Child development: perception and memory in infants. Baby's memory up to a year - what you need to know about it? How long does a baby's memory remember?

Of all the sense organs, vision is the most important for a person. It first begins to actively develop at the very beginning of life. Already in a month-old baby, tracking eye movements can be recorded. At first, such movements are carried out mainly in the horizontal plane, then vertical tracking appears, and, finally, by the age of two months, elementary curvilinear, for example, circular, eye movements are noted. Visual concentration, that is, the ability to fix the gaze on an object, appears in the second month of life. By the end of his child can independently look from one object to another.

Infants of the first two months of life spend most of their waking hours looking at surrounding objects, especially when they are fed and are in a calm state. At the same time, vision is the least developed sense at birth (meaning the level of development that vision can achieve in an adult). Although newborns are able to follow moving objects with their eyes, however, up to 2-4 months of age, their vision is relatively weak.

A fairly good level of development of eye movements can be noted in a child by about three months of age. The process of formation and development of these movements is not completely predetermined genetically, its speed and quality depend on the creation of an appropriate external stimulating environment. Children's eye movements develop faster and become more perfect in the presence of bright, attractive objects in the field of view, as well as people making a variety of movements that the child can observe.

Approximately from the second month of life, the child has the ability to distinguish between the simplest colors, and in the third - fourth months of the shape of objects. At two weeks old, the baby has probably already formed a single image of the face and voice of the mother. Experiments conducted by scientists have shown that an infant shows obvious anxiety if a mother appears before his eyes and begins to speak in a “not his own” voice, or when a stranger, an unfamiliar person suddenly “speaks” in his mother’s voice (such an experimental situation with the help of technical means artificially created in a number of experiments with infants).

Observing the development of children in the first year of life, Soviet psychologists N. L. Figurin and M. P. Denisova found that at about the sixth week of a child’s life, his behavior at the sight of an adult changes dramatically. If earlier the baby’s gaze only briefly stopped at an adult and quickly “ran away” to the side, now something completely different is happening: the child looks into the eyes of an adult for a long time and carefully, a smile appears on his face, he starts to walk. It seems that the child's behavior is meaningful, he is all drawn to the adult and, as it were, says to him: "Don't leave, stay with me longer." Scientists have called this amazing reaction of the baby "complex revitalization."

In the second month of life, the baby reacts in a special way to people, highlighting and distinguishing them from surrounding objects. His reactions to a person are specific and almost always brightly emotionally colored. At the age of about 2 - 3 months, the baby also reacts to the smile of the mother with a smile and a general activation of movements.

It would be wrong to associate the emergence of a revival complex in a child with the visual perception of well-known faces. Many born blind babies also start smiling at about two or three months of age, hearing only their mother's voice.

A smile on a child's face does not arise and be maintained by itself. Its appearance and preservation is facilitated by the affectionate treatment of the mother with the child or the adult who replaces her. To do this, the facial expression of an adult should be kind, joyful, and his voice pleasant and emotional.

It has been established that intensive emotional communication between an adult and a child contributes, while rare and soulless communication prevents the development of the revitalization complex and can lead to a general delay in the mental development of the child.

Further observations and work of Soviet researchers (D. B. Elkonin, M. I. Lisina and others) showed that the revitalization complex is nothing more than an expression of the child’s need to communicate with an adult, an active attempt by the baby to attract and retain an adult, to communicate with him.

The first elements of the revitalization complex appear in the second month of life. This is fading, concentration, a smile, cooing, and all of them initially arise as a reaction to an adult's appeal to a child. In the third month of life, these elements are combined into a system and appear simultaneously. Each of them acts as a specific reaction to the corresponding influences of an adult and serves the purpose of activating the communication of a child with an adult. At the final stage of its development, the revitalization complex is demonstrated by the child whenever the child has a need to communicate with an adult.

By the age of three to four months, children clearly show by their behavior that they prefer to see, hear and communicate only with people they know, usually with family members. At the age of about eight months, the child shows a state of visible anxiety when the face of a stranger comes into his field of vision or when he himself finds himself in an unfamiliar environment, even if at that moment his mother is next to him. Fear of strangers and unfamiliar surroundings progresses rather quickly, starting from the age of eight months and until the end of the first year of life. Together with her, the desire of the child to constantly be close to a familiar person, most often with his mother, and not to allow a long separation from him, also grows. This tendency to develop fear of strangers and fear of unfamiliar surroundings reaches its highest level by about 14-18 months of life, and then gradually decreases. In it, apparently, the instinct of self-preservation is manifested in that period of life that is especially dangerous for the child, when his movements are uncontrollable, and his defensive reactions are weak.

Let us consider some data that characterize the development of perception of objects and memory in children in infancy. It has been noticed that such a property of perception as objectivity, that is, the relation of sensations and images to objects of the surrounding reality, arises by the beginning of an early age, about one year. Soon after birth, the child is able to distinguish the timbre, loudness and pitch of sounds. The ability to memorize and store images in memory in their primary forms also develops in an infant during the first year of life. Up to 3 - 4 months of age, the child, apparently, is able to store the image of the perceived object for no more than one second. After 3 - 4 months, the time of preserving the image increases, the child acquires the ability to recognize the face and voice of the mother at any time of the day. At 8-12 months, he selects objects in the visual field, and recognizes them not only as a whole, but also in separate parts. At this time, an active search for objects that suddenly disappeared from the field of vision begins, which indicates that the child retains the image of the object in long-term memory, distinguishes it from the situation for a long time and correlates it with it, that is, fixes the objective connections that exist between objects.

The specificity of associative memory, which infants already have, lies in the fact that quite early they are able to create and maintain temporary connections between combined stimuli. Later, by about a year and a half, a long-term memory is formed, designed for long-term storage of information. A child of the second year of life recognizes familiar objects and people in a few weeks, and in the third year of life even after a few months.

The formation of grasping movements in a child, starting approximately from the third month of life, has a significant impact on the development of his perception of the shape and size of objects. Further progress in the perception of depth in children is directly related to the practice of moving the child in space and to the actions of the hand freed from locomotor functions. Sensory processes, being included in the service of practical actions for manipulating objects, are restructured on their basis and themselves acquire the character of orienting-exploratory perceptual actions. This occurs in the third and fourth months of life.

Infants of one year old or close to this age are characterized by a clearly expressed cognitive interest in the world around them and developed cognitive activity.

They are able to focus their attention on the details of the images under consideration, highlighting the contours, contrasts, simple shapes in them, moving from horizontal to vertical elements of the picture. Babies show an increased interest in flowers, they have a very pronounced tentative-exploratory reaction to everything new and unusual. Babies are animated by perceiving phenomena that are different from those they have encountered before.

There is a hypothesis proposed by J. Piaget that infants already have a schema prototype in the form of an elementary ability to orderly reflect reality in the form of common properties inherent in a number of similar but not identical phenomena. This is evidenced by the fact that many one-year-old children distinguish between groups of objects united by common features: furniture, animals, food, including images.

If in the first six months of life a child discovers the ability to recognize objects, then during the second six months of life he demonstrates the possibility of restoring the image of an object from memory. A simple and effective way to assess a child's ability to reproduce an image is to ask him where the object he knows is located. The child, as a rule, begins to actively search for this object by turning the eyes, head, torso.

In order to better understand what level of development an infant reaches in perception, it is necessary to turn to the concept of a cognitive schema.

The scheme is the main unit of perception, which is a trace left in the memory of a person by the perceived picture and includes the most informative signs that are essential for the subject. The cognitive schema of an object or situation contains detailed information about the most important elements of this object or situation, as well as about the relationships between these elements. The ability to create and maintain cognitive schemas already exists in infants. Older children form cognitive schemas of unfamiliar objects after looking at them for a few seconds.

The older the child, the better he learns to isolate the informative features of the perceived object and to abstract from insufficiently informative ones. In order to catch the mood of a person, children look into his eyes, listen to his voice. At the same time, they learn to conduct a targeted search for the necessary informative elements.

Memory is one of the most important mental processes. It makes learning and development possible. Memory helps the child to learn the world and establish connections between objects, events, phenomena, people. Without it, no purposeful activity is possible. The development of memory in children is interconnected with the development of speech, thinking, perception, attention and motor activity. Adults can “help” this process by understanding the age-related nuances of memory formation.

Memory development in children 1-2 years old

A one year old child lives for today. He does not remember what happened yesterday, and is not able to imagine "tomorrow" in his imagination. All his attention is focused on what surrounds him at the moment. The kid is able to distinguish familiar objects, sounds, smells, tastes, surfaces. Based on the knowledge received from the senses, he learns to quickly recognize objects around him.

On a walk and at home, show your child as many different objects as possible. Name them and talk about them (what it is, what it is, what it does). Pay attention to properties: smells good, soft, cold, ringing, red, etc. Let the baby properly "enjoy" the object under study. Numerous repetition will lead to the memorization of new words denoting the names of objects, their properties and actions.
React to everything that is interesting to the crumbs. Follow his active pointing finger, naming everything that attracts the baby's attention.
Of the toys for this age, multi-colored pyramids (in 3-4 rings), cubes, different containers that are nested in each other are suitable.

Games

"Guess"

With a child, you can play the game "What is it?" or "Who is this?" First, point to the object yourself and ask: “What is this?” After waiting a few seconds to get the baby's attention, name the object. Once the child understands that everything has a name, he will want to learn as much as possible. Therefore, soon he himself will begin to point with his finger and pronounce some sound with an interrogative intonation, and then ask a question on his own. This game develops vocabulary and trains memory.

"Names"

Since a child at this age is actively exploring his body, parents will help him in this by asking questions: “Where is your nose (eyes, hands, fingers, heels, knees, etc.)?” As you master the material, the game can be made more difficult by asking “where is dad’s nose?”,

“And what about mom?”, “And what about the boy in the picture?”. And by the age of 1.5, the baby, as a rule, will know the parts of his body well.

Development of memory in children 2-3 years old. Persistent explorers

During this period, the development of memory in children is very active: the child masters the connections between objects, their properties, signs and actions. For example, if the baby is interested in the subject, now it’s not enough to name it - you need to say what he does (swims, flies, drives, barks, chirps, etc.) From the age of 2, the baby remembers small rhymes well; knows some numbers, letters, geometric shapes, animals, fruits, vegetables, berries. On the way to the playground, you can describe everything you see.

Keep satisfying your little one's curiosity. Name whatever interests him.
Answer his questions as simply and accurately as possible.
Learn poems and songs.
Look at the pictures and re-read your favorite books over and over again.
The more activities a child masters, the more associative connections that help memorization will be created.

Games

"Secrets"

Try to bury a secret (it can be a cut out picture from a magazine, placed under a piece of transparent plastic, or a button). "Secrets" can be buried near a conspicuous tree and memorized landmarks. After some time, invite the child to find the hidden. Help only in case of great difficulty. This is how memory is trained.

Numbers and letters

The kid is able to learn numbers up to 10 and some letters. To do this, you can level the snow and, using a stick, draw numbers or letters on it and pronounce them. And for better memorization, pay the baby’s attention to the features of the letter (what it looks like), and make associations with numbers - for example, how old is he. This exercise trains memory and expands horizons.

Development of memory in children 3-4 years old. Novice analysts

At this age, the child learns to clearly distinguish the primary colors, knows the basic geometric shapes, begins to compare objects according to various characteristics: size, shape, color, quantity. And learns to select a pair according to a given attribute. Masters such concepts as "little-many", "big-small", "high-low". Can match numbers up to 3 (sometimes up to 5) with the number of fingers on the hand.

It is important that the child speaks as much as possible. To do this, ask him to describe in detail what he saw. Play “What is he doing?”, passing by someone / something or looking at pictures, ask: “What is this grandfather doing?” The answer may be: "Goes" or "Sits and looks."
Expand your child's horizons. By the age of 4, he is supposed to know the basic vegetables, fruits, berries, trees, flowers, mushrooms, animals (and distinguish between domestic and wild), birds; clothes and shoes. The kid must navigate the time of day (morning, afternoon, evening, night), know the seasons.

Games

"Repeat"

An adult shows 1-2 movements in a row, and the child must repeat them in the same sequence. The game can be made more difficult by adding difficult moves. This will develop the muscle memory of the body.

"Memory"

Prepare 10 picture cards. The child pulls out three and looks at them for a while. Then he is given all 10 cards, and he must choose from them those that he pulled out.

"Find a Pair"

It is necessary to find a pair of the proposed pictures or objects. You should also make sure that the baby is able to classify objects into groups and give them names (apple, pear and peach - fruits; T-shirt, shirt and pants - clothes, etc.).

Memory development in children 4-5 years old. younger preschoolers

At this age, it is already clear what “talents” the child has, what is easier for him. Weaknesses are also visible - what the child does not know or cannot understand and what you need to try to explain to him.

Try to determine what is easier for the baby to remember - a picture (image) or words by ear. Help memorize new information based on different senses. Pay attention to what causes difficulty.
Teach your child poems, songs, counting rhymes. Discuss different professions (name, who does what).
Pay attention to how the child remembers the rules of the game. You can learn them in advance, pronounce possible game situations. And then at the right moment, the baby's memory "does not let us down."

Games

"Why"

On a walk and at home, you can ask your child different questions. “Is it possible to swim in the river in autumn?”, “Why do they brush their teeth in the morning?”, “Why do they wear a fur coat in winter?” etc.

Opposites

The child is invited to memorize pairs of antonyms: girl-boy, cat-dog, cold-hot, etc.

Seasons

The adult describes the season, and the kid should guess and name it as soon as possible. You can complicate the game by explaining what helped him guess and how else you can describe this time of year. If there are several children, then you can play at speed.

"Guess"

Let's guess the word. Then, without naming a word, we give a description of the object, person, animal, phenomenon. For example, the sun. We say: "Big, warm, shining." First, let the baby learn to guess, and over time he will be able to choose the words he needs to describe.

Not far off at the kid entrance to the first class. And the load he expects is much more significant than in kindergarten years. And a well-developed memory can make it easier for him to adapt to school rules and master new subjects. The task of parents is to help the child develop this mechanism laid down by nature in time.

Important!

From 1 to 3 years, the leading activity is objective activity aimed at mastering the traditional ways of using things (i.e., you need to play with toys, put on clothes, eat with a spoon, etc.). It is she who has the greatest influence on the development of memory.

From 3 to 6 years, the leading activity is a role-playing game. There is a development of social norms and relationships between people, the arbitrariness of behavior is formed. Perception, which largely develops memory, at this age becomes more meaningful. The child begins to analyze what he saw and heard.

Could this be? Do kids really forget everything or do they have a protective mechanism - “blocking” of negative moments? The child's memory is selective and emotionally colored. Therefore, it is unlikely that the baby will forget you in 1-2 months, because the mother is the very first emotional stimulus for the crumbs. Yes, it happens that the children seem to be offended by their mother and after their arrival for some time they do not want to approach her. But such behavior is most likely dictated not by forgetfulness, but by other motives.

Causes of children's behavior. It can be assumed that in this case there is a reaction to the interruption of contact with the mother. In this psychological situation, 3 phases are distinguished: protest, despair, alienation. The kid perceives separation as a danger, a threat to life, and this causes fear in him. If the separation from the mother is delayed, then the baby may react with apathy, this is a kind of inhibition of mental processes due to emotional trauma experienced. Children in such situations develop psychological protection - denial. Subsequently, this can be carried over into adulthood, when a person denies alarming circumstances, drowns out internal impulses, does not recognize character traits that are obvious to others. Such features are laid up to 1.5 years.

Separation advice for parents. Compensate for parting with increased care, attention at a meeting, emphasis on hugs and body contact. Upon arrival, take the baby in your arms and swing it as if it were lying in your tummy and swinging in the amniotic fluid. Even for adults, this psychotherapeutic exercise is used, which imitates the mother's womb and a state of serene peace. You will see that after some time the stress will go away, the child's psychological state will normalize, and your emotional contact with the baby will be restored.

Child memory: People usually do not remember their childhood until 3-4 (and sometimes 5) years

There are several versions of the loss of childhood memories.

Childhood memories are vague and fragmentary due to the imperfection of the nervous system. In children, the nerve fibers are not yet covered with a special sheath that makes the transitions of impulses from cell to cell more accurate, targeted and fast. The nerve cells themselves still have few reflex connections, thanks to which the child's memory is formed. The formation of the nervous system is completely completed by the age of 7.

Another theory was given to us by Z. Freud, it is completely psychological. Freud associated childhood amnesia with the repression of impressions of a sexual and aggressive nature from the child's consciousness. Such amnesia refers only to the period of sexual development at the age of 2-4 years.

There is also a version that childhood memories are so few because of the impersonal perception of reality. That is, the child simply observes the events around him, without connecting them with his personality, without analyzing or evaluating, and therefore those episodes that emotionally affect the child or bring him new experience are remembered.

The child's memory is formed by school, and up to this age there is no need to specially train it.

The child's memory begins to "work" from the age of 3 months and gradually "works out". It needs to be trained from birth through the game, through emotionally colored images, details, with the help of the development of fine motor skills. Particular attention should be paid to the development of attention. Meaningful memorization appears in children at about 4-5 years. At the age of 5–7, the child’s arbitrary memory begins to work: when the baby can already remember on purpose, and then recall the necessary information, if he sets himself such a goal.

Until the age of 3, children usually cannot remember something outside of specific actions, so at this time it is better to play story games with them, for example, “shop”, and in the process offer to remember purchases, ask them to bring several things in a row. So children will learn to build and memorize logical chains. There are also special games and exercises for memory training.

We remember animals. This fun game will allow you to reveal your acting talents and laugh heartily. Depict how the bear walks: “A bear is a clubfoot (depicting how toptygin walks) walks through the forest, collects cones, sings songs”, how geese fly: “Geese-geese - ha-ha-ha, flew to the meadows (depict how they fly geese), nibbled the grass (we squat, we pluck the “grass” with our hands), jumped into the groove (jump)”. Then invite the baby to show how the bear walks.

Remember where it was. For the smallest, such a game is suitable - put the toys in different boxes. Cars - in one, the designer - in another, animals - in the third. Then take out one item from each box and lay them out on the table. Ask: “Which box was this item in? Put it back." Let the baby remember the right box.

For older kids, make it harder. Lay out several different objects on the table, let the baby look at them for 3-5 seconds. Then ask the child to leave the room, swap things, and remove one object. The task of the baby is to remember and name the object that is missing.

Poetry. When reading nursery rhymes, pause at the end of the lines (on the rhyme), encouraging the child to complete the phrase on his own. This is how a dialogue arises in verse and the child's memory develops well - the baby learns to memorize rhymes.

Home theater. Play famous fairy tales with children, for example, “Gingerbread Man”, “Turnip”, “Three Bears”, etc. Gradually, the little one will remember all the characters and their lines.

Finger games. Very useful for memory development. It can be sprinkling of cereals, and a mosaic, and a children's finger puppet theater - if only the baby likes it (just don't leave the child alone with small details, be close to the baby so that he doesn't pull them into his mouth).

Children's memory is better than that of adults

The memory of children and adults is different. Toddlers remember more easily, but forget faster. So any comparison is incorrect. The child's memory is involuntary, unintentional, selective and is closely related to sensations and perceptions. Therefore, kids are easier to remember something visual, bright, interesting.
Toddlers remember better with the help of tactile sensations, when they can touch, play with objects. Children sometimes confuse images of memory with images of imagination: this is how unintentional lies arise. The motor, figurative, emotional memory of the child is most developed, the verbal memory is weaker: the baby better remembers objects and pictures, emotional stories and descriptions.
Preschool children quickly memorize rhymes, counting rhymes, funny tongue twisters based on “associations”, but when the kid retells familiar fairy tales and stories, logical thinking turns on. That is why it is so important to read with your child more often.

What can slow down or weaken the development of a child's memory and attention?

Excessive interest in cartoons and computer games. The fact is that the frequent flickering of pictures on a TV or computer screen negatively affects the baby's nervous system, as a result, attention becomes scattered and the child's memory weakens. It is advisable to limit such a pastime for children so that in the future they do not have unnecessary addictions and problems with learning.

Text: Yulia Lebedeva, consultant - Svetlana Garipova, psychiatrist, psychotherapist, executive director of the Bashkir branch of the Russian Psychotherapeutic Association, head of the Center for Clinical Psychotherapy and Psychology in Ufa

In the womb

The baby begins to accumulate memories in the mother's stomach. “Science has confirmed that as early as the 24th week of intrauterine life, a tiny human starts hearing,” says Natalya Gryuntal, psychologist at the Perinatal Medical Center, candidate of psychological sciences. - And on the third day after birth, the baby noticeably perks up when he hears his mother's voice. This means that the fetus is able not only to perceive information, but also to remember it. Recognition is a primitive form of memory.” In 1986, American scientists conducted a simple experiment. They gave newly born babies to listen to a recording of the voices of two women. One of them was my mother. Hearing the familiar timbre and intonation, the children began to suckle the breast more actively. The same effect on the babies was provided by the music that the mother often listened to during pregnancy.

Anatomical features

The human brain is made up of nerve cells called neurons. A baby has more of them than an adult. But the main difference is different: in a newborn, there are no connections between individual nerve cells that are formed as life experience accumulates. This process begins immediately after the baby is born. “In the first year of life, the speed of connections between neurons is enormous. The record set at this age will never be broken in the future. This happens because the baby learns something new every moment, actively explores the world and makes discoveries every day,” explains Natalya Gruntal. He absorbs a huge amount of information, but does not remember it. Now he has a more developed right hemisphere, in which the knowledge gained is only stored. The left hemisphere, which structures information, matures later.

“But if nature itself has provided the kids with everything necessary for active “study”, the potential from birth is different for everyone. Mental abilities, including the ability of our memory, are inherited by us, says the psychologist. “However, they can and should be developed.”

Stages of infant memory development

prenatal period
From the 12th week of pregnancy, the fetus hears and distinguishes sounds.

1st week of life
The newborn gets used to the daily routine, recognizes the sounds and smells that precede feeding: the clinking of dishes, the sound signal of the bottle warmer, the smell of warm milk.

1 month
The baby learns the voice of dad and other family members.

1.5 months
The kid remembers the grimaces of adults and imitates them in a situation that is appropriate in meaning.

2 months
Remembers the experience. If one end of the ribbon is tied to a musical mobile, and the other to the baby's leg, he will quickly understand who is "conducting the orchestra." Another time, at the sight of a mobile, he will automatically pull his leg, even if the ribbon is untied.

3 months
Able to remember something, but cannot draw conclusions. So, the baby will have to re-learn how to play with a new toy, even if it has the same functions as the one he is used to. But at this age, he begins to distinguish some forms.

6 months
The baby knows that the familiar object continues to exist even when it disappears from view, because the visual image remains in his memory. In addition, the child is already aware of the difference between objects of different sizes.

9 months
Guess that words have meaning.

1 year
Begins to feel a connection between the word and an invisible object.

How selective!

In the mother's tummy, the child's memory develops thanks to hearing. And let the baby does not see the world, but he hears it and can even taste it. Through the amniotic fluid that fills his mouth and nose, he distinguishes the taste and smell of the food that his mother eats. When the baby is born, all 5 senses are activated in him. With their help, the child fixes information, the meaning of which he does not understand. At this stage, he perceives it at the level of emotions. And the baby remembers only what is useful for him to adapt to new conditions of existence, which, by the strength of the contrast, can be compared with life on another planet. Only those impressions and images that are often repeated are stored in the infant's memory. Everything else is immediately erased. For the same reason, one and a half year old babies who have changed their place of residence completely forget their native language if no one speaks it to them.

Our first childhood memories usually date back to 3 years. But why don't we remember what happened before? The famous Soviet psychologist Lev Semenovich Vygotsky established that the development of the so-called semantic memory (memory for facts) is due to the ability of our brain to structure information. There are three forms of thinking. The first and earliest is visual action thinking that babies have. A little later, figurative thinking arises, and only by the age of 7 does abstract-logical thinking form in a person. At the age of 3, thinking becomes inner speech: children, like adults, begin to think not only in images, but also in sentences. From this point on, babies can structure information and build connections between individual events. Of course, a child's memory begins to develop much earlier, but until the age of 3, only emotions or vivid images are imprinted in it. A kid can remember a scene from life or his feelings, but, being unable to put what he saw into words, and therefore give meaning to memories, he quickly forgets everything.

Two kinds of memory

Children, like adults, have long-term and short-term memory. Short-term helps us remember information immediately, but not for long. For example, you can easily remember what you ate for breakfast today, but just as easily forget about it a few days later. The baby also knows this feeling. We store important information and experience accumulated over the years in the barns of long-term memory. “Although babies have little to no life experience, they already have long-term memory. That is why some people retain memories of their earliest childhood, explains Natalia Gryuntal. “Only in children it functions in a different way.” If you ask an adult to learn a poem and remember it for a long time, he will be able to do this because his memory, as scientists say, is "arbitrary." Simply put, in such cases, he himself decides what to memorize and what not. In the child's memory, some information can also be imprinted for a long time, but not of his good will, but only because of the child's impressionability. So, for example, kids remember the melody they like the first time, and then play it no worse than an mp3 player.

In an effort to comprehensively develop the baby, many of us often lose our sense of proportion. But the perfectionism of parents can completely destroy the child's natural desire to explore the world.

The ability to count to 10, according to psychologists, is only useful if this skill can be applied in everyday life. And it doesn’t make sense to teach the alphabet to a child of 2-3 years old, because he is not yet completely ready for reading. “In order for the child’s abilities and psyche to develop harmoniously, the game must remain the main form of education right up to school,” recalls Natalya Gryuntal. You don't have to constantly evaluate your child's progress. Leave this function to teachers and society. Mom and dad are, first of all, loving parents, to whom you can turn for help and support at any moment.

7 tips for parents

1 Always give your child the opportunity to speak. Young children often tell stories in a chaotic order: from right to left and from bottom to top, starting in the middle, continuing with the ending and ending with the beginning. It's okay, over time, the child will definitely master the simple tricks of the screenwriter.

2 Help your child set up temporary landmarks. As often as possible, tell your child stories in the past tense and talk about plans for the future.

3 Discuss the story you read or the cartoon you saw. If the baby knows that his mother will definitely ask him which character he liked the most and why, he will try to remember what will be discussed in the book or on the screen.

4 Show your baby pictures. If you're planning a summer trip to the seaside, search your family album or magazine for pictures of the seascape and beach.

5 Learn counting rhymes, songs and poems with your baby. But this great way to train your baby's memory should above all remain a fun game. No need to arrange forced rehearsals and make round eyes if the baby has forgotten a few words.

6 Stimulate all 5 of your baby's senses, not just sight and hearing.

7 Play as often as possible. For example, invite your child to memorize 5 items in 15-20 seconds that you previously put on a tray. Ask him to turn away, remove one item, shuffle the rest. Now ask him to name the missing object.

Memory, which accompanies us in daily life and functions amazingly in solving any practical problems, can even irritate and puzzle individual scientists who are trying to understand its secrets. Memory is a stubborn human tool, but it is not an absolute automaton. Over the past decade, some of these facts have been severely criticized, questioned and emotionally judged, widely discussed in the media and have led to great embarrassment and disappointment. Can any human memory be completely trusted, and in particular the deep-seated memory of birth and childhood?

Heated debate between plaintiffs and defendants, between experts defending opposing sides, clashes between clinicians and researchers in scientific associations have increased the number of arguments in favor of the basic principles noted above. The pendulum began to swing between extreme positions: on the one hand, memories are sacred and true by definition, and, on the other hand, memories are even somewhat larger than fantasies and cannot be trusted. Professionals today must be prepared to accept that while memories cannot be vouched for, they can still be fairly accurate. Psychotherapists, although they are not detectives or lawyers, have learned that memory is at the root of anxiety, and have realized that it is their responsibility to help clients find the difference between fantasy and reality.

When personal memories are brought to court, they can be vigorously challenged and met with more criticism than respect. Allegations of ill-treatment, up to and including attempted murder, made by children based solely on their memory, with no other means of verification, are issues that the courts are unable to resolve. Very young witnesses present a particular challenge to the courts. Children's unverified memories are vulnerable to being distorted by adult researchers (including sympathetic but careless lawyers). They may include fantasies created with the help of the researchers themselves. Sometimes children tend to make up stories that will make your eyes pop out of their sockets! However, this opportunity should not be a reason not to listen to children. Violence against children is a disgusting reality that adults often hide or do not accept in order to protect their own interests. Therefore, children need to be listened to, but with more experience and understanding than in recent years.

There is a new assessment of the special characteristics of memories based on traumatic events. These memories can be hidden (suppressed) for a long time until the moment of extraction caused by the event, which opens the way for them to consciousness. The fact that they were for some time immersed in the depths of memory does not prove that they are false. Few people retain continuous spontaneous descriptions of their birth (although I have known such), but under certain conditions, their long-lost memories can be restored and verified. Children who have been severely traumatized may not have any conscious memory to offer. But, as a rule, they live and act in accordance with their memory, as in a spontaneous play in which everything is described vividly and accurately.

This form of memory is seen in war veterans who have faced unimaginable scenes of violence and death. Some participants in the same battles retain clear and specific memories, while others completely suppress the impressions received - perhaps for decades - and like children, these veterans "act out" their anxiety and shock in everyday life. Under the guidance of a psychotherapist, these "underground" memories can be extracted and eliminated.

My experience in hypnotherapy with many traumatized clients led me to the conclusion that "hidden" memories were usually disguised as fears. Lost memories seemed to be outside the normal field of vision. Often we try to recover some of our "lost" life in the past, but rarely can we do it up to the standards of "evidence" required in a court of law. Our personal search for truth calls for a harmonious balance of curiosity and prudence and to be as objective as possible in assessing what we have done and what others have done to us.

Longstanding prejudices against the reliability of early memory (intrauterine, prenatal, birth, and infant memory) are slowly being eroded in academic circles. The most controversial in terms of the functioning of memory, the intrauterine period is becoming clearer and clearer, ultrasound is a significant help in this, which shows psychologists that memory and learning systems are already functioning. Babies still in the womb signal that they have become familiar with the rhymes addressed to them, which were repeated daily for four weeks. In the same way, immediately after birth, babies recognize their parents' voices, musical passages, soap opera themes, news program sounds, the sounds of their native language, and tastes and smells perceived in the womb - because they are all familiar, that is, studied and stored in the memory of the preceding weeks and months.

The memory experts went on to review the primary evidence provided by two- and three-year-olds who had just started talking in recalling their birth patterns. These important testimonies, published in 1981 in the journals for childbirth educators and parents, which I welcomed in this book, have never been taken seriously in scientific circles. All this time, experts denied the memory of birth, but new generations of three-year-olds continued to prove them wrong!

Psychologists have been enthusiastic about the theory of "infantile amnesia", which was first promulgated by Sigmund Freud in 1916. This idea seemed obvious, since everyday observations of people showed that rarely anyone remembers what happened to them before the third or fourth year of their life. This view was further supported by the theories of the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, who have dominated developmental psychology for the past forty years. Piaget's ideas about the limited intelligence of newborns and its development at certain stages are only now being shaken under increasing pressure from experimental evidence. The disillusionment about infant memory is due to the work of a handful of experimental psychologists who performed about forty important, crucial experiments in about ten years. Now, finally, the theory of infantile amnesia is dead.

The main idea in medicine and psychology that made it difficult to accept any complex idea about thinking was the idea that an immature and incomplete brain could not support memory and learning. In addition, there were difficulties in testing the individual true memory of infants who could not speak. Therefore, studies were not conducted, and when evidence appeared, it was ignored or dismissed. In the face of considerable controversy, experimental psychologists have been able to prove that all children aged three, two, and one are capable of immediate and long-term reproduction of events. Infants tested at two, four and six months could recognize hidden objects in detail, their location and size. Babies can recall procedures involving a series of steps, even after a long break. And the ability to do so does not depend on their age, but on the same factors and conditions that improve memory in older children and adults, such as the nature of events, the duration of their action, and the accompanying cues or reminders. The main conclusion of this study is that infants constantly learn and remember what they should know at any given time. Their memories are not lost, but continually renewed as learning continues.

Despite the clear evidence, the belief that infants are mentally incompetent, still prevalent today, has delayed confirmation of even rudimentary intelligence in infants. But more importantly, this belief has made us desensitized to the evidence of higher perception, telepathic communication, and subtle forms of knowledge that have been demonstrated by infants and described in this book.