What is stimulation and why is it so important? Stimulation, the current buzz word Stimulation seems to be the be the “in” word, but what do we mean by it? Why was it not seemingly of such great concern for our parents 20, 30 , 40 years ago?……most of us turned out OK I hear you cry!!  As I scan some parenting journals I find  titles such as “Early learning…give them a head start at home…” and “How to raise a maths lover” etc. etc.  Is this stimulation?  The Oxford Dictionary explains stimulation to mean: apply stimulus, to act as stimulus, animate, spur on, excite….  I would like to pose the answer: We want our infants to reach their full potential, physically, intellectually, emotionally and socially. We read all these terms, but what does it mean in everyday language and how do we put it into action in our hectic working world? I believe that if we come back to the age old understanding of what it is to be  a nurturing parent and what the milestones of development are we will lighten the load we put upon ourselves and our little ones.  Many of us have spent hours anxiously referring to baby books to check our child is growing properly and taking great pride in finding out that our baby is doing the “right“ thing at the right  age. What we need to understand is the range of  age variation in normal behaviour! Above all we need to look at our infants as WHOLE little people. That means not just looking at their physical new skills…..the first time your baby sits alone of course is a real achievement, but what is also exciting is the one on one interaction he has had with you that aided him to achieve this goal!  You were the one who gave him words of encouragement every time he lifted his head to smile at you, which enabled him to strengthen the muscle control in his neck, which enabled him to roll over which in turn enabled him to sit up unaided etc. etc. All the encouraging sounds and smiles you gave him when you saw him pulling himself up to standing and that encouraged him to take a step forward and then another and another. Do you see how all this emotional stimulation nurtures  the physical development, which then nurtures the intellectual  development through the 5 senses: visual, tactile, smell, taste and auditory. All these stimuli work together to enable your infant to grow.  However, your child’s development  does not all depend on you! Donald Winnicott, an English paediatrician who focused on the psychodynamics of children and their families, made some fascinating observations. Parents often try to prod the infant, feeling responsible for its aliveness! Some people think of a child as a lump of clay in the hands of a potter. They start moulding the infant and feeling responsible for the result. This is quite wrong. If this is the way you feel, you will be weighed down with the responsibility, which you need not take at all. If you accept this idea  of a baby as a going concern you are free to get a lot of interest out of looking to see what happens in the development of the baby, while you are responding to his or her needs.  Winnicott likens the infant to a bulb in a window box  (scan a suitable pot plant!)  …if you just put a bulb in the window box, you know perfectly well that you do not have to make the bulb grow into a daffodil. You supply the right kind of earth or fibre and you keep the bulb watered, just the right amount and the rest comes naturally because the bulb has life in it. ……. In both the bulb and the infant there is something going on which is not your responsibility. The tendency towards life. Growth is something inherent in a baby. The baby grows and you are the mother providing a  suitable environment. If you accept the idea of the baby as a “going concern” you are then free to get a lot of interest when looking at what happens in the development of the baby while you are enjoying the responding to his or her needs.  So what can you do to encourage your baby’s developmental needs?   The physical development of each infant starts with head control and then moves down her body to the trunk, legs, feet. The more you stimulate your baby both mentally and physically the more responsive she will be and the more likely to develop her mobility skills. There is a link between when and how children learn to move and other inward developments such as speech and self expression. Encouraging movement is a question of encouraging the whole child.  “Remember your baby is an individual and each one will develop at his or her own rate” Email this article to a friend Back to Articles on Child Care...