Little as they are, babies are social beings, just like adults. Even though they can’t yet talk, they enjoy interacting with their parents and caregivers. They respond to conversation, cuddles, and eye contact, and they let you know their different needs with their cries and actions. Research shows that babies are biologically programmed to be pro-social beings. They actively pursue contact with those around them using a wide range of social-emotional, perceptual and sensory abilities.¹ Building relationships is important for your baby’s healthy development. Babies are meant to be social!

(SPECIAL OFFER: Sign up for Playful Bee’s Bee Well developmental learning program to give your baby the best start in life. The first 10,000 children enroll for FREE! Sign up today.)

How Relationship Building Starts

Your baby will start developing these Building Relationships skills during his first 3 months. He will begin to show an interest in you and other familiar adults and will respond to you in positive ways.² In addition to growing his strong feelings of bonding and attachment with you, “it is [your baby’s] desire to connect with others that motivates [him] to learn.”³

As he grows, your baby will get to know all of the important people in his life and create lasting and steady relationships with them, first and foremost with you. When you and your baby are attached and bonded, there’s a sense that you’re connected and in tune with one another. By spending quality time caring for and communicating with him, you’ll learn his daily rhythms and his different cries for feeding, discomfort, or overtiredness.² Furthermore, this attachment you build together will help strengthen your parent-child relationship as he learns to trust and rely on your care.^4,5

Building Relationships Through Attachment and Trust

Just as your close bond will help you learn your baby’s many cues and needs, he will soon learn to read your emotional cues and facial expressions in order to better communicate with you. At around 6-8 weeks, you will see him develop a true social smile. (Not just an involuntary reflex during sleep or reaction to gas!)² During this exciting time, you will see him actively express positive emotions towards you, especially during your face-to-face play time together. A social smile shows your baby’s growing communication skills. He will attempt to grab your attention and return the love you shower upon him. When he smiles, you will see him gaze at you and coo in a way that says, “Hello, play with me” or “I love you, too!”^1,6 As these examples demonstrate, Building Relationships is about developing Attachment and Trust and becoming in tune with one another.

Your baby will exhibit Building Relationships skills at this age in a number of ways: turning towards your familiar voice, smiling when he sees you or other primary caregivers, imitating your movements or expressions, and developing trust and dependency.^2,7 To best support your baby as he builds his relationship with you, it is important to strengthen his attachment. You can do this by encouraging eye contact and reciprocal back and forth communications.⁵ By building a healthy relationship with your baby, you are teaching him how to eventually care for himself and empathize and express emotions. This also develops a strong sense of confidence, self-worth, and security about the world, which will let him venture out to learn new things.⁸

Play Tips:

Do you want to know how you can support your baby’s development of Building Relationships skills at this age? It’s easy! Read on for some simple tips to incorporate into your daily play time together.

1. Make sure that your baby has a primary caregiver. He needs a dependable person whom he can rely on and bond with regularly. Parents and other caregivers provide healthy relationships that babies count on for love, security and comfort.⁸ To build a true bond with your baby, be sure to share warm physical contact with him as much as possible. This shoudl include many hugs, kisses, and loving infant massage time.⁵
2. Participate in “Parent and Me” co-playing activities. Spending quality play time with your baby not only helps to build a secure relationship with him, but it also informs you of his current developmental abilities and learning strengths and needs. Sign up for Playful Bee and try some fun newborn activities together.
3. Respond to your baby with positive words, gestures, and gentle facial expressions.The goal is to have experiences that will allow your baby to connect thoughts of you with positive feelings. Not only will he be drawn towards the warmth and happiness you provide, but he will soon start to imitate and copy your positive expressions in relating to others, such as smiling and cooing with joy.⁹
4. Talk with your baby directly and face-to-face. This meaningful face time signals to your baby that you are giving him your undivided attention so that he may have purposeful “conversations” and interactions with you. The more you communicate with one another, the stronger and deeper your relationship will become.

(SPECIAL OFFER: Sign up for Playful Bee’s Bee Well developmental learning program to give your baby the best start in life. The first 10,000 children enroll for FREE! Sign up today.)

Developmental Milestones:

Has your newborn achieved the following Attachment and Trust developmental milestones yet? If yes, check off all the skill(s) he has already mastered to date using Playful Bee’s developmental milestones tracker. It’s absolutely FREE and so easy to use, just click HERE!

• Smiles when she hears or sees a familiar adult.
• Begins to develop a social smile.

Sources:

¹Nugent, Dr. Kevin, and Morell, Abelardo (2011). Your Baby is Speaking to You. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

²Maryland State Department of Education (2010). Healthy Beginnings: Supporting Development and Learning from Birth through Three Years of Age.

³Zero to Three: National Center for Infants, Toddlers and Families. Behavior & Development. Zero to Three: National Center for Infants, Toddlers and Families. Retrieved November 1, 2013, from http://www.zerotothree.org/child-development.

⁴Sears, Dr, William, and Sears, Martha (2001). The Attachment Parenting Book. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company.

⁵Connecticut Department of Social Services. Connecticut’s Guidelines for the Development of Infant and Toddler Early Learning.

⁶WedMD (2013). Baby’s First Social Smile. WedMD. Retrieved January 30, 2014, from http://www.webmd.com/parenting/baby/babys-first-social-smile.

⁷Early Steps: Louisiana’s Early Intervention System (2005). Louisiana’s Early Learning Guidelines and Program Standards: Birth through Three.

⁸Brotherson, Sean (2009). Keys to Building Attachment with Young Children. Education.com. Retrieved November 6, 2013, from http://www.education.com/reference/article/Ref_Keys_Building/?page=4.

⁹Gellens, Suzanne R. (2013). Building Brains. St. Paul, MN: Redleaf Press.

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Playful Bee

Education Team at Playful Bee

Playful Bee is an e-Preschool that delivers inquiry-based preschool learning from the classroom to your home. Our preschool curriculum was created by our talented team of rock star teachers. With years of hands-on preschool and Kindergarten teaching experience, they've developed a high-quality preschool experience that is convenient-to-use and easy-to-teach by you, grandparents, or your nanny at home.

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