Month 3
What can your child?
- recognizes mom’s and dad’s faces, laughs while communicating;
- grizzles and whines, cries out in protest;
- babbles, coos, makes a conversation with adults;
- gets his hands on the toys hanging above the crib;
- catches a toy and pulls it into his mouth;
- lifts his head, lying on his stomach and leaning on arms;
- flips from the back to the side;
- rests his feet on a hard surface when supported under the armpits;
- hold his head and moves it;
- finds the source of sound and light.
A smile takes more important role in conversation. Crying gradually fades into the background and becomes an explicit expression of physical or emotional discomfort. Did you know that neonatology experts distinguish more than 70 types of smiles in 3 months old babies!? Ironically, a common mother can easily achieve the same results being attentive to her child. The main thing is to maximally often communicate with your little son or daughter!
Moreover, at this age a child starts to laugh. Trilling with laughter and sincerity. At negative emotions the baby shouts loudly or angrily, especially when he is frightened, unhappy, or wants to prevail.
The kid already knows how to grizzle. It is usually caused by the fact that he is simply bored. Capricious children whimper and cry not genuinely. Talk to your child, play, take on your hands, tell a story or a nursery rhyme and his face will light up again with a smile!
As soon as the baby glimpses a sight of his mom or dad he starts joyfully babbling, cooing and uttering loud noises. Coo a bit in reply and your communication will become a full-fledged dialog with a variety of shades and intonations! A toddler usually uses the whole body in conversation, swinging arms and legs.
By the way, at the age of 3 months he is already capable of unfolding fisted fingers. And on a beautiful day the child discovers existence first of his hands, which he consciously puts into his mouth or tries to use to get rattles hanging over the bed, and then his legs. To suck on a heel, is it not great!?
One more skill develops: now the baby carefully examines the toy for a long time before trying to get it, shake, pull in his mouth. It’s as if he is pondering whether the result is worth the effort …Most innate reflexes disappear by three months, and their place gradually is taken by deliberate skills. Speaking of the conditioned reflexes, they increase progressively.
A baby not only looks up, he also turns his head in all directions in search of toys, humans, source of sound or light. Raising his chest is no more difficult to him. Now he can lie, resting on the forearms.
Many babies by the end of the 3 months period can roll, especially pushing off from the cribs’ side. They get tons of fun by kicking a ball, which you can put at the child’s feet in the crib or a playpen. At this age, babies will be happy to listen to fairy tales (especially rhymed or of rhythmic), poems, play along with nursery rhymes or “sing” along with their mother’s lullaby.
If your baby has already “discovered” the hands and feet, help him get to know other parts of the body. Show first on yourself because there is nothing more interesting than a mother’s face: where the nose, mouth and eyes are. And then touch your baby’s face. Teach your toddler to stick out tongue, puff up cheeks, smack his lips – he would be happy to repeat after you all these movements, so important for speech formation.
The child will be delighted if you will dance with him, spinning to the light, smooth tune, swaying from side to side. By the way, the baby can be a wonderful fitness partner for you: hold him in your arms while doing exercises. Beneficial for you – more load, and for him- your movements and your heart rate will be transmitted to the baby, and his muscles will work in sync with yours.
Let’s play?
Stimulate your baby to fix the stare on moving and stationary objects, encourage a longer focusing on the subject. Take a bright ball in hand. When the baby catches it with his eyes, begin to move the ball from left to right, up and down. Say at that: “Where is the ball? Look, here it is!”
Actively use toys making various sounds. Move sounding toys to attract your baby’s attention. Ring toy on the left, right, top and bottom. Ask: “Where it rings? Ding-dong! Where is it now?”
Allow the baby to do as much groping hand movements as possible. At the same time the child should see the object he touches. To do this, insert the object into your baby’s hand and draw his attention to it. The shape, size, texture of this items should be varied, but convenient for grasping. Pronounce the sounds you have heard from the baby: “Abu”, “agu”, “boo-boo”, “ah-ah-ah,” “oh,” “ga-ga”, etc.
Hide-and-seek game
Drape a scarf on your head, asking: “Where is mommy? Where’d she go? Find your mom!” Help your child if it does not work well. Reveal yourself and be sure to praise him. Now throw in a scarf on the child as if he hid himself. “Where is my baby (say his name)? I can’t find him. Where did he run?” Remove the scarf:” Oh, well, that’s where my baby!” Keep playing with the baby while it is interested, coming up with different versions of the game.
Development of the child’s movements
Child’s movements at this age are still imperfect: the muscles are just relaxing from the hypertonia. And the baby timidly and awkwardly begins to move his hands. Use this when doing exercises with him.
Encourage any child’s desire to move. Place a bright toy by the baby;s side to attracted his attention, and help the baby when he will try to reach it by gently rolling him over from back to stomach.
A “Funny hoop” game
Tie bells to a hoop. Hang them on the ribbon over the crib. Shake the hoop, so that the baby hears the bells ring and pays attention to the funny toy. Talk to your baby, stroke his hands and direct them to the toy. Gradually the baby learns to capture the bells and ring them on his own. Training the grip will help to cope with hypertonic muscles and relax the palm, being also a type of massage.
To make the palm open sooner, it is necessary to knead and massage the baby’s fingers more often. It is better to do so in form of a game. In addition to the hand movements, you must pay attention to the development of the loco motor activity(joint movements of the whole body).
At the age of 3 months the baby learns to lifts his head, lying on his stomach and leaning on arms; You can train this skill by raising highly and lowering an attractive toy in front of the baby’s face.
When the baby is awake lying on his stomach, show him something very interesting, such as a roly-poly: it will attract his attention with bright colors and pleasant sound. And the main thing is it’s smiling face. Do not forget that a baby’s neck muscles are still weak and he can not hold his head for a long time, so the duration of exercise should not exceed 1-1.5 minutes. Also make sure that he leans symmetrically on both elbows.
By the age of 3 months the baby can firmly rest his feet on the hard surface if supported by the armpits. We offer you to play a game, combining training and massage of the feet soles.
Exercise “Walking walking”
You will need: a roly-poly, a baby cream and a mat with a rough surface. Stroke the baby’s feet including soles. Apply the cream on the changing table and pour a bit of water. Hold the baby under the arms and rest his legs on the table. Reading the poem, perform sliding motion with the baby’s feet on the smooth surface.
- Walking, walking. Walking, walking.
- Hop, hop, hop. Hop, hop, hop.
- Running, running, running. Running, running, running.
- Now let’s stop. Now let’s stop.
- Tiptoe, tiptoe. Tiptoe, tiptoe.
- Jump, jump, jump. Jump, jump, jump.
- Running, running, running. Running, running, running.
- Swimming, swimming, swimming.
- Now let’s sleep. Now let’s sleep.
- Wake up! It’s time to go!
- Are you ready to go fast?
- Okay!
Now lay out a mat with a rough surface and reading a poem make the sliding steps. Carefully observe the child’s behavior. Make sure that he is not hurt, and he would gladly accept your actions. At the end of the game push the roly-poly with the baby’s feet.
To teach the baby crawling place a toy at a distance from the baby so that he can not grasp it. Help your child to approach it, pressing your hand to the soles of his feet, so that he could rest on them and push off.
