Understanding Developmental Toys for Babies by Brian Levitt
Children have a lot to learn, and they do this largely through play, so developmental baby toys are a fantastic way to help your child's development.

When your baby is born, their brain is wired up in a very random manner. The brain consists of millions of neurons, and hundreds of millions of synapses - the wires that connect one neuron to another. Initially the wiring is random, but as the brain gets feedback from the environment, some of the synapses strengthen, some weaken or even disappear. This is how we learn.

Developmental baby toys are designed to help build your child's basic skills. Initially this would be the senses - a baby does not know how to interpret light, sound, touch, etc., and so the brain has to decipher the mass of colour, sound etc. into something it can deal with. We do this automatically now - our brains have learnt, but a baby's hasn't. Then comes basic motor skills, crawling, walking, talking, and basic cognitive ability. Your baby's toys can help with all of these things.

In the early stages - birth to 6 months, your baby will be developing senses, and basic motor skills, so things like mobiles are great for developing sight. Mobiles provide recognisable shapes and patterns that move smoothly through their environment, that a baby can fix their attention on, and also they'll try reaching for it which helps develop motor function. Another toy that's great at this stage of development is play mats, these help develop motor skills, and the tactile sense.

In the later stages - 6 months to 1 year, the child will be moving on to more advanced motor skills, and simple cognitive function, so toys that help them learn to walk, (such as pushing and pulling toys), and toys that will engage their reasoning such as very simple puzzles, and blocks will help here.

The wrong kinds of toys for your child's current stage of development will do very little to help them - for example if you gave a puzzle to a child of 3 months, they wouldn't be able to interpret their environment in a way that's sufficient to understand the point of the puzzle, and hence it would be a meaningless toy.

So it's important to pay attention to your child's current stage of development - you should be giving them toys that will enable them to practice their current focus in development. It's pretty simple stuff, but if your child has learnt to crawl, and is now faltering on two feet, give them toys that will help them practice walking. If they're learning to talk, play phones with them. If you understand at what developmental stage your child is, you can do a lot to help them by giving them the developmental baby toys that will aid learning at their current stage.

If you're interested in learning more, please visit Developmental baby toys.

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