How High Contrast Objects Aid Brain Development in Babies

The first five years of your baby’s life are the most crucial in terms of brain development. While your baby grows, the brain receives input from all five senses. This input makes nerve cells multiply. Visual stimulation is very important for the little one and contrast plays a big role here…

In the first five years of a child’s life, brain cells make connections that lay the foundation for all future learning. These connections need to be maintained through repetition and consistency, in order for the connections to be preserved. Adding colours and visuals to your baby’s day helps develop senses over a wider spectrum than in a baby who is not exposed to them.

If a baby is blindfolded right from birth, the visual centre in his or her brain would never develop and the baby would never develop vision. On the other hand, if you provide continuous visual input to the baby’s eyes, the retina thrives, the optic nerve grows, and the visual part of the baby’s brain develops exponentially.

How Your Baby’s Vision Works

Let’s understand a little bit about how the baby’s vision works right from birth. At birth, the sense of hearing is much more dominant than the sense of sight. New-born’s vision is blurred and they can only focus between 8 – 12 inches. Full term babies are able to see their mother’s facial expressions within a week of birth. Initially babies learn to focus their eyes by looking at faces. Usually, by 3 months of age, infants start following moving objects.

How To Enhance and Stimulate Your Baby’s Vision Using Contrast

1. The best way to stimulate a baby’s vision is by using black and white strips or light and dark contrasting colours. Yes, you got it correct, not various colours but high contrast objects like black and white helps stimulate the baby’s vision. It has been proven by researchers and psychologists that black and white contrasts register powerfully on baby’s retina and send the strongest visual signals to the baby’s brain!
2. You can also use “Infant Stimulation Cards”. These are black and white patterned cards which you need to hold up in front of your baby as a visual stimulation tool. They help calm and soothe your baby as well as increase concentration skills, enhance natural curiosity, and stimulate the creation of brain cells.
3. Once your baby is around 5 months, you can start using flash cards to aid learning. For this age flash cards will be from A-Z and 1-10 in high contrast of black and white. You can get them from a baby store or download it online as well. So when your baby is fully awake and alert, you need to flash each card for a second and the whole exercise should be completed in a minute. This is a very effective technique to stimulate the brain development of your child.

Consistency is the key here. If you follow the above activities consistently on a daily basis you will see a significant improvement in the visual potential of your child. Please keep in mind that teaching your infant with flashcards should not be time consuming and should always be fun for your munchkin. If you feel your baby is not interested, then try it at a more suitable time when is in a good mood.

The early years of parenting can seem like a daunting task, especially when you want to do everything right for your baby’s development. Developing an understanding of his growth and what you can do to help will ensure that your baby’s development is spot on!