Looking intentionally

I was fascinated by the intense visual engagement of this infant at a lakeshore, where Anna and I had gone for a pleasure boat ride.

Most infants have only a perception of movements, familiar objects or human faces till about four months. Between four months and six months, they begin to take note of objects, children, pets, toys, places, sounds and movements, etc. Most of these experiences are in the realm of looking to store information in the visual cortex to access it when the same or similar things or events are observed later. This is an important period in the life of infants. The more they are introduced to variety of objects, picture, sights, they store more information to process it. It is an essential aspect of optimizing the visual activation of all infants. Infants who are used to exercising their sights and hearing are more alert, communicative and reciprocal in their behavior.

One important transition by the time they are around nine months of age is the ability to take in what they see and respond to it meaningfully with facial expressions, verbalization and turn taking efforts. It was this I observed in this infant in (photo), whom we noticed at the lakeshore. He was looking and following the movement of the boat, arrival and departure of people. He was intensely watching this with varying facial expressions and returning to look at his mother in between. The mother verbalized some words to him. The body posture of the infant with open palms and stretched out hands convey heightened alertness and observation. This is the most fascinating developmental process which if utilized by feeding in enough information appropriate to the level of engagement, an infant can be full of exploratory and learning instinct. 

In an era when, most adults spend hours watching TV, I am afraid that children receive less variety of visual sights, which in turn limits their developmental prospects. It is around nine months, the visual familiarization is most important to augment language development, social skills, communication skills, play habit, etc. Blessed are those parents who value this period in the developmental process of their infants that they offer variety of visual exposure  to promote their perception and interpretation!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)