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# Be alert to what your baby is paying attention to
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/be-alert-to-what-your-baby-is-paying-attention-to/
- Published: 2003-11-04T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T03:09:47.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Events, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*By Margret Altman*

(This is part one of a three-part series on attention, a capacity that is often taken for granted in infant development. When the child reaches pre-school age, parents become acutely aware that this vital capacity must be developing strongly and when it isn’t we hear the collective groans from moms and dads who have to deal with their “distracted” and “impulsive” child. Our capacity to pay attention to one thing or to several things is at the core of our emotional intelligence).

It feels so natural and wonderful when a newborn is able to focus his eyes on mom or dad’s face and keep his focus right there for a period of time. It is incredible when an infant gazes at a parent and smiles for the first time. This early and amazing ability to focus attention is just the first step on the journey towards the development of a vast range of attention skills. As the child grows, these attention skills will empower the youngster to pay close attention to one important thing, or to shift attention from one thing to another, or to divide attention between several compelling events. Without these amazing skills, a youngster can become easily lost and quickly distracted on the complicated paths of life.

Attention, as a developmental capacity, has a unique place in the growth of emotional intelligence. This capacity is, for example, a first line skill for memory development. Research has shown that in order to encode certain data into memory a youngster has to first be able to pay attention to that particular thing. Memory and attention are interdependent capacities.

Attention can be looked at and understood in several ways. It is a mechanical skill in terms of the physical focusing of the eyes, ears and body towards a compelling, important object. It also is a quality skill in terms of the content of what the youngster is paying attention to. Is the child paying attention to a lot of noise or to the kind of important information that will help that child make decisions and move successfully through life challenges? In both cases, the capacity of attention needs a great deal of parental input. Parents are the ones who guide the child’s attention towards events, people and feelings that are meaningful and relevant.

During the first three years of life, we can say that many of the child’s developing capacities are parent-driven. Parents and primary care takers play an enormous role in shaping, supporting and creating the environment for the development of their child’s attention capacities. In the very first months of life, parents should take the time to ask themselves the question, “What is my baby paying attention to?”

> “If a man looks sharply and attentively, he shall see fortune; for though she is blind, she is not invisible.” — — Francis Bacon

QUESTION: “My 4-month-old has the benefit of lots of the new videos and stimulating toys for babies. She seems to focus on the TV when we put on the videos and she looks at the animated mobiles over her crib. Is this a positive sign?”

ANSWER: There are many interesting and stimulating toys on the market for very young infants. During the first weeks of life, most infants will develop the physical skills to be able to focus their eyes on objects of interest and listen to lively sounds. When your baby turns his head towards a new sight or sound it is a positive sign in his overall motor and sensory development. It is, however, more important during this phase of development that infants orient themselves towards the faces, voices of their parents and primary caretakers. This is vital because the information that is contained in the expressive face, the tone of voice and the movements of the parents is information that parents want their infants to learn to pay attention to. When your baby looks at your face, listens to your voice and watches you move, that baby is learning the lesson that emotional expressions are vitally important information. The feelings, sensations and urges that are expressed and communicated by other people’s faces, voices and body language are as important in our lives as are the inner emotions that we experience. When parents respond positively to their infant’s gazing and paying attention, this sends a message to the infant that paying attention to the emotional domain of life is a good thing to learn. There is a special term for this high quality, interactive attentiveness that is used throughout the parenting literature. “Attunement” is the name for the special parent-child interactions that focus attention on the emotional content of communication.

Parents hope that their youngsters will learn to focus on and to pay attention to the teacher’s face, voice and body language when they begin school and the lessons that teach this start in the first few months. The child’s ability to know that this information is vital and to make the effort to tune into what the teacher is saying is based on his earliest experiences.

Attention skills also boost the child’s ability to get out of negative emotional states and into positive emotional states. Research has demonstrated beyond any doubt that chronic stress states are damaging for the growth process and the child’s ability to transition out of negative states is of great importance in learning and maturing. Paying attention to the parent’s face, voice expressions help the infant to move into a comfort zone. The positive content in mom and dad’s expressions and voices is soothing and stimulating for the baby. The smiles, the coos, the pats and strokes are helpful in preventing the kinds of chronic stress that damage the brain and put the child far behind in the learning curve. The infant learns, through positive face, voice and body expressions during the first year, to look for and focus on parent’s emotional expressions as regulators of his own emotional states. Later on, the child will learn to pay attention to his own emotional states and self-soothe with the help of others when needed.

The capacity of attention, during the important first year of life, needs to be nurtured, shaped and stimulated, primarily by parents and their positive emotional expressions.

Here are some tips for parents from the experts: ■Use positive face-to-face interactions with the infant as much as possible in the first year. Use your emotional expressions to stimulate and soothe your baby regularly. Teach your baby to pay attention to your important emotional communications through your face, your voice and your touch. ■Limit use of toys and videos during the first months. ■When you do want to use these aids, choose toys and videos with care in terms of the loudness, brightness and overall content of what your child will be paying attention to on the screen or in the crib. ■Educate baby-sitters or child care workers about the value of face-to-face interactions. ■If your baby is not paying attention to faces and voices at 4 months old, consult with the pediatrician as this may be an early sign of hearing disorders, visual disorders or autism. (Margret Altman, author of “Developing Your Child’s Emotional Intelligence” is a specialist in the field of child development and her goal is to make people’s knowledge and experience available for parents, teachers and any child-involved individual.)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 4, 2003.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/110403.pdf?ref=smdp.com)