Face-to-face interactions are important to your baby's development

I love this new video from Baby Signs and Dr. Linda Acredelo about the importance of face-to-face interaction with your baby. Not only is it important for your baby's emotional development, but it is also the start of turn-taking, an essential language development skill.

Baby Elizabeth
To the children in your life, YOU are the most
important thing in their universe
and the "apple" of their eyes.

These simple interactions are something that we don't even notice we are doing, yet how important they are! I learned this very early. My parents were missionaries in Swaziland, Africa, and I used to volunteer in the hospital maternity ward helping to wash the newborn babies every Saturday when I was about 10 years old. We would wash about 30 of them, so I must say, I was quite an expert at washing babies!

One Saturday I noticed that every week I saw the same baby girl in the room where they kept all the babies. She was so large that they propped her up on pillows so she would fit in the crib. I asked about her and they said that she was an orphan who had been left at the maternity ward. I discovered that she lay in the crib day after day and although her basic needs were being taken care of, the nurses did not have enough time to interact with her. She was left lying in the crib most of the day with no one holding her and talking to her. She could not smile, sit up, or even lift up her head although she was 6 months old!

I got permission and started taking her out and playing with her every afternoon after school. She had the most beautiful dark brown eyes, and I remember discovering how when we were looking at each other, I could see my reflection in her eyes. I realized that the picture she was forming of who she was was what she saw on my face and expressions! With this face-to-face interaction and a little attention, even from an inexperienced 10 year old like me, she learned to smile, laugh, lift up her head and even to sit up in the next three months.

This story had a happy ending because a lovely English family adopted her, but how sad it would have been if she did not get that face-to-face interaction and stayed immobile in that crib!

My father going to the OR or "Theatre"
as we called it in Africa. 

The entrance to our mission station in Manzini, Swaziland,
with the hospital pictured behind.