Guidepost 1 How do babies grow, and what influences their growth?

• Normal physical growth and sensory and motor development proceed according to the cephalocaudal and proximodistal principles.
• A child's body grows most dramatically during the first year of life; growth proceeds at a rapid but diminishing rate throughout the first 3 years.

Guidepost 2 How and what should babies be fed?

• Historic shifts in feeding practices reflected efforts to improve infant survival and health.
• Breast-feeding offers many health advantages and sensory and cognitive benefits. However, the quality of the relationship between parents and infant may be more important that the feeding method.
• Babies should not start solid food until 6 months of ages and should not get cow's milk until 1 year.
• Obese babies are not at special risk of becoming obese adults, unless they have obese parents. However, too much fat and cholesterol intake may lead to eventual cardiac problems.

Guidepost 3 How does the brain develop, and how do environmental factors affect its early growth?

• The central nervous system controls sensorimotor functioning. Brain growth spurts coincide with changes in cognitive behavior. Lateralization enables each hemisphere of the brain to specialize in different functions.
• The brain grows most rapidly during the months before and immediately after birth as neurons migrate to their assigned locations, form synaptic connections, and undergo integration and differentiation. Cell death and myelination improve the efficiency of the nervous system.
• Reflex behaviors--primitive, locomotor, and postural--are indications of neurological status. Most early reflexes drop out during the first year as voluntary, cortical control develops.
• Especially during the early period of rapid growth, environmental experience can influence brain development positively or negatively.

Guidepost 4 How do the senses develop during infancy?

• Sensory capacities, present from birth and even in the womb, develop rapidly in the first months of life. Very young infants can discriminate between stimuli.
• Touch seems to be the first sense to develop and mature. Newborns are sensitive to pain. Smell, taste, and hearing also begin to develop in the womb.
• Vision is the least well-developed sense at birth but sharpens within the first six months.

Guidepost 5 What are some early milestones in motor development, and what are some influences on it?

• Motor skills develop in a certain sequence, which may depend largely on maturation but also on context, experience, and motivation. Simple skills combine into increasingly complex systems. The Denver Developmental Screen Test assesses gross and fine motor skills, as well as linguistic and personality and social development.
• Self-locomotion seems to be a "setting event," bringing about changes in all domains of development.
• Perception is closely related to motor development.
• Environmental factors, including cultural practices, may affect the pace of early motor development.

Guidepost 6 How can we enhance babies' chances of survival and health?

• Although infant mortality has diminished, it is still disturbingly high for African American babies. Birth defects are the leading cause of deaths in the first year; for black infants, low birthweight is the leading cause.
• Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is the third leading cause of death in infants in the United States and the leading cause after the first month. Major risk factors are exposure to smoke and, prenatally, to caffeine, and sleeping in the prone position.
• Injuries are the third leading cause of death after the first month.
• Vaccine-preventable diseases have declined as rates of immunization have improved, but many young children are not fully protected.