can also make funny faces at baby and do things like sticking out your tongue to see if baby will imitate your movements. Another thing you can try is holding a mirror in front of baby so he can interact with himself in the mirror by smiling and laughing and waving.

3. Teach hand-eye coordination.

At first babies don't understand that they can use their hands and eyes together. Developing hand-eye coordination is a challenge during baby's first year. They learn hand-eye coordination by starting to look and touch together. PullyPalz is a baby toy that provides baby with developmental benefits including hand-eye coordination and right/left brain coordination. The toy works similarly to a pulley system: when baby drops one pacifier it falls to the side and another is in view and reach. By grabbing the one in view and pulling toward mouth, the dropped pacifier comes back. Baby will enjoy watching the pacifiers move up and down as he pulls on them.

4. Read to baby.

Even if baby isn't old enough to understand what you are saying, it's never too early to start reading to baby to help him learn language. Even infants that are 8 months old can start to recognize word sequences in stories that they have heard multiple times. Sing the alphabet song to your baby and count everything as you play with him, including counting his fingers and toes. You can also point out all of the items you see that start with the letter A and move onto a new letter each week.

5. Play with textures.

An important aspect of sensory development in babies is allowing them to play with all sorts of different textures. You can let baby feel his way through the different clothes in your closet and rub your soft sweater sleeve on his cheek. Get different fabrics like silk, wool, and terrycloth and describe the feelings of each of them to your baby as you rub them on his hands, feet and tummy. You can also let baby play with his food to feel the texture of the pasta, cereal or fruit as baby also practices his pincer grasp.

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Written by Julie Tabor Thompson, Founder & President of Bounce Innovations, Inventor of PullyPalz

As a mother of two, Julie found she was continuously retrieving dropped pacifiers, because even though they spit them out, they still want them immediately! She called it "the pacifier game," and, at times, it was difficult to play. One day, she thought, 'I wish somebody would invent a ...' A what? What could make it so babies can keep up with their pacifiers? Clips help parents keep up with pacifiers, but they don't help the baby. Babies don't understand when it's behind their shoulder or around their side. As they say, out of sight, out of mind. She started by making the first prototype in her kitchen (which included melting molding plastic, an instruction manual for her sewing machine, and YouTube videos). Several designs later, the PullyPalz were born... The first ever pacifier toy that - with the help of baby's interaction - keeps pacis coming back!

Her goal is to offer unique products that make life and parenthood just a little easier, and ultimately more enjoyable. Compatible products (teethers and toys) will be coming to market soon. Julie also offers product development and consultation services for other aspiring entrepreneurs.

For more information, visit www.pullypalz.com.

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