Toys And Equipment For The Mobile Baby

Getting moving opens up a new world of fun for your baby, but a hazardous one.

– Check and recheck your safety precautions. And remember the floor is now his natural habitat, so whenever you lift him off the floor and into any kind of seat he must be strapped in, and it must be so stable that rocking games can’t tip it.

– While he was getting moving, your baby was also learning to reach out for things and manipulate them with his hands, since this is a peak age for toys (real toys you buy and suitable things of yours you lend him to handle and explore). Remember, he won’t just handle objects, though, he has to explore them with his mouth as well.

– He’ll enjoy big toys to hug and rough house with, toys on wheels with a string which he’ll soon learn to pull toward him, lots of smaller objects to empty out of baskets or bags, your oranges make a nice change from his blocks, and some noisy games like banging a pot with a wooden spoon or knocking down the blocks you pile up for him.

– He’ll enjoy his old rattles all over again; now he can hold one in each hand and bang them together. But don’t bother with manipulative toys for a while; he only wants to explore the nature of things; he isn’t ready to do anything special with them yet.

Penelope Leach, Ph.D., is one of the world’s most respected (and best-loved) developmental child psychologists. She is most widely known for her best-selling books on child development and parenting. They include Babyhood, Children First: What Society Must Do — and Is Not Doing — for Our Children Today, the classic Your Baby & Child: From Birth to Age Five (now in a new edition for a new generation), and Your Growing Child: From Babyhood Through Adolescence.