Babies are smarter than you think

I came upon interesting things babies know innately and I’m going to share 2 facts, and the latter will actually shock you.

The first one is the stepping reflex. Here’s how it goes: when you hold a baby by its arms or waist and let the sole of their feet rest on a hard surface, their feet will move rhythmically like walking; while this is a step towards walking, it is astonishing how a baby is born with this trait. Now, by repeatedly performing this reflex, the baby will not walk any earlier than it’s supposed to; walking relies on not only the process of taking steps, but handling body weight, eye-leg coordination and so much more and that takes time to develop.

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The second one is that a baby’s crying sound is not completely random. It depends on the mother. How, you may ask? Well, whatever language the mother speaks most frequently (most likely it being the native language of the mother), the baby’s cry will have the same intonation as the mothers language. For example, newborns of French mothers generally cry with the rising intonations of French while newborns in Germany cry with the falling intonations of German. This is also why, in most cases, children prefer to speak and show interest in their mothers native languge than their fathers in cases of different languages. Fascinating, isn’t it?

Now you know never to say, “Babies don’t know anything” 😃.