Chapter 7

In this chapter I liked learning about the development of social bonds between a baby and the caregiver. My favorite social bond was synchrony. Synchrony is a coordinated, rapid and smooth exchange of responses between a caregiver and an infant. What I found interesting is during this development of social bonds that this happens mostly through out the early stages of an infants life. Within the first three months and as the baby matures, and during this time parents and infants average about an hour a day in fact to face play. Researchers have discovered that adults rarely smile at newborns until the infants smile at them. Which I found funny because I always try to smile at babies that are very young and when they do not respond I feel awkward, but learning about this made me realize that babies have to be a little more mature to understand your face. Another thing I found interesting is that I usually see babies imitating adults but during synchrony parents are imitating the infants. Parents can detect their babies emotions and they give a physical response, which gives the baby a message of connection. The baby can connect the internal state to an external expression. I also found how interesting life would be without synchrony. Last week in my discussion I talked about the "Still-face experiment, which they suggest in this book for an example without synchrony. What concludes is, without it, the baby cries, babbles, kicks and looks away. The baby becomes vulnerable without a facial expression or positive feed back coming to the baby. The last thing I found important and interesting is in the first year of life if a mother is depressed the baby suffers. All together, this proved to me how important it is to be active and have face to face play with your baby, because without it , it can affect your baby in a negative and emotional way.