1. Read a Book That Deals with Infant Growth and Development in the First Year of Life.
From Birth to Five Years
Children’s Developmental Progress
Mary D Sheridan
NFER Publishing Company Ltd
First published 1073
I chose to review this book because it is widely used over the years by students undergoing early years training. I have found this useful to refer to during my career.
The text is broken down into easy reading sections that focus on a particular development stage of the child e.g. posture and large movements, vision and fine movements. Hearing and speech, social behavior and play. There are also clear illustrations of the child’s developmental progress.
The area I found most interesting was posture and large movements from birth to six months I focused on this age group because this was the age range of the babies in my first massage group. The book describes and illustrates the movements babies have at birth and how they respond to certain stimuli. It also describes how the baby should be developing.
At three months the baby is able to lay with the head in midline. This is ideal position for infant massage as the eye contact between parents and baby is more easily maintained. When laid on their back baby lifts up head and chest and uses forearms for support.
By six months the baby laid on its back raises its head to look at feet and can lift legs to vertical and grasp one foot also stretches the arms out to be lifted. The knowledge gained from this book is useful when demonstrating infant massage has it enables the instructor to understand and observe how each baby develops at a different rate.
Having this knowledge gives the infant massage instructor information about various stages of development that can be shared with parents. As all parents will make comparisons with other children’s development as a way of beginning to understand what is happening to their own child.
The infant massage instructor will be able to offer parents support and reassurance by explaining that each child is an individual and will
Children’s Developmental Progress
Mary D Sheridan
NFER Publishing Company Ltd
First published 1073
I chose to review this book because it is widely used over the years by students undergoing early years training. I have found this useful to refer to during my career.
The text is broken down into easy reading sections that focus on a particular development stage of the child e.g. posture and large movements, vision and fine movements. Hearing and speech, social behavior and play. There are also clear illustrations of the child’s developmental progress.
The area I found most interesting was posture and large movements from birth to six months I focused on this age group because this was the age range of the babies in my first massage group. The book describes and illustrates the movements babies have at birth and how they respond to certain stimuli. It also describes how the baby should be developing.
At three months the baby is able to lay with the head in midline. This is ideal position for infant massage as the eye contact between parents and baby is more easily maintained. When laid on their back baby lifts up head and chest and uses forearms for support.
By six months the baby laid on its back raises its head to look at feet and can lift legs to vertical and grasp one foot also stretches the arms out to be lifted. The knowledge gained from this book is useful when demonstrating infant massage has it enables the instructor to understand and observe how each baby develops at a different rate.
Having this knowledge gives the infant massage instructor information about various stages of development that can be shared with parents. As all parents will make comparisons with other children’s development as a way of beginning to understand what is happening to their own child.
The infant massage instructor will be able to offer parents support and reassurance by explaining that each child is an individual and will