What newborns can see

Muffle the light: the newborn came. As if hitting from a dark room in a flooded light, the newborn squinted. Add this swollen eyelids to this increased light sensitivity, and the world may not seem so distinct in the first few hours. As another shield from the light, the pupil of the newborn in the first week or two is usually somewhat narrower than normal. In a few minutes or an hour after the birth, most of the newborns look at the world with wide-open eyes, with interest.

In the early days, except for the fleeting moments of opening the

eye, newborns keep their eyelids closed. This can lead to despair of parents trying to establish eye contact. Try this method of opening the eyes: keep your child in front of you, with one hand holding his head, and the other ass, about twenty or twenty-five centimeters from your eyes. Starting from the waist, tilt it gently about 120 ° and suddenly stop. This rotational motion makes the child reflectively open his eyes. Another method is to support the baby's head, gently lift it from the recumbent into a sitting position.

Newborns see;they just can not see far. Most clearly they see at a distance of 20-25 cm, which, oddly enough, coincides with the usual distance from the eyes to the eyes when breastfeeding. Look into the clear eyes of your child when he is in a state of calm vigilance. Keep it in front of your face, placing eye contact in the eye at a distance of about 20-25 cm. Pushing the child away from yourself or drawing him to yourself, thereby increasing or decreasing this intimate distance - the distance at which the child's attention is best kept -attention to how the child looks away and loses interest, because your image becomes more vague.

What newborns like to see

Here's a hint: this object has round contours, contrasting pattern and clear protrusions. No, it's not the chest, but you're close. One more clue. It moves, blinks and smiles. Newborns like to look at faces, especially one familiar. Give him yours. There is something uniquely attractive in the arrangement of features on the face. The researchers showed forty newborns at the average age of nine minutes four different diagrams. The children turned their heads, eyes and showed interest in the drawing, in which the parts of the face were depicted correctly. To the drawings, on which the facial features were confused, they showed less interest. If you play the game "Whose face is better", the father can win. Because of the preference for contrast( light and dark), infants usually pay more attention to men's faces, especially if they have beards or mustaches. Although the parental face will always be the best magnet for the eyes for a young child, the next in the list of preferences are black and white portraits or photographs of human faces, as well as black and white contrast patterns such as chess cells, stripes and circles.

Newborns are very picky in choosing what to look at. If you usually do not wear glasses and suddenly put them on or if your

child is accustomed to seeing you wearing glasses, and you took them off, he can look at you puzzled and turn away, as if thinking: "What's wrong with this picture?" This is a visual perceptionindicates that even a newborn is able to store in his visual memory familiar images. The newborn is programmed to pay attention to the human face from birth.

Child restrains

"Sometimes his eyes are mowed, sometimes not," parents often say. Periodic mowing is normal. If the eyes mow constantly, needs medical attention. Eyes may not be constantly directed right up to the age of about six months. Since newborns do not use both eyes together, images do not fall on the same retina in both eyes. This explains the poor perception of depth. As the child learns to keep his head and eyes fixed, the images become clearer, the perception of depth improves, and the child begins to hold a longer look at your eyes. This binocular vision begins to develop at the age of about six weeks and is set to four months.

How to determine if the child has a strabismus

Because some children have a wide bridge of the nose, you can almost not see the whites of the eyes. As a result, the child's eyes may seem oblique to you, although in reality they are not. That's how to determine exactly. Shine in the child's eyes with a flashlight( or take a photo with a flash).Pay attention to the place where the light is reflected, a white point in the eyes of the child. It should be in the same place in both eyes. If the point is located in the middle of the pupil in one eye, and in the other is displaced from the center, one eye or both have lazy muscles. Report on your discovery to the doctor. This is how your doctor checks the eyes of the child during a routine examination.

A long look at

In the first few weeks your child's eyes run over your face and rarely stop or look right into your eyes longer than a second or two, despite all your pleas: "Well, look at me."Although at the age of about two weeks your child begins to hold a better eye, be prepared for the fact that his eyes are still most of the time going. For a long time to look at a stationary object or watch the view of a traveling person - this is not given to a child until about four months old.

How to hold the child's eye

• Plant the child or keep it upright.

• Wait until the child is in a state of calm vigilance.

• Keep the object or person about twenty-five centimeters from the child's face.

• Use expressive facial expressions( open your eyes and mouth), while slowly, rhythmically, exaggeratingly talking with the child.

Sometimes, if a newborn child is in a calm, interested state and in a state of calm alertness, a person or other object can keep his attention for a few minutes. Try to play the peepers: keep the child at his individual clear visibility distance( which you can determine by gradually bringing the child to him and pushing him away from you until you find the distance at which the child's attention is best kept - usually about 20-33 cm).

Children are more tired from visual games when they lie on the back, but they become more attentive if they are given a vertical position.