- Mom on the Clock
- Posts
- Why your baby needs you more than screens
Why your baby needs you more than screens
Eye contact is the original Wi-Fi connection
Eliana Savitsky
August 21, 2025
✨ Hey there!
In a world filled with screens, gadgets, and endless distractions, one of the most powerful tools for your child’s development is something wonderfully simple: your face.
From the very beginning, babies are wired to seek out human faces. Looking at you, studying your expressions, copying your movements—all of this builds the foundation for communication, bonding, emotional regulation, and even motor skills. Face-to-face interactions light up more of your child’s brain than any toy or app ever could.
✨ First Things First: Quick Wins for You
Here are a few face-to-face favorites that make connection fun and easy:
Baby-safe mirrors → Perfect for floor play and visual engagement.
Finger puppets → Great for storytelling right in front of your little one.
Board books with faces → Babies love seeing faces—real and illustrated.
Why Face-to-Face Matters (OT Lens)
When my baby was a newborn, I’d hold him close and exaggerate silly expressions—big smiles, wide eyes, puffed-out cheeks. He couldn’t do much yet, but he’d stare with absolute fascination. One day, I stuck my tongue out, and he copied me back for the very first time. It was such a small moment, but it reminded me that kids don’t need anything fancy—they just need us.
From day one, babies are wired to seek out human faces. Long before they can talk or crawl, they study your eyes, your mouth, your expressions. They watch how your eyebrows raise when you’re surprised, how your lips curl when you smile, and how your voice matches the picture in front of them. These tiny moments—just you and your baby looking at each other—do more for their brain, body, and emotional development than any toy or app ever could.
Occupational therapists talk a lot about “foundations.” These are the early skills that everything else is built on. Face-to-face interaction might look like a sweet bonding activity (and it is!) but beneath the surface, it’s doing heavy developmental lifting:
Communication: Eye contact and facial expressions are the first steps to speech. Babies learn turn-taking in conversation by staring, babbling, and waiting for your response.
Social-Emotional Growth: Your baby’s ability to calm down, feel safe, and eventually regulate big emotions starts with seeing calm and loving expressions mirrored in your face.
Cognitive Development: When you exaggerate emotions—surprise, joy, silliness—you help wire their brain for recognizing and interpreting social cues later in life.
Motor Planning: Copying small gestures like sticking out tongues, clapping hands, or blowing kisses strengthens coordination and prepares them for fine motor skills.
Attention & Bonding: These small, daily moments of connection teach your child how to focus, engage, and feel secure.
In short, your face is the ultimate multi-sensory learning tool—it stimulates vision, hearing, language, motor skills, and emotion all at once.
Wrapping Up for Today
So much of parenting feels like juggling gear, toys, and endless tips—but don’t forget: your face is the best developmental tool you already own. Every smile, silly face, and shared laugh builds your child’s communication, emotional resilience, and connection to you.
Here’s to making faces (and making memories). 💛
— Eliana
|
Reply