It is in the first year of a baby’s life that it grows and develops the fastest. Stimulation of the baby’s sensory and motor skills can only help enhance their development.   Having lots of fun interaction and playtime with your baby is a great way to stimulate their development as their curiosity to learn increases.  Keeping them entertained can also improve their concentration and focus on the task at hand, thereby developing their attention span, memory, and nervous system. Improving these areas will also enhance a baby’s movement and motor skills. Interacting with other children is also very important, so your baby can watch and learn from them and develop social skills.

Below are some suggestions to stimulate babies' senses, including smell, hearing, and touch.

Baby Massage

Baby massage offers many benefits, including strengthening the bond between mother and baby (or father and baby) and helping your baby become more aware of their body and the sense of touch.   Time can be set aside for a baby massage, or just a few minutes before bed after a bath, which can be really useful.  Attending baby massage classes is another way.  More information about baby massage and its benefits is available here.

Touch Stimulation Ideas

• Playing with water
• Swimming
• Placing some items of different textures into a box, such as wool, rough sponges, balls, soft spiky balls, cotton, and velvet
• Making them get messy with food, play-dough, pasta shapes and other things like foams
• When starting solids, give them a piece of food to play with; for example, if giving them broccoli puree, provide them with a piece of broccoli to hold and feel.
• Standing on different surfaces such as carpet, wood, sand, grass, stone, rugs, and mats

Visual and Hearing Stimulation Ideas

• Hang objects which are of bright colours and reflective off the pram, cot, or car seat.
• Let your child play with a plastic mirror or hold it up to a mirror – they will quickly learn to recognise themselves.
• When feeding your baby, look at them
• Peekaboo playing is a fun way of helping with visual stimulation
• Using noisy toys such as rattles and bells or squeaky toys
• Singing songs and nursery rhymes
• Story reading
• Chatting away to your baby – asking them questions – talking about things as you are doing them
• Musical toys

Motor Stimulation Ideas

• Tummy time is the key in the early stages to help babies' motor development – it helps to build their back, head and neck muscles and eventually crawl – try putting a rolled up towel or small cushion underneath their chest so that their arms are freed up to play.
• Place objects around them to try to reach
• Work out with your baby – our physio trainers can do workouts for mums and babies – so much fun and stimulate your baby’s development at the same time.
• When beginning to sit, place them between 2 cushions
• Place babies in different positions when playing on the floor, such as side-lying, sitting, tummy time, back, and propped up in a sitting position.
• Give babies lots of experience with movement, such as singing to them and demonstrating with significant movements.

If you have any concerns about your child’s development, do not hesitate to get in touch.  One of our paediatric physios can drop by your child's home to assess their development.  If they notice any delays, they can teach you exercises to do with your child to help.  Just drop us a WhatsApp at +65 8088 1876 or email us at hello@ptsc.sg.