The development of the senses in newborns

Even if a newborn seems helpless and completely uncoordinated at first glance, all the senses are already active. Of course, they are far from fully formed and also vary among babies of the same age. However, your child can already do more than many would assume.

This is how your newborn sees the world

Newborns can see immediately after birth. They don’t see like we adults do, but babies can distinguish between light and dark. Images may appear blurry at first, but visual acuity develops gradually and soon your baby will be able to see clearly at a distance of about eight inches. That’s about the distance between your face and your baby’s face when you’re holding them.

Babies like to see faces and track them with their eyes. All things in the background appear out of focus and blurry. This makes it easier for the baby to concentrate on what is important, namely the face. Too much movement in the background would only irritate, because your child’s nervous system is not yet able to process too many impressions at once. Babies can already follow slowly moving things with their eyes and head and fixate on immovable things. Strong contrasts usually attract your baby’s attention. Colorful things, stripes and square shapes appeal to him more than smooth, round shapes. So make sure that the toys are colorful, but don’t confuse your child by holding several cuddly toys in front of their face. Too much input can overwhelm your child.

hearing your newborn

Your child has already heard your voice and various noises in the womb. That’s why it has the ability to recognize your voice right after birth. Your child also likes quiet music, gentle rhythmic drumming or monotonous noises such as engine hum. Because that reminds your baby of the throbbing and rushing tones of your blood vessels and organs that it heard in your stomach. Your child can already distinguish between high and low voices. High-pitched noises are more likely to attract his attention. So you don’t have to feel stupid when you talk to a small child in the “Gutzigutzigutzi language”, the so-called nurse language. Your baby can already tell the difference between loud and quiet. It doesn’t like sudden loud noises, probably as much as you do.

This is how your newborn feels and touches

The sense of touch develops from the eighth week of pregnancy. This allows your child to perceive warmth, cold, caressing and pain from birth. However, your baby does not feel pain immediately because the stimuli are not transmitted quickly enough by the nerves. That’s why you have to pay special attention to your baby in extreme temperatures. Because you can’t count on him to start crying when the bath water is too hot or the walk in the snow has lasted too long. Cold is particularly dangerous because babies are not yet able to regulate their body temperature themselves (e.g. by shaking) and thus quickly become hypothermic.

The skin is the largest and most exciting sensory organ. Every touch, every caress triggers stimuli on the skin that are passed on to the brain. In this way, the nerve tracts can continue to develop. However, it is particularly important for your baby to always be lovingly touched and stroked. Your child feels a lot of warmth and security through physical contact. But also fabric books with different surfaces help your baby to further train the sense of touch. You will find a selection of exciting baby books here.

smell and taste

Your baby can smell and taste right from the start. Of course, the senses continue to develop in the months that follow. However, they are already subtle enough to favor one flavor, namely sweet. The unborn child can already taste the sweet amniotic fluid in the stomach, because the perception of taste develops after the 25th week of pregnancy.

In one experiment, the babies immediately spat out bitter and sour food, but suckled enthusiastically on a bottle of sweetened water. Even when it comes to smells, the little ones develop their preferences very early on. Smells that we would describe as pungent (like that of spicy food) are unpleasant for children and they try to turn away from the source of the smell. If you show a baby a freshly worn shirt from his mother and that of a stranger, he will always turn to his mother’s shirt. So your baby can distinguish body odors and “smell you out” without any problems.

This is how the senses develop in newborns

You can usually observe real leaps in development in your baby, and it often develops new skills overnight. These are the so-called growth spurts . In the following articles you can also find out how your baby’s senses will develop over the next few months:

Developmental status of your newborn in other areas

Get an overview of the developmental status of your newborn in other areas in the following articles:

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