Becoming A Father: Child Intellectual Development

In its first months a human baby seem virtually helpless. Note the use of the words 'seem' and 'virtually'. Babies may not do very much, but without the slightest effort they manage to get us, their parents, to run around doing everything on their behalf. In two decades' time we will be helping break them out of Thai or Vietnamese jails. The servitude never ends.

Child Intellectual Development

Vulnerable and weedy be damned. The human baby is an extraordinary creature, with extraordinary abilities. As well as growing, over the next year it will learn how to live. It is already amazingly alert, sensitive to its surroundings, watching, listening, soaking everything up. It is not staring at you because it thinks you are an idiot. It is trying to see what you are doing, who you are. It is acquiring knowledge. Everything is new. Everything is raw material. (All babies are writers. Discuss.)

Consider the amazing reflexes a baby is born with. The pre-smile is just one of many. Probably the most famous is the grasp reflex. Junior will grasp anything you put into its tiny hand. Play tug of war with your finger - and expect to lose. The more you pull your finger, the tighter it holds on. Already the little bleeder has the upper hand.

Some reflexes are easy to misinterpret. Stand your baby on a table and he/she will take an instinctive step forward. Does this mean Junior will walk early, have instinctive ball skills and one day play for England? Sadly not. It's just what they call the step reflex, and like most of these things it disappears after a few weeks. Put your baby stomach down on the table and, with luck, you'll witness the crawl reflex. Take your baby into the sea - on a warm day; ideally - and you will find it can swim, or at least make reflex swimming movements to keep afloat. (An image memorably captured on the cover of Nirvana's Nevermind album.)

If a baby believes it is falling, it may throw out its arms and legs in a star formation (this is called the Moro response). Most practical of all may be the rooting reflex. Stroke baby's cheek and it will automatically turn its head in that direction, looking for a nipple to suck. Fascinating to watch, although baby will start to get pissed off unless supplied with a real milk engorged breast from time to time.

The abilities of the newborn continue to surprise the men in white coats who get research grants to look into this sort of thing. The Medical Research Council's Cognitive Development Unit have shown that babies recognise their mother's faces from four days old. Again, they have no idea how this happens. A 1983 study found that some newborns could imitate an adult opening their mouth and sticking out their tongue - and they could do this when only half an hour old. (Imagine: you have just given birth, and some men in white coats rush in, pull faces at your baby, write down the results and rush out again. All in the name of knowledge.) This skill, if that's what it is, lapses after three weeks or so. Six months later the baby's ability to imitate returns as though it had never been away.

In The Father's Book, David Cohen gives a list of things to try with your baby in its first 24 hours of life. It's worth reproducing in full:

Make eye contact.
Look at your child and smile.
Tickle his or her toes.
Test the grasp reflex.
Stroke the baby gently.
Make ridiculous noises at the baby.
Watch for the baby imitating you.

If you don't find 'bonding' with your baby the most natural thing in the world - and many men don't - then treating it as art object of study may be more helpful than you know. But this sort of stimulation is what a baby is waiting for. Newborns process information as quickly as two-year-olds. Their brains are ready for everything life can throw at them, including strange men sticking tongues out at them.

Incidentally, not all of the baby's reflexes wear off after a few weeks. The survivors include the sneeze reflex (when nasal passages are irritated) and the yawn reflex (when additional oxygen is needed, or there's a boring documentary on TV). These and others will stay with baby for the rest of its life.

But as you begin to understand how much this immobile little lump can do, and its potential, you also begin to appreciate how fine a little baby's spirit is. They may cry a lot, but so would you if you had no other way of getting your needs met. The idea that babies are in some way malign or cunning - as previous generations often believed implicitly - is wrong, and has been wholly discredited. A baby needs you to look after it.

Evolution has given it instincts and some reflexes and beautiful blue eyes to help it do this. The rest is up to you. It's not the baby who is the writer, it's the parent. The baby is the blank sheet of paper, and you are holding the pen. To find out more, you can check out Child Intellectual Development.