Since the work of Rene Spitz and John Bowlby on the profound importance of the baby's attachment to and interaction with the mother, research has continued to focus on and to contribute more and more insights into the many subtle aspects of this relationship.

By contrast, there has been less attention to the baby's spontaneous response to the larger world, with its many personal and impersonal aspects. The first months and years are a time of sensory delight, discovery and wonder. The exciting, inviting world of the infant and toddler is the subject of this essay.

While we will emphasize experiences of sensation and discovery that are common to many children in the first three years of life, we illustrate our points with observations of individual children we have known. It is important to remember that each baby responds to the world in his or her own way.

And while we focus on the child's spontaneous responses to the natural and man-made environment, we cannot neglect the role of the child's caregivers in helping the baby to find comfort in the world, in encouraging or impeding discovery, in giving meaning to experience through words and sensitively responding to the child's own way of experiencing each object or event.

Finally, we will examine the infant's sensory experience in the context of his culture.

The expanding universe

The arrival of a healthy baby in the strange new world outside of the cozy dark womb brings a series of tasks: to become at home in the world and to trust it, to get oriented to its many resources for gratification, for support of growth, and to its dangers, to select and to demand what will feed the baby's individual potentialities, autonomy and capacity to cope with stress.

Babies are born with a capacity for attention to, and soon, curiosity about the objects around them--stimuli some of which help to maintain the baby's equilibrium and some of which present challenges or distress. The baby's senses and motor system are ready to respond to the tastes, smells, sounds, sights, touch stimuli and motion experiences that come his way. These would be overwhelming if the baby were not protected by the fact that at first he or she can see only up to about eight inches from his face and cannot move his body very far, so the quantity of stimulation is limited. His world expands gradually. The introduction to the new world is also helped by the fact that the baby has already heard sounds from inside the mother's body, such as her heartbeat, and from outside, such as music, and the baby has smelled and tasted the amniotic fluid around him. Sensory experience is not new.

The newborn baby who can watch a little dangling red ball cannot see a whole person. Specific experiences with mother, father or other caregiver gradually combine as he sees, hears, touches, smells, tastes different parts of each person. Similarly, the baby cannot see the whole room at first; out of doors only a small section of the world around him or her is within visual grasp. The world expands steadily with more and more experience and with maturation of the baby's vision.

With the ability to remember, the baby becomes familiar with more and more of the objects within view and in fact can get bored with the same old thing, restlessly reaching for (or "fussing") for something new and interesting. Reaching, touching, tasting, stretching to look up or around, listening; some babies' drive for stimulation seems insatiable.

Babies' interest and pleasure in new stimuli are not biologically extravagant - if there is a dearth of sensory nutrition, development is slowed or the baby may even give up and die. In a foundling hospital we visited in an undeveloped country there were no toys, no pictures on the wall, nothing for a crawling baby to explore, only one nurse for ten babies; every sort of stimulation was lacking. The mortality rate was 50%. In another foundling hospital, supposedly ideal, with one nurse for only four babies but a similar lack of visual stimuli, things to manipulate and discovery opportunities, the babies survived but with below average mental development. It is true that growth is pushed by genetic processes, but environmental nutrition is essential.

Put a three-month-old baby prone on the floor and she lifts her head to look around; hold a crying baby to your shoulder and he will stop crying, open his eyes and survey the new vista. Put a two-month-old baby in a crib with colored objects dangling from the sides and he will try to swipe at them. Or place him near a window with a sunbeam drifting in and he will watch his hand as the sunbeam shines on it.

The early years, then, are the child's years of exploring sensory and motor experiences in every area. Swooshing in mud puddles, making sand pies, drawing on the window pane with tooth paste or messing with mother's cold cream are expressions of the irresistible drive for tactile experiences. The baby and toddler stretches and turns, looks up and down, to one side and the other when something new catches his eye. He reaches up to catch a sunbeam and she stretches out her arms, the better to feel the delicious breeze. Only in unusual settings, such as Mammoth Cave, do we see adults using their bodies as flexibly as toddlers do to extend their vision. In the early years newness constantly confronts the child and his curiosity is the foundation of learning. The baby craves to see more and more.

Cognitive maps

Each baby's world expands at a different rate, depending upon the range of the baby's interests and on the pattern of his or her sensory and motor development as well as the range of experiences. At one birthday party for a year-old baby, eight-month-old Peter scampered about the new house in curiosity, while 15-month-old Alec, who could not yet walk, sat in a corner intently exploring a large picture book, thumbing its pages like an adult, to my astonishment. Many factors are involved in these strikingly different responses to the environment. Peter's slender light build combined with excellent motor coordination, proprioceptive and enteroceptive integration with visual orientation, facilitated his activity. Alec's fine coordination of fingers integrated with his visual response made it possible for him to explore the picture book with sustained interest earlier than most little boys.

As children orient themselves to their surroundings they develop cognitive maps; they learn their way around the house as they crawl from room to room. Our Topeka two-year-olds knew their way around the block and were chased by four-year-olds who watched over them. Some Head Start three-year-olds even knew the way to a nearby grocery store where they bought a loaf of bread to take home.

The baby creates its cognitive map as do birds and squirrels. The crawling baby explores the kitchen cupboards along the floor; the toddler pulls a chair to a kitchen table and climbs up to poke into the higher cupboards. Mastering the path to interesting places develops a sense of competence and independence.

As we watch three-year-olds' constructions with miniature life toys we see how they absorb the structure of their home life - rigid in some instances, flexible and dynamic in others; in still others, chaotic. In Ahmedabad, India, some children arranged dolls in a circle, sitting on the floor as is the custom for a meal.

Sequences of daily life were played out by some New York children: the routine of getting up, washing, eating breakfast, going to work. A sequence over time was the theme of one little boy's play: at three, he arranged a house, then placed a horse on a boat to go off for a trip. (His mother was an architect who designed, built and furnished houses, then after each one took her little boy on a boat trip.) Even the conversation of parents may be assimilated and visualized by a child. During World War II, four-year-old Debbie set up household toys near herself, separated the house area from distant events and organized a battle scene in that far area.

In other words, the child's inner world is developed from early experiences - what he or she does, sees, and even hears.

Attachments to things

As part of developing feelings of being at home in the world babies and children feel strongly about their possessions - their cribs, their toys, their pets. In the Topeka study, Molly was upset when she heard her parents talk about moving to another city, but she calmed down when her mother told her she could take her crib and the kitty.

The process of developing attachments to things, or canalization, extends to toys, foods, clothes, and even to the home setting. A three-month-old baby boy was restless when his parents brought him to visit us in the country. He relaxed visibly when he returned home. The attachment may even extend to familiar objects on the street. When little Al was taken to the country at the age of two, to get away from city heat, he looked around woefully, saying, "No cars, no taxis, no buses, no trucks, no wheels!"

Confinement and freedom

Babies differ in their feelings about confinement and freedom; most babies are comfortable in bassinets with soft coverings, but some active babies like Al kick off the covers as early as five or six weeks. Many babies crave contact too, and when they are moved from the cozy bassinet to a larger crib they are restless in the open space and even find it hard to go to sleep. One four-week-old baby in the Topeka study wiggled her way to a corner where she again had contact. When little Alec grew fussy in the crib to which he had been moved he quieted after we placed a large soft stuffed animal next to him as a companion.

Energetic toddlers even as young as one year old may resist confinement as Stewart did; he pulled out a spoke of his playpen and took it to his mother. In miniature life toy play at our nursery school many children broke the little wooden crib and others dramatized their resistance to confinement in their play with fences. At the same time, anxious children created protective areas for themselves with large blocks to wall them in.

Different children develop different patterns of trust and distrust in their world. Actually, it is sound for children to be able to discriminate - to trust those people and situations where they know they are safe, and to be cautious when they are doubtful. Excessive or persistent distrust inhibits the curiosity that motivates the child's exploration of the world and discovery of resources for coping with his needs.

The exciting world

It is in new encounters with different aspects of the world that the baby, especially from four or five months on, experiences surprise, delight, triumph in achievement and, as a toddler, wonder, along with puzzlement, and even anxiety. The foundation for a rich emotional life is laid early in the healthy baby. As successes in coping with challenges in the environment accumulate, the baby builds a foundation for optimism.

The borderline between satisfying stimulation and disintegrative overstimulation is often very thin. We see this when a father enjoys his baby's laughter as he is tossed in the air or tumbled in play, but is dismayed when that baby suddenly bursts into tears as his excitement becomes unmanageable, or the play goes on so long that the baby becomes exhausted. Babies differ in their capacity to take a large amount of stimulation.

They also differ in thresholds for pain and for milder degrees of discomfort. Sounds that one baby enjoys may be too loud for another, while vague or soft sounds are unpleasant for some babies.

Coping with stress and frustrations

Babies have individual ways of dealing with stress; one of the Topeka babies went to sleep when three observers of the research team converged at her crib to make simultaneous observations.

A toddler may cover his ears in protection from excessively loud sounds. Babies turn away from lights that are too bright and pull away from unwanted contact. If a parent or caregiver whom the child trusts is at hand, the child will stay close or cling or signal to be picked up when a threatening person comes near.

Use of environment for comfort

Inevitably babies experience disappointments and frustrations, and each baby develops his or her own consolation strategy to maintain an equilibrium. One day when I (LBM) was helping to care for babies in a foundling room of a children's hospital, I was impressed by the different comfort techniques of a group of three-month-old babies. After I had fed, changed and played with each infant, I had to turn to the next baby. After this separation one baby relaxed in its crib, sucking his thumb; another focused on looking at pictures on the wall; another rubbed his toes on a balloon hanging on the end of his crib. In contrast to these oral, visual, and tactile comfort techniques, a fourth baby became limp and unresponsive to any available stimulus. (I urged the social worker to find a good foster home placement for him as soon as possible since he was in urgent need of stimulation. This was done, and he responded well.)

The inviting world

As we watch babies, we see them "hooked on" elements of the environment that we take for granted. Consider stairs: we see toddlers fascinated by their invitation to climb and to discover different ways of getting down--sliding down on your tummy, or sitting down one step at a time, until you are ready to go down standing up--holding on to the banister and bringing both feet down on each step because you don't yet feel secure with one foot on a certain step and the other on the step below. It can take a year or more of experimenting with these methods before the three-year-old finally walks down stairs like an adult. Over these months, just sitting on a step to look at the world is satisfying.

A curb along the street invites hopping off and on again; a fence offers an exciting temptation to bang a stick along the spokes for the rhythmic sounds it makes. A railing can be leaned on or crept under. Adults do not see so many possibilities along the way, oriented as they are to the goal of the journey and their sense of propriety. While the adult sees trees as part of a landscape, a child enjoys trees one at a time, to hide behind or peek around, as a resource for fun or protection.

Wheels are important to adults for their use in conveying vehicles from place to place, but to children they are fascinating in themselves for their ability to go around and around as nothing else does. We have often seen little children playing with a bicycle or tricycle lying on the ground--pushing a wheel thoughtfully as if trying to understand how it does that.

Contributions from natural and manufactured objects

The extraordinary number of manufactured toys available for nursery schools and day care centers--puzzle boxes, building materials of many different kinds, playground equipment to stimulate varied motor experiences--provide a wide range of activities, including construction. However their sensory range is narrow--colors are chiefly primary red, blue, yellow and green, not the variety of tones to be seen in nature and in the home. Textures mostly limited to those of plastic and wood are also limited in comparison with textures in nature and home. And there is little stimulus for curiosity.

Occasionally we visited a day care center located near a vacant lot where wild flowers were blooming, but the children were not allowed to explore it. A teacher in another day care center took the children to the "wild place," helping them to pick the flowers and take them to the center; talking about the differences in colors, leaves, stems and how they grow from seeds the wind blows across the lot. Experiences in natural settings provide a variety of sensory and cognitive experiences, with opportunities for discoveries which lead to questions.

Perception and internalization

With all of the eager looking and reaching, what can we know about what is going on inside the baby's head? What does he absorb from the environment? What image of the world is he developing? Dr. David M. Levy reported that some babies under the age of six months cried at the sight of a doctor in a white coat, and even at the sight of a taxi like the one that took them to the doctor's office for their inoculation. Only at six months did a baby cry only at the sight of the inoculation needle.

This tells us that babies' early experience is global--the baby responds to the total experience and only gradually discriminates the specific offending object. Global perception also is seen in babies' responses to satisfying people; one aspect of the stimulus person evokes the whole image, as when four-month-old Jennifer, hearing her father's footsteps after the front door opened, bounced up and down in her buggy as if he were already in sight. Differentiated feelings about objects can be seen in the last half of the first year, if not before, as when a Topeka mother said, "He loves his green frog." We cannot predict what toy or what color will be the favorite of a particular baby--or, for that matter, what foods or what music. Each one has his and her own tastes. The baby's inner world is built up of those favorite tastes and the rejected ones.

When we watch a child playing with blocks or miniature life toys we see the projection of integrated patterns of the world as the child sees it. When we watched the crawling baby we could infer his cognitive map as he made a bee-line from the living room to the kitchen to find his mother. But at the age of three and four the child can create a model of home or, as we mentioned, play out a daily routine. He can also play out protests against restrictions as he breaks a toy crib or playpen. A child who felt insecure in a new situation barricaded himself within a protected area walled in by large blocks.

The baby's perception of his world in the early months may have major consequences for his later development. A deep, unassailable optimism and trust may have its roots in early global pleasure and comfort. We saw the opposite in the Children's Division of the Menninger Clinic: when I reviewed 200 cases of disturbed children, the most severely disturbed and difficult to treat had a "bad start"; their mothers said, "I wasn't able to comfort him; he cried and cried." Such global misery persisted in the form of anger and despair; there was no foundation of good feeling to which a therapist could reach.

The caregiver

Fascinating as the environment may be to the infant, he cannot survive in it without a caregiver. Parents and other caregivers protect the baby. They also help the infant learn to soothe himself; allow the baby to influence his world; and offer the child priceless opportunities to share observations through language.

The parent's or other caregiver's role is to respect the baby's way of restoring its equilibrium, to see that he has access to whatever in the environment he finds soothing. That is, he may need to be placed where he can see pictures on the wall or trees out of the window if visual stimuli are calming; or he may want a soft animal toy for tactile comfort; or quiet rhythmic music to listen to; in the early weeks, help in getting his hand to his mouth so he can suck on fist, fingers or thumb may be the chief resource. Adults can help, as when a father picks up a baby and holds it up to his shoulder so that the baby can look at a new vista, but it is the baby who quiets himself, recovers his equilibrium and lays a foundation for maintaining integration as he goes. This involves selectivity, both retreating from, and reaching out to, the world around him.

Influence on the world

As we watch healthy babies in their own settings, their influence on their caregivers and thus their world is impressive. Just now the postman brought me (LBM) a letter from a young mother who tells me that five-month-old Alex "has become more demanding now--if he doesn't like something, he sticks his arms and legs straight out and grunts loudly. He's very definite when he wants or doesn't want to eat. I'm having to adjust."

This is only a hint of the way in which a baby can change or influence his world. One of our Topeka babies at six months would bounce on his mother's lap to stimulate her to bounce him; our baby would blow repeatedly while looking toward the record player to tell us that he wanted us to play a record (we had a habit of blowing on the record to remove any specks of dust). An action associated with a pleasurable event could make it happen, the baby assumed, although he had no words to communicate this. In such ways some babies can select from the world and demand from it the experiences or objects they find pleasurable. Perceptive parents pay attention to initiatives of the baby and encourage them, realizing that these are the beginnings of healthy coping.

Freedom to discover

We see great differences between parents and caregivers who encourage and share the toddler's curiosity about the environment and those who are indifferent or who stifle the child's impulse to peek, peer, or poke into interesting openings. We see parents in the post office who tolerantly keep an eye on a wandering toddler and others who grab the child, insisting "Stay here!" One mother smiles in amusement when her child uses a banana for a telephone; another protests, "Bananas are not to play with!" The mother or caregiver who observes the child with interest in the child's-eye view of the world finds delight in his or her unexpected and original ideas.

Connecting objects and language

From the first teddy bear that is given to the baby (or stuffed kitty or rabbit) the baby should hear the word that names the object: "Here is your bear!" The word makes a connection between the real thing and the idea of it. Babies need to have these bridges made clearly and consistently. "Here is your spoon" or ball, or bottle and so on. When objects are given to the baby without naming them, images form in the baby's mind, to be sure, but vocabulary lags. Words are a crucial part of our mental furniture.

We see some parents and caregivers taking children to the zoo with never a word being said, while others talk with their children about the animals. When the child stops, fascinated by the zebra, it is important to say, "Yes, that's a zebra--he always has those stripes. Horses don't have stripes like that, do they?" The parent can help the child verbalize what the animal is doing or trying to do. This is part of sharing the experience with the child.

As the toddler gets interested in language, names of things stamp in their differentiated character, although some children connect analogies with objects or parts of objects, as when little Midge referred to the bottom of a table leg as its "hoof." In these days of busy working parents and group day care, a conversation between one child and one adult is rare. But if the child has little or no opportunity to share his observations in words, language development lags.

The cultural context

In different parts of the world babies look out from different angles: in Indian villages, for instance, a baby is carried on the mother's hips under her sari; in Nigeria the baby is tucked into a broad sash on the mother's back, covered up to its neck. These babies go wherever their mothers go; they look out at a wider world than that seen by most American babies who spend much of their time in a crib, playpen or stroller, sitting in a high chair or a baby-swing, waiting for the day when they can walk upright like adults.

In their various types of "furniture," American babies have less skin and eye contact with caregivers than do babies in cultures where they are carried by members of the family. A mother or caregiver pushing a stroller does not see the baby who may be slumped uncomfortably down in the seat. By contrast, the Indian mother is immediately aware of discomfort in the baby she carries on her hip. Like other travelers to India, we noticed that babies do not cry as much there as they do in America; they do not need to, when mothers respond quickly to restlessness. In Nigeria when a mother senses movement in the baby on her back, she reaches for him, holds him out in front of her, makes sssing sounds to stimulate the baby to urinate, cuddles him and replaces him on her back. In both instances there is sustained contact and communication between mother and baby.

In our present-day mobile world, even babies and toddlers travel with parents in cars, on buses, subways, trains and planes. We see babies crying from fatigue or tedium; or cuddled and sleeping; toddlers looking at picture books or trying to get out of the seat to explore the aisle; mothers patient or impatient, resourceful or exhausted with the effort to keep the child quiet. We see tired mothers slap restless children: "Sit down!" Even if parents attempt to explain the trip to the child, it is hard for a child under three to understand why it takes so long. It is hard to sit still and be quiet, and for an active child unbearable. With the exception of safety seats for children riding in automobiles, our culture makes no provision for children's needs in vehicles used for travel. The result too often is tension and stress for both child and parents.

The fact that American children do not do so well in science suggests that we need to look at basic processes involved in scientific thinking and interests: observation, discovery, comparison of objects, scrutiny of parts, watching effects of combining two or more materials, and changes with heat and cold. Even two-year-olds and three-year-olds can see the difference between a butterfly and a hummingbird, or a spider and a large ant, a chipmunk and a mouse.

Where winter brings freezing weather, children can learn about the different forms water can take, from clouds to rain, or hail, and snow and icicles. In warmer climates they can still learn about the making of ice cubes; and anywhere the making of steam is easy. Scores of interesting facts of nature including processes of change can be introduced to young children. Encouraging spontaneous curiosity gives a foundation for continued learning.

Conclusion

In order to guarantee the optimal development of our babies and young children we need to look at the total environment in which they are spending their days. How much does it provide for all sensory, cognitive, motor, emotional needs of the children? How much does it offer in the way of responsive caregiving that values spontaneity and originality? Can we make the effort to share the child's own way of experiencing the world and, in the process, offer support for all the child's potentialities?

As Walt Whitman wrote:

There was a child went forth every day And the first object he looked upon, that object he became And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

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