any parents (or anyone who happen to know about themselves.)...
what age was your child when he/she gave his/her first 'social' smile, ie not gas... just wondering if differences exist in thie area between ASlets and NT's. i would think it was likely, but we will see...
I didnt smile until I was 10 weeks old (my poor mother) and then it wasnt at her, even though i was with her practically all the time, it was at another family member we were spending Christmas with.
Alex smiled socially at 3 weeks, but again it wasnt at me, and again, he spent virtually every moment with me... it was at my mother! lol! I had to wait another two weeks for mine.
anyone else?
I found it hard to tell a smile from my son, whenever I would say he was smiling my mum would say 'thats not really a smile, its just wind'.
So I don't know.
I don't believe, and never have, that a baby smiles because of gas (or wind)! Do you smile when you have gas? I certainly don't! When a baby, even if it's a day old, smiles, I assume the child is happy and means to smile, and that's that. Any mother who believes that 'gas' nonsense deprives herself of some beautiful and precious moments when she dismisses a baby's smile as merely being gas. It is totally illogical, and whoever came up with that ought to be shot (sort of kidding there).
Babies at a particular point in development will mimic facial expressions. Mostly what newborns do is sleep. When they are awake they will look at person's faces. They also like to be touched, stroked and held up to someone's heart.
Why a preoccupation with smiling? Nwborn babies cry because they are hungry, wet, tired, uncomfortable not because someone hurt their feelings. So how could they smile because of emotion. Eventually they will smile for a reason other than exercising their facial muscles.
Look up some good child development books.
M have you had many children out of interest?
I feel that babies certainly can feel happiness, and may be able to show that on their faces with an instinctive smile.
Babies at a particular point in development will mimic facial expressions. Mostly what newborns do is sleep. When they are awake they will look at person's faces. They also like to be touched, stroked and held up to someone's heart.
Why a preoccupation with smiling? Nwborn babies cry because they are hungry, wet, tired, uncomfortable not because someone hurt their feelings. So how could they smile because of emotion. Eventually they will smile for a reason other than exercising their facial muscles.
Look up some good child development books.
Ermmmmmmm, out of curiosity....... how do you know what a baby thinks and feels, have you asked a newborn lately? Oh, right, they can't talk, forgot about that!
And yes, a couple of my kids did smile at me from the start, and kept doing it, and I believe they smiled because they were happy to be with me.
Besides, isn't thinking the baby is smiling because he is happy a much nicer way of thinking than that the baby has gas? If people believe he is truly smiling, they'll be delighted, cooing at him, making happy noises, smile back, hug, kiss etc. the kid. If they dismiss it as gas (which is totally unproven), they aren't doing themselves or the kid a favour.
A lot of child development books have been written by people who don't have any kids. Many of their theories are just that: theories. Like the nonsense about boys and girls being exactly the same, that they develop differently only because we treat them differently. Any parent who has both boys and girls will tell you that this is total garbage. I have four daughters and one son, and boy, was he ever different right from birth!
Babies at a particular point in development will mimic facial expressions. .
which is precisely why I wondered if differently wired people had different patterns of smiling, it would suggest they might, and I wondered, is all. Its interesting!!!
I dont think babies 'smile' because of wind either. Alex didnt look like he was smiling when he was windy, he looked freaky!!!!
And neither Alex or I slept lots as newborns... i remember taking Alex to a baby clinic when he was two weeks old, the health visitor gave us cards to fill out for sleep time and next class we had to read them out... the idea to prove that our babies were perfectly normal sleepers etc... well everyone else was like 17 hours, 19 hours, 16 hours, 15 1/2 hours... Alex slept an average of 8 hours in total, and that was in snatches of no more than two hours at a time and including daytime naps!
I was pretty tired :lol: :lol: :lol:
Of course the HV told me I must have filled out the card wrong as no baby needed that little sleep, lmao... um.... yeah but mine's a superbaby! And that card was spot on accurate grrrrrrrrrrrr.
And luckily he sleeps pretty well now, far, far better than I do...
I have no children so I only know about babies from playing with my nieces and nephews. I love them.
I was just reading something about babies and smiles. There was something mentioned about the "social smile" showing up at a certain age range. It said newborns can smile as well.
Babies can recognize the parents. They turn the head when they hear the voice. I don't know when the baby can show the parents love: maybe it is a smile?
I tried the link, it doesn't work.
Sorry if I came on a little harsh above. Of course I never claimed a newborn baby's smile is a social smile, but they sure look happy when they do smile! And since even their eyes look happy, I see no reason to believe the reason for that delightful smile could be something as nasty (and painful) as gas.
I can't get that link to work any more. Try
http://www.medic8.com/healthguide/articl...flife.html
I never realized that social smile could be so important. Some sources that I am reading have mentioned different times for social smile, from two weeks to two months. Most parents seem to be more excited about first steps, first words and teeth.
My nephew did not have social smile for sometime because he was premature by two and a half months. My sister was in a car accident. He was born black and blue with bruises and two black eyes. He respond to faces and touch. He would look at my face when I would hold his hand and tell him stories while he was in premie care ward. The nurses showed me the little pats that other babies like are not good for premies. He liked light gentle strokes. While he did look at my face we later found out he was deaf at three months. Now all the hospitals are giving babies hearing tests at a certain age. Before most hearing problems were not detected until the child was older or went to school.
Babies don't come with instruction manuals. I suppose if someone if not around babies much they would need to talk to other parents about what to expect. It is difficult to know whose advice to trust since I have met people who never talked to their baby because they said they thought the baby couldn't understand them. (they didn't have Asperger's)
Babies start doing the really cute wiggling arms and legs, smiling and making coo noises when they are happy. Usually when someone they know is there. They hold their little arms up to be picked up. That starts at a certain time. The screaming at strangers picking them up starts at certain time too. Not many parents would write it all down so how would they remember after years and a few babies.
So a relationship between social smile and Asperger's??? maybe with other social types of behaviours. I smiled around ten weeks but I was sick most of my first year.
I don't think that having Asperger's makes someone a bad or incompetent parent at all.
I have met people who never talked to their baby because they said they thought the baby couldn't understand them. (they didn't have Asperger's)
Not only people with Aspergers talk to their babies. My oldest daughter has four kids, and she'd always talk to her babies a lot. The difference is, that I always assume that babies understand what you say (since nobody can prove otherwise) and that when they say a word, they mean it.
I'd get excited if one of her babies would say something I thought I recognized as a word, and she'd just say, "Oh, it's not a real word, he doesn't mean it!" Which is too bad, because that means she didn't encourage their speech because she didn't make a fuss over what they said. I remember many things they said when I was there, and I'd tell the kid what a smart baby he was, and to say it again, and he would! But next time I came, he couldn't say it any more.
Once when Ethan did something neat, I said, "Good boy!" (he was about 11 months old), and he said, "boy". I said, "wow, you said 'boy', say it again!" and he did. When I told Sarah, she said, "Oh, he is just parroting, it means nothing."
Well, of course he was parroting, that's how babies learn to talk! You teach them the meaning later. It was very discouraging to me. And she was a very early talker herself, saying 'Mama' and meaning it at three months. But she won't believe it now and claims I imagined her talking so early, and Susie (her youngest sister) actually speaking in sentences at 12 months.
But when you take babies seriously, and consider them as important a human being as an adult, you might see amazing things. Dismissing something a baby says as unimportant to me is almost child abuse, that's how strongly I feel about it.
My sister-in-law claims her daughters, fraternal twins, had different personalities even in the womb. (She scores high on the EQ.) Babies do express much that most people don't notice.
My nephew did something amazing. He is deaf which the family found very hard to deal with. He was crawling around (must have been about 12 months, walked late, premie) and liked to crawl up the steps were my mother kept a string of bells. He was very attracted to it. I would sit with him to keep him from climbing too far and falling. I wondered why he liked to shake the bells if he was deaf (not so deaf we found out later). So I would take turns shaking the bells with him and I would sing "Jingle bells" and shake the bells to the tune. Then he repeated back the rhythm of jingle bells with his voice. Not the tones just the rhythm. I called his dad other and he did it again. Of course when mom came he won't do it again.
I found that he was talked to less because everyone would say "oh, he's deaf, he can't hear you". I talked to him anyway. If I was reading him a book he won't hear everything but I would point to objects and say something and he would minic and then say gibberish. He would repeat a few words that he could hear. His parents might be unconsciously avoiding some interact because they did not want him to learn lipreading.
I think that might be the problem with some autistic children, not so much that they have problems learning but that people just give up and don't interact with them as much. So even with an Asperger's child who doesn't seem attractive or friendly at first, they give up or don't try to interact with the child as much. They are expecting a certain response to social cues and when they don't get them they ignore the child or treat them differently. (usually with anger)
Thats a lovely story about the bells, he could have been feeling the vibrations from the bells when they created the noise.
"he could have been feeling the vibrations from the bells when they created the noise."
He was imitating my singing. At first I sing with the bells in the rhythm. I did it quite a few times before he repeated back.
I don't know what exactly he can hear. He does have some very limited hearing and only certain ranges of tone. He now has some very good hearing aids that don't just boost the volume overall but adjust the balance of the volume.
He likes to bash things. It could be to feel vibration or make a noise that he could hear.
Babies are smarter than we think.