Reading eye language .. What do our faces say to our children?

When babies are born for the first time, they need help from their parents to learn about the complex world around them;

But where and how do they begin to understand this confusion and this strange noise to them?

Research indicates that human faces are an important source of information for children during the first days of their lives. They are born with preferences for facial shapes, and after a few months they prefer looking at faces over most other things, and they especially prefer faces that are familiar to them;

Like their mother's face.

Vanessa Lobo, an assistant professor of psychology at Rutgers University, says in an article she wrote on Psychologytoday, “In the beginning, when children look at faces, they often erase the parts of the face that are more contrasting in color, such as the dividing line. Between the hair of the head and the rest of the face, but as they age, they look at the parts of the face that contain the most information, such as the eyes, and then later when they start learning the language, they focus more and more with the mouth. "

eye language

This innate preference for seeing and tracking faces helps children learn to recognize loved ones early, and directs them to the most important information in their surroundings.

Childhood researcher Lobo says faces give children an idea of ​​the kinds of organisms that may have thoughts and intentions, and they make actions and movements.

Because they tend to look at things they find most interesting in the face such as eyes, this provides them with information about what to look at.

Babies start from 6 to 12 months old to understand that eyes are a sign of potential intent, as they begin to follow the gaze of adults, and look wherever adults are looking.

The ability to interpret facial expressions is important for emotional efficiency (pixels)

Various emotional expressions

Next, babies learn to use facial features next to the eyes to gain information about what to do in social situations, as newborns develop the ability to distinguish between different emotional expressions very early on, including happy, sad and surprised faces.

Between 12-18 months of age, babies learn to use information from mothers' facial expressions as a signal for what to do in new situations;

For example, children avoid playing with a new toy if they see an adult reacting fearfully to it, and the same is true for descending from a slightly higher place or going down the stairs, if children see that their mothers form a negative or frightening face in response to this step, they will not try to descend.

Effects on learning

All the information that children can get from faces has implications for learning and how they interact with others, as the ability to interpret facial expressions is important to emotional competence in general, says Gwen Dewar, PhD, author on Parentingscience. Or how children learn to express and control those feelings and recognize the feelings of others, and emotional competence is an important indicator for the initiation of positive social relationships and academic excellence.

The author adds that parents should realize that from an early age, children look at our faces for instructions on how to behave, just as children can learn to avoid a game or dangerous slip by looking at their mothers' faces for information.

Children can also learn fear from the faces of their mothers, if a child or infant watches a parent react with fear towards a spider on the ground, then he can reasonably learn to fear spiders as well. This is also true for the things we say in front of children. If we say that spiders are scary, Our children may learn to deal with spiders with the same fear.

According to Burning Science, parents can have an important impact on developing emotional recognition in their young children by showing expressions of different emotions through their faces, and explaining this through general context.

Reading general posture helps them understand facial expressions;

For example, if they saw someone fall, and then certain emotions such as pain or shock were shown, they could imagine how they would feel if this happened to them.

Children who have stronger face reading skills are academically distinguished (social networking sites)

Face reading

Dewar stresses that children who have stronger facial reading skills enjoy more popularity in school, and they are also distinguished academically. On the other hand, children who have more difficulty identifying emotions in faces may have peer problems, learning difficulties, and some behavioral problems such as Hyperactivity.

For her part, Lobo says that given that children have a lot to learn, the faces of parents will always be an important source of information.

She tells kids what is familiar and unfamiliar, what we think, what we feel, and what to do when things are uncertain?

The ability to interpret facial expressions can also be an important guide for children about what to expect from a social situation.

In this way, the types of messages we send with our faces can be powerful tools for learning;

So it is important to be aware of the faces our babies and toddlers deal with, and be attentive to what we offer our little ones through our faces.