1. Cuddling
   Cuddling is perhaps the activity preferred the most by newborns and infants. It is also one that grandparents like you, love. Cuddling with your new grandchild will give you the opportunity to bond, as well as provide them with much needed love and comfort.
2. Singing
   Singing is another fun activity that is ideal for newborns and infants. In all honesty, it doesn’t matter what you are signing, your grandchild will likely enjoy hearing your voice.
3. Dancing
   In addition to signing with your grandchild, you will want to dance with them. In the newborn and infant stages, it is important that you take slow, smooth steps.
4. Reading
   Reading to your grandchild is not only a fun activity that they will enjoy, but reading at a young age also has an unlimited number of benefits, in terms of education. When reading to your grandchild, you may want to use fun, character voices. Do so and watch your grandchild’s eyes light up with excitement.
5. Floor Play
   Floor play in general is a great activity for newborns and toddlers. What is nice about floor play is that you can do nothing but lay or sit on the floor with your grandchild or you can play with fun, educational toys. Toys great for floor play include building blocks and stacking toys.
6. Puppet Play
   Playing with puppets is a fun activity that children of all ages love, especially newborns and infants. You can easily purchase pre-made puppets or make your own. When playing with puppets, be sure to use funny voices.
7. Watching DVDs
   Watching DVDs is an activity that you and your grandchild can enjoy at home. It is advised that you watch DVDs, as opposed to television, as you have more options. There are DVDs that are designed for newborns and infants. These are often intriguing and educational in nature.
8. Walking
   Walking is a great activity for you and your grandchild to enjoy together. Outdoor walking is best, but you may also enjoy placing your grandchild in their stroller and taking a walk around your local shopping mall. Watch your grandchild light up with excitement as they enjoy the world around them.
9. Shopping
   Shopping with your grandchild is another fun filled activity that they will like. You can purchase a treat for your grandchild, like a new toy, book, or outfit, but honestly, you will find that no purchases are needed. Shopping is a great way to show your grandchild the world that awaits them, while completing a few errands yourself.
10. Take a Trip to the Zoo
    Visiting a zoo or even just a petting zoo is a fun filled activity that is great for both you and your grandchild. Encouraging a love of animals and learning has a number of benefits. Even if your grandchild is unable to comprehend what they see, you may be surprised how exciting the zoo is to them.

1. You cannot love, hug, kiss, cuddle, or hold your newborn too much. He needs your affection to feel safe in a world that’s all new to him.
2. This tiny person is totally dependent on you for everything in his life. He cannot survive without you.
3. Establish a routine. Your baby needs to be able to count on certain activities occurring around the same time each day. Feeding, naps, fun and affection should be a part of every schedule.
4. Sleepless nights may seem never-ending as your newborn awakens you with his cries. But time will fly by and your baby won’t be a baby for long. Treasure each moment of this experience.
5. Nobody can teach you how to be a parent. You will learn on the job. Trust your instincts. Nobody knows your baby better than you.
6. Being a parent will be the most challenging and most rewarding experience of your life. Cherish every day with your child.
7. A child is not a possession or a toy or someone to take for granted. A baby is a blessing.
8. Respect your child’s father or mother whether you’re still married to them or not. Your baby will remember how you treat each other. Children learn by example.
9. Being a parent is at minimum an 18 year commitment. You can’t quit halfway through.
10. Your life will never be the same. Respect the value of this little miracle and remember he will always be a part of you. Nothing in the world should compete with your commitment to love your child.

Resource Box – © Danielle Hollister (2000)

About the Author:
Danielle Hollister is the Writing Host at BellaOnline and Publisher of BellaOnline’s Writing Zine. To subscribe send mail to: bellaonlinewriting-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

Chapter One covered the wide-reaching benefits of reading to your baby. In this chapter, we present a few simple suggestions to help you and your baby begin a journey together that will enrich your lives. Besides the calming and bonding benefits, you’ll develop a conversational resonance through everyday ideas and events that children’s books inspire. In the very beginning you may feel like it’s a one-way monologue, but before you know it, you’ll be in a dialogue in which your baby responds to you by locking her eyes in rapt attention on your eyes, your mouth, and the book. She’ll wiggle her legs and arms, and breathe faster. In return, you’ll read more to her, and the read-aloud dance is underway with all its lifetime benefits of increased vocabulary and language skills.

1. Newborns Need a Quiet Reading Environment
As your baby makes the transition from a uterine environment to our noisy, well-lit, open-air world, many physiological changes are taking place. A newborn’s perceptual system does not screen out everything that her eyes see, her ears hear, or her skin feels. Be sensitive to your newborn’s needs by providing quiet time when she can listen clearly to your voice as you talk or read to her. When reading to your baby, turn off any competing noises, such as the television, stereo, or radio. In early infancy, it is especially important to prevent over stimulation or stress. During read-alouds, allow your baby to hear only you rhythmic voice without the disturbance of background noises.

2. Newborns are Comforted by the Sound of Your Voice
Initially, right after your child’s birth, you have a lot of leeway in what you may select to read to your baby. One parent told us he read aloud from the stock market pages of the newspaper. Since babies are mostly focusing on your voice at the outset, you could read anything aloud. However, since babies love your melodious voice the best choice right after birth might be any kind of rhymes, such as Mother Goose.

Some parents start right out with board books, such as Goodnight Moon, and note that their babies become so accustomed to these books that they continue to request them for the first year or longer. Gradually you will become aware of your baby’s favorites and select books that you know he would like. As babies mature, they become pickier and let you know what they like through their body language. Whatever you choose to read, become aware of the effect of the sound of your voice on your baby. Notice your baby’s excited movements when you read with enthusiasm or change the pitch of your voice.

3. Hold and Cuddle Your Baby When You Read
The most important thing to remember when reading a book to your infant is that you are providing love, attention, and intimacy while giving important language input. When babies are old enough to begin to choose books and bring them to you to read, often what they really want is to cuddle and be given loving attention.

When you first hold a newborn it can feel awkward, especially before they can hold their heads up. Imagine holding a book and the newborn at the same time. After a little practice, you’ll find the most comfortable position, whether it’s in your favorite rocker with a “boppy” (a donut-shaped lap pillow often used by nursing mothers) or lying next to your baby on the bed.

4. When Choosing a Book, Allow Your Baby to Be Your Guide
There is no prescription from pediatricians, educators, or psychologists recommending a list of books for each stage of a child’s early development. This is a good thing, as we have never encountered identical lists of books from parents we interviewed. Each child is unique and has his own preferences. One size does not fit all. Parents begin early with books they think their child will like and then reread many, many times those that get a favorable reaction. In each of Chapters Three through Eight, we provide detailed reviews of several age-appropriate books with tips for how they can be used to launch rich interactions between you and your baby. You can readily adapt these tips to whatever books you and your baby prefer.

Newborns benefit most from hearing your familiar voice reading poems or books with rhythm and rhyme when they are awake or asleep. After the first two or three months, your baby will react favorably by looking back and forth with interest between your face and the book, wiggling her legs and hands with excitement, or smiling happily. Conversely, if your baby is not enthused about a book she may look away from your face and the book, push the book aside, or fall asleep. By the time your baby is a year or more, she will select the books she wants you to read from the shelf, pile, or basket.

Your choice of books is not as important as making the choice to read to your baby on a regular basis. By making that choice, you will give your baby a powerful boost of language development, the benefits of which will last a lifetime. More importantly, your baby will associate reading with cuddly love and attention.

5. Start Reading at Any Page
You don’t have to finish a book, or even start at the beginning. You can go right to the part you know your baby likes best and have fun on one or more pages by dramatizing different parts with a variety of voice inflections and tones. Your baby may even want to switch back and forth between one book and another. Often baby books do not contain stories, but illustrated rhymes or labeled pictures. Skipping around the text is easy in these types of books. If there’s a story line, it still doesn’t matter if you pick and choose pages that interest your baby.

6. You Don’t Have to Read All of the Words in the Book
Sometimes you’ll find that your baby prefers that you merely point to the illustrations and name some objects, or that you make up your own words or story as you go along rather than reading what the words on the page say. Your baby will let you know. For example, when you select a favorite book for your baby, if you know from previous readings that your child prefers a certain page, you can turn directly to that page. You can read it in the way your baby loves to hear, perhaps dramatizing certain sentences or words by speaking them more loudly or in a squeaky voice. How will you know what your baby likes best? She may wiggle her arms and legs or gaze at the page with great interest. She might also look at the page longer than other pages.

For a wordless picture book, like Tana Hoban’s White on Black, you may dream up anything you want to say about the pictures of simple objects. Your baby will show you which pictures she’s most intrigued by. In this interaction with your baby the most important element is listening, observing and following your baby’s cues. Your baby will let you know what pages she prefers and how long to remain on a page. Usually, at this stage it’s best to remain on a page for only a few seconds.

7. Repeated Readings are Good for Baby’s Language Development
As soon as your child can speak in phrases some of the first words you’ll hear are “read it again.” Hearing language from books repeatedly helps children memorize it. Eight-month-olds can remember certain words that are read to them after two weeks of hearing repeated readings. Reading the same books over and over again may seem an interminable task, but the language benefits as well as your child’s joy will keep you going.

Even at birth babies have been shown to prefer hearing books that were read to them in utero. Researchers gave newborns a choice between hearing their mothers read a new book or hearing a book read repeatedly before birth. Using a sucking device, babies responded by increased sucking when they heard the familiar book read to them before birth. Rereading of traditional nursery rhymes starting at birth helps your baby identify and learn the sounds of his language. A good knowledge of sound discrimination forms the basis of later reading and writing skills.

8. Use “Parentese” when Reading and Talking to Your Baby
If you think reading to babies is having a quiet baby on your lap soaking up every word that you read straight from the book, think again. Reading to babies looks and feels very different from reading to older children. The principal difference in reading to babies as opposed to older children is the way you interrelate using your voice and a baby book. This way of talking to newborns is called “parentese.”

When parents are in intimate, face-to-face contact with their babies, they speak in a sing-songy, higher-pitched, slower, louder voice. When reading, you’ll use the baby book primarily as a vehicle to converse and dialogue with your baby using your parentese voice. You may use none, some, or all of the words in the book to have this kind of conversation.

Studies show that beginning at around five weeks, babies prefer parentese, rather than regular adult conversation. Parentese is the best way for babies to hear and learn language. Studies show that it takes babies twice as long as adults to process information. With parentese you speak more slowly so babies can hear the individual sounds and words in the stream of speech. This helps them distinguish the unique rhythm of the language spoken in the home.

Babies learn language best when parents speak with their parentese voices using face-to-face, personal, baby- directed talk. The more parentese babies hear before the age of two, the more words they’ll learn. A large vocabulary will lead to higher intelligence and academic achievement in school. Parentese aids in the process of learning the sounds, grammar, and structure of language necessary for effective speaking, reading, and writing.

About the Authors:
Caroline Jackson Blakemore and Barbara Weston Ramirez have a combined experience of over fifty years helping thousands of elementary school children with reading difficulties. They have given workshops on read-alouds to thousands of parents of babies, preschoolers, and school age children.

Swaddle
Wrap him up quite firmly in a baby quilt or receiving blanket, tucking the ends under him to make a neat bundle. It may comfort him to feel safe and secure. Carry him around in your arms still swaddled up until he seems happier, and put him down to sleep on his back without unwrapping him. If your baby is crying because of something you’ve had to do to him–perhaps he hates being dressed or washed, for example–swaddling may be the best way to reassure and calm him, and stop the crying.

Rock
Movement often comforts a cranky baby, and may put him to sleep. Rock him in your arms, and if he doesn’t quiet down, try rocking faster — perhaps 60 to 70 rocks per minute. Or just jiggle him up and down by shifting from foot to foot, perhaps with your baby in an infant carrier on your chest. Or rock with him in a rocking chair, if you have one. Or put her in her stroller or carriage and push her back and forth or go for a walk around the block.

Cuddle
Very often, this will be just the sort of loving contact your baby needs to calm down and stop crying. If he quiets when you hold him upright against your shoulder, or face down in your arms, it may have been gas making him cry. If he has been passed around for relatives and friends to hold, he may just want a few quiet moments of being cuddled by a familiar parent.

Distract
Something to look at may make your baby forget why he was crying, at least for a while. Bright, colorful patterns may fascinate him. He will often gaze intently at postcards, wallpaper, or your clothes. Faces and mirrors are also excellent distractions, and a walk around the house to look at photographs or to peer into a mirror may calm him.

Pat
Your baby may be gassy and need to burp. Rhythmically patting and rubbing his back or stomach will often calm him down and may help him to bring up gas. The feel of your hand will often comfort him when you first put him down to change his diaper, too. Try patting his chest or belly to help him calm down.

Sucking
Almost all babies are soothed by sucking, and nowadays mothers are often sent home from the hospital with a pacifier for their newborn. Obstetrical nurses have been known to use them, so don’t be afraid to try one. You might also offer your cranky baby your own clean little finger. Some newborns suck their own thumbs or fists. Your baby may not want to suck on a prop, but would rather nurse for comfort. This is ok, too. It will just help strengthen the bond between you and your baby.