Intrauterine developmental period psychology. Prenatal development of the child. Newborn. Congenital forms of psyche and behavior. Origins of prenatal education

When to start raising a baby? Each nation had its own rules in this regard. In ancient China, for example, there were antenatal clinics.

There, future mothers were surrounded by beauty and peace, so that their children would be born just as beautiful and calm.

Periods of prenatal education

A modern woman has to organize the prenatal care of her baby herself. And for this it is useful for her to know the following.

It is believed that after living its first 40 days in the womb, the baby has already formed.

The prenatal period (pregnancy period) can be divided into 3 parts. This division is determined by the level of development of the child’s body:

1. first 3 months,
2. from 3 to 6 months,
3. after 6 months.

Each trimester has a completely different pace, character and level of development. Accordingly, the mother should treat the baby differently. What the future little person will become depends not only on her nutrition and physical health, but also on the feelings and emotions experienced by the mother.

The baby receives a lot of information through the mother. It is important to try to ensure that the information is of high quality. From the first weeks of pregnancy, the baby should be treated like an adult.

Stage I of prenatal development

In the first trimester, the mother communicates with the baby on a feeling level. The child also develops at this level. It is very important at this time to get away from negative feelings and emotions that harm the baby. Everything that the mother experiences, the child also experiences. Moreover, it “records” at the cellular level. And then what is recorded is implemented in life.

1. Cultivate a state of inner freedom and happiness in yourself, passing it on to your child.
2. To do this, remember the best events from your own life.
3. Enjoy nature. Nature gives us peace and freedom. Remember these sensations of beauty and give them to your baby.
4. Read poetry, but be sure to listen to how the poetic lines make you feel. Select and repeat things that give you a surge of energy. Mentally bathe your child in it, imagine how the baby’s health is increased.
5. Listen to classical music at least once a day for 10-20 minutes. Prenatal development and music are a separate topic. The main thing is to focus your attention on the feeling that the pieces of music evoke in you and imagine that you are experiencing it together.

Classic melodies can evoke a sense of magical beauty in the listener. This condition has a positive effect on the health of mother and child and activates its growth and intelligence. Stimulates all prenatal development.

And also sing lullabies to your baby. Learn a lot of lullabies!

Stage II of prenatal development

During the period up to 6 months, the child develops sensory organs and their corresponding brain centers. Prenatal development changes. This means that the expectant mother should focus on sensations.

1. Continuing to perform all the previous exercises, imagine that you, together with a little person, are beginning to re-examine the world around you. You are friends, and mother is an older friend.
2. Touch as many objects as possible, try to feel the weight, color, shape, material.
3. Listen to sounds: sounds of nature, sonorous children's voices, enjoy them. Compare the sound of a male and female voice. Press any piano key. How does this sound make you feel? Try to convey the sensations to the child.

III stage of prenatal development

After 6 months, the baby's inner ear begins to function. Now the child perceives sounds and transmits the signal to the brain. Therefore, speech perception can be added to positive emotional experiences and awareness of sensations.

1. Talk to your baby about everything you do and see. The baby watches you, perceives 3 streams of information: the mother’s emotional state, speech and attitude towards him.
2. With your hand on your stomach, read the book out loud to your child. If there is a picture, tell us what is shown on it.
3. When listening to musical fairy tales, try to experience events from the point of view of a baby. At the end, express your attitude towards the heroes: which hero is brave, smart, cheerful...
4. Tell the baby how much you love him and are looking forward to his birth. How healthy, handsome, noble, energetic, generous, strong he is. Say it regardless of whether you are expecting a boy or a girl.

During this period, communication with the father is important. If the father talks to the baby regularly during pregnancy, the baby will recognize his voice almost immediately after birth.

Modern science is trying to figure out what exactly is useful during the prenatal period. Music has an exceptional influence on him. This is interesting and described in detail in the proposed video.

Children who have received prenatal development are distinguished by good mental development, goodwill, emotional balance, and curiosity. The site Non-standard children wishes health and well-being to all children.

Couples who want to have a child have a lot to learn. Expectant mothers should be interested not only in the changes that will happen to their body, but also in how the baby changes in the womb and outside it. Therefore, today we will talk about the prenatal and postnatal periods of baby development. What happens when the baby is still in the tummy? What changes await him? How do babies develop after birth? Agree, these questions are of interest to all expectant mothers, without exception. We offer you to get acquainted in detail with the natal and postnatal periods of development. Today you will learn the answers to all these questions and be prepared to be a parent.

Periods of child development

First of all, you should know that there are two large groups: prenatal and postnatal periods of development. From the very moment of conception, the baby is constantly developing, growing, acquiring new skills and capabilities. It is customary to distinguish certain periods that have their own special characteristics. This is what we suggest you talk about.

Now it’s worth clarifying what the prenatal and postnatal periods of a child are. The prenatal period of development is the very changes that occur in the baby’s body when he is not yet born. We already observe the postnatal period of development after the birth of the baby. We see how he develops, grows, learns and so on.

Prenatal period

As we said earlier, the prenatal period is the development of the baby in the womb. As a rule, it lasts two hundred and sixty-six days. The entire prenatal period can be divided into three stages:

• embryonic (lasts about two weeks from the moment of conception);
• embryonic (lasts five weeks, from the third to the eighth; this is a rather important stage, because right now vital organs are being formed and the heart begins to beat);
• fetal (duration - from the ninth week until birth; at this stage the child is growing rapidly, and all systems begin to function).

Many mothers (including expectant mothers) know that the entire pregnancy is divided into trimesters. You can see a brief description in the table.

Trimester	Characteristic
	It lasts 13 weeks (from the very moment of conception). As a result of development in the first trimester, it is already possible to determine even the sex of the child using ultrasound. The skeletal, muscular and nervous systems are now actively developing. Already in the tenth week of pregnancy, the fetus begins to move, but the mother does not feel it yet (its length is about 12 millimeters).
	At this stage, the child acquires human characteristics. This stage is characterized by rapid growth and weight gain. If at week 14 its length was 15 millimeters and its weight was only 35 grams, then by week 27 (the end of the second trimester) its length was approximately 35 centimeters and its weight was 1 kilogram. At the sixth week of pregnancy, the baby’s sensory organs and nervous system are already well developed. Now you can talk to the baby, read fairy tales, and so on. Know that loud music scares him now. It is at this moment that many parents begin training their baby; you will learn how to do this further.
	Lasts from 28 to 40 weeks. This is the final stage of pregnancy and baby development. Now the child already has a routine (sleep and wakefulness), he opens his eyes and can even breathe. Now the child is very receptive to touch, sound and bright light.

Education

When the baby has not yet been born, it can be gradually trained. Now some tips on raising an unborn baby will be given.

Daily regime	You can accustom your baby to a daily routine with the help of songs. In the morning - a cheerful welcome composition, in the evening - a lullaby, before a meal - an interesting gastronomic composition. This will help him quickly get used to our big world.
	Talk to your baby as often as possible; if he hears his mother’s voice, he calms down faster. The loud sound irritates the baby, he begins to cover his ears with his hands.
Musical taste	Listen to calm classical music for one hour every day. Little kids really like it.
	Respond to your baby's every action. Tapping, stroking, speech - these are all means of communication.
Vocabulary expansion	If you can speak several languages, then do it as often as possible. Although the baby does not understand what he hears, it is possible to develop a predisposition to a foreign language.
Taste preferences	During pregnancy, try to eat varied and healthy, because the mother passes on a certain gastronomic code to her baby. As a rule, children have the same taste preferences as their mother.

Postnatal period

This period begins immediately after the birth of a child. It usually distinguishes the following stages:

• newborn (up to 1 month);
• infancy (up to 1 year);
• late infancy (up to 2 years);
• preschool age (up to 6 years);
• school age (up to 10-12 years);
• adolescence (up to 18-20 years).

In adolescence, some features can be distinguished:

• body growth;
• personality formation.

Newborn baby

Now briefly about newborn babies; this stage enters the postnatal period of development. In the first month, a number of changes occur in the baby’s body:

• weight loss in the first days of life (up to 10%);
• congenital reflexes appear (sucking, grasping, proboscis, and so on);
• the baby’s muscles are in good shape;
• During the first two days, meconium comes out of the intestines;
• The baby sleeps longer (up to 22 hours).

Now the baby needs as much contact with his mother as possible, because separation during childbirth is serious stress for the baby. The best food for a child is mother's milk.

Infant

Now briefly about another stage of the postnatal period of development. Now we will talk about infants (up to 1 year). Now the baby is going through a very difficult period, he faces a lot of tasks: learning to hold his head, crawl, walk. The grasping skill allows the baby to study objects, crawling - to explore our big new world. Children often imitate the movements of adults (bringing a cup to their mouth, trying to eat on their own, and so on).

Kindergarten

The postnatal period of child development includes another stage - preschool age (up to 6 years). At about three years old, the child develops his own “I”. The world of objects is no longer so interesting to him; he is fully developing his communication skills. Now people, their communication, relationships are the main interest of the child. At the age of six, one can already judge his character, since he has practically formed.

School age

School age is another difficult stage in the postnatal period of a child’s development. It is very easy to recognize a child’s readiness for school: he strives to learn more, is active and full of energy. In addition, you can see that he constantly wants to compete. Now it is very important for a child to see a good example: a friendly family, loving parents, good friends, and so on.

Development is a process of irreversible, directed and natural changes leading to the emergence of quantitative, qualitative and structural transformations of the human psyche and behavior.

Prenatal development is the beginning of human life.

Prenatal development, or intrauterine development, the development before birth, is the initial stage of human life. Its importance was already recognized in ancient civilizations. The origins of ideas about intrauterine development are lost in the centuries. Perhaps they appeared together with Homo sapiens, who discovered the function of childbearing. The Egyptians, Indians, Celts, Africans and many other peoples developed a set of laws for mothers, couples and society as a whole, providing for the creation of the best conditions for the life and development of the child.

Thus, more than a thousand years ago in China there were prenatal clinics, where expectant mothers spent the pregnancy period in conditions of peace and targeted cultivation of beauty. In the first months of his wife's pregnancy, the future father had to go through a ceremony to meet the unborn child. The man introduced himself to the expected child, talked about himself, his profession, and his views on life. If after such an acquaintance the child remained in the mother’s womb, then the ancients regarded this as his acceptance of the father. If the pregnancy was interrupted, it was considered a sign of protest against the parent and reluctance to be his offspring... In some cultures, in particular among the peoples of Southeast Asia, the beginning of life is counted not from birth, but from conception. For some time now, European peoples, and in modern times North Americans, have also begun to realize the importance of everything that precedes the birth of a child for all subsequent human life.

A truly serious study of the life of an unborn person began only in the 18th century, and for several centuries knowledge about intrauterine life was fragmentary and scarce. Even in the first half of the twentieth century, the development of a person before his birth was understood only as the unfolding of bodily forms - it was believed that there was no individual existence, much less a psyche. And only thanks to the successes of modern biology, genetics, medicine, psychology, thanks to the development of new research methods, it was possible to penetrate the mystery of life before the birth of a child and gain knowledge about his active intrauterine mental development. The paradox is that, despite the enormous experience accumulated by humanity over thousands of years, a newborn child has remained virtually unchanged during this time.

Prenatal development begins with the fusion of a male sperm and a female egg, the resulting zygote carries all the genetic information necessary to create a new organism.

Prenatal development is one of the most striking processes of maturation. The maturation of the unborn baby occurs in a strictly controlled environment and goes through a number of stages in a strictly defined sequence. Almost from the moment of conception, a child becomes an element of the situation developing in his environment and, when born, is by no means a “blank” slate. There is a point of view that a person’s personality is formed long before his birth - the mother’s thoughts, experiences, sensations are transmitted to the unborn child, and he not only sensitively perceives them, but also remembers them. Thus, the mother’s fear and anxiety lead to the appearance of special chemicals in her blood - catecholamines. Through the umbilical cord they enter the fetus, which also begins to experience anxiety. But at the same time, these substances also play the role of stimulants, when each wave of maternal hormones sharply removes the fetus from its normal state, awakening primitive self-awareness and sharpening sensitivity. The fetus begins to feel that something has happened, and even tries to understand what exactly.

Although the impressions of the prenatal period in the future largely determine the character, behavior, and degree of mental health of a person, it is very difficult to answer the question of at what point a developing organism really is a person. On the one hand, from the moment of fertilization until birth, the biological component of the future person is in the mother’s body, but on the other hand, already at this time he lives his life, reacting to the mother’s mood, as well as to stimuli from the outside: loud sounds, noise, music , human speech. Perhaps these reactions begin from the moment the nervous system is formed, but perhaps much earlier - after all, its cells are able to detect even changes in the chemical composition of the mother's blood.

Currently, it is believed that a born person is not only endowed with elementary mechanisms for maintaining life, but, without possessing almost any ready-made forms of behavior, already has considerable life experience and knows quite a lot. It is impossible to hide from him whether they love him or not. And even the fetus feels the mother’s negativity if she is irritated by the necessity of his birth. The hormones produced in her body have an unpredictable effect on the unborn child. It is now well known that the main characteristics of the brain depend not only on heredity. The signals that the brain receives in the early stages of its development are of great importance.

In order to find out what information from the outside world the fetus absorbs and whether it is capable of learning, many experiments were carried out. Thus, a group of expectant mothers living in London was divided into those who watch the popular daily series and those who do not. A few hours after birth, the babies were played tunes from this film while they cried. Children whose mothers did not watch the series did not react to the music. Children whose mothers watched the series stopped crying and listened - there was no doubt that they had learned something.

American researchers stimulated the development of the fetal brain through various games and exercises. Training began in the fifth month of the intrauterine period. For example, twice a day, future parents tapped the mother's belly. After two months, a reaction appeared - the fetus began to move when a familiar signal was given. Then the pronunciation of simple words was reinforced with the same signal. One of the future fathers periodically clearly said: “Baby, I am your dad.” After the birth of the child, he reminded him of this phrase. Judging by the reaction, the son recognized her - he stopped crying and tried to turn his head towards his father’s voice. In general, “trained newborns” are more active, develop faster, and establish closer and more emotional relationships with their parents.

Expectations and fears, prosperity and deprivation, stability and shock, health and illness in those families where children will be born affect not only their subsequent life, but also prenatal development. Despite the fact that childbirth is a genetically programmed sequence of events, the characteristics of the birth of each individual child are determined to a large extent by cultural, historical and family conditions.

Period prenatal development- this is the period from conception to birth (G. Craig).

The maturation of the unborn baby occurs in a strictly controlled environment - the womb, but even here the external environment influences it. Expectations and fears, prosperity and deprivation, stability and shock, health and illness in those families where children will be born affect not only their subsequent life, but also prenatal development.

Most birth defects are caused by exposure to environmental factors during the prenatal period or during childbirth, as well as the interaction of hereditary and environmental factors (G. Craig).

Scientists identify three main risk factors that have a strong influence on the entire course of intrauterine development: nutrition and maternal age (R. Kyle).

A teratogen is a specific factor that disrupts the normal development of the fetus (for example, a virus, a chemical drug). Thus, rubella can cause mental retardation, damage to vision, hearing, and cardiac function; nicotine - retards growth, affects mental abilities; radiation - retards growth, causes leukemia, delays mental development.

Principles of action of teratogens:
1) the impact of teratogens depends on the genotype of the organism;
2) exposure to teratogens changes at different stages of intrauterine development;
3) each teratogen affects a specific aspect of intrauterine development;
4) damage by teratogens is not always obvious at birth, but may appear later.

Newborn (0-2 months)
From birth, a child is endowed with the ability to hear and see, taste and smell, and feels touch, pressure and pain.

Full-term babies have a number of innate (unconditioned) reflexes that help them adapt to new conditions. These are food reflexes, protective, orienting. By the end of the first month of life, the first conditional ones appear.

The sensations of a newborn are not differentiated and are inextricably fused with. Auditory concentration appears at 2-3 weeks. So, at a sharp sound, the child stops moving, freezes and becomes silent. Visual concentration appears at 3-5 weeks.

The baby's hand movements are directed towards the object; palpation of the object appears in the 4th month. At 5-6 months the child can grasp an object. Grasping is the first purposeful action and is the basis of manipulation with an object. After 7 months, “correlating” actions develop. After 10 months - the first functional actions. By one year the child gets on his feet. During this age, emotional development is observed. The first is recognition, after 8 months reproduction appears - restoration of the image in memory.

The main psychological neoplasms of the first year of life:
- mastering vertical sitting and standing postures;
- visual-motor manipulations;
- formation of the need for communication;
- formation of phonetic hearing (according to V.G. Kamenskaya).

The child’s increased sensory and motor capabilities come into conflict with the system of attitudes towards him as a weak and helpless being, which gives rise to a crisis in the first year of life.

Infants whose parents maintain the same relationship with them, without recognizing new features in their behavior and the emerging desire for independence, are characterized by increased irritability and high anxiety. Subsequently, after emerging from the crisis, they are characterized by distrust of their capabilities and their environment.

Early age (from 1 year to 3 years)
The basic need of a young child is to understand the world around him through actions with objects.

The form of communication is situational business communication, which is business cooperation with adults regarding actions with an object.

Leading early childhood - object-tool activities. Instrumental and correlative actions are considered especially significant for psychological development (drinking from a mug, drawing with a pencil, folding a matryoshka doll, putting figures in a hole). First, the adult introduces the child to the main function of the object. However, the use of multifunctional objects (so a cube can become bread or an iron) is also of great importance in the mental development of an early age. The substitutive action indicates the emergence of a sign form of consciousness. The ability to substitute is considered as one of the prerequisites for the development of the game.

The emergence of new activities
New types of activities begin to take shape within the leader. This is a game and productive activities (drawing, modeling, designing).

Object play, one of the earliest forms of play, is the repeated reproduction of general patterns of using things. Then it develops into plot-display (I.V. Shapovalenko), when the child reproduces his own observations in everyday life in actions. At the end of the 2nd year of life, the child reproduces the actions of a specific adult from his environment.

Drawing goes through several stages: scribbling; recognition of an object in a random combination of lines; image by design.

Development of cognitive mental processes
the child in early childhood is woven into leading activities.

Visual perception is involuntary and selective. Then a stock of ideas about the properties of objects accumulates, and it becomes possible to purposefully select an object according to a model - by shape, size, color.

Attention and memory are mainly involuntary and intertwined with activity.

Thinking at this age is visual and effective.

Early childhood is a sensitive period for. Speech begins to act as the main means of cognition. By the age of 2, a child’s active vocabulary is 200 words, and by the age of 5 it is approximately 1200-1500 words. After 1.5 years, two-word sentences appear. By 3 years - sentences are complete and widespread.

Psychological new formations of early childhood: the child’s separation of himself from others, awareness of himself as a subject of action, comparison with other people.

The crisis of 3 years proceeds as a crisis of social relations, separation from close adults and is associated with the formation of self-awareness. There is a need for the realization and approval of one’s own “I” (“I myself”). Symptoms of crisis (according to L.S. Vygotsky): negativism, stubbornness, obstinacy, self-will, protest, depreciation, despotism.

Children also begin to develop autonomy (independence and independence).

Feelings of shame and insecurity arise when parents limit the child’s expressions of independence, punish or ridicule attempts at independence.

The prenatal period is the period from fertilization to birth. At this time, rapid development of the child’s entire body and his psyche occurs.

The pace of these changes is truly fantastic: 30 hours after fertilization, the egg divides into two cells, and by the fifth day the embryo already has more than a hundred cells and is a hollow ball filled with liquid. After implantation, which occurs at the beginning of the second week, the growth and development of the unborn child accelerates even more: at two weeks its body is only 2 mm, at three weeks - 4 mm, at 4 - already 8 mm, and by the end of the second month it reaches 8 cm ! In just a month and a half, a tiny creature is formed from a fertilized egg, which already has the rudiments of all internal and external organs and the main parts of the brain. By the end of the second month, the intrauterine child is already quite similar to a person: he has a large rounded head with a high convex forehead, clearly visible eyes, nose, and mouth. The arms and legs are still short compared to the body, but they already have all the fingers. If the growth rate during pregnancy remained the same as in the second month, the newborn would weigh about 14 tons - twice the weight of a large elephant.

The main development ends by the middle of the intrauterine period, with respiratory movements appearing from 20 weeks. Starting from 22 weeks, a child can survive outside the mother’s body, but only in specially organized conditions (however, not all countries have the opportunity to create such conditions). By 20 weeks, all sense organs are developed and functioning, and a decisive turn has taken place in the structure of the brain: now it is different from the brain of other higher primates, our closest relatives in the animal world, and is developing like the human brain. Throughout the second half of intrauterine life, the brain is actively developing, the child masters rich information coming from his immediate environment, and even some influences from the outside. He, of course, is still growing, although not as intensely, and in recent weeks he has been accumulating fat and preparing for a new life. Let us now see how the child’s psyche develops before birth.

At 22-23 days, the heart of the embryo begins to beat, and at the same time the nervous system begins to form. At 6 weeks, all parts of the brain are present and the vestibular apparatus begins to function. The vestibular system regulates the position of the body in the amniotic fluid throughout the entire intrauterine period. It is she who is “responsible” for the child’s mastery of the rhythm and style of the mother’s movements even before birth. Imagine that you are floating in a large vessel that someone is carrying, turning, shaking, accompanying each type of movement with sounds of different intonations, different breathing rhythms and other information. It is not surprising that after 9 months of such “training” the baby quickly calms down when he is rocked in his arms.

Already at 7.5 weeks, a developing child feels touch on the skin of his face, at 10 weeks he opens his mouth, at 10.5 weeks he bends his fingers, and at 11-12 weeks he can move them and clenches his fist. During the same period, active movements of the whole body occur: the child swims in the amniotic sac, touching its wall - changes the trajectory of movement. At 13 weeks, the baby sucks his thumb, and the remaining 6 months (!) before birth are his constant activity. It is not surprising that after birth the best “soothe” is the pacifier. In addition to fingers, there are many other “toys” in the womb for the development of tactile sensitivity and movements: parts of your body, the umbilical cord, and a little later, when the baby becomes larger and is located close to the walls of the uterus, he can touch them.

By the middle of the prenatal period (at about 16 weeks), hearing sensitivity awakens. The first thing a child begins to hear is intrauterine noises, which are very varied and intense. This is the sound of blood in the vessels, the beating of the mother’s heart, the movement of internal fluids, and intestinal peristalsis. A constant, never-ending background. The most stable characteristics are the pounding of the heart and the noise of blood in the vessels, reminiscent of sea surf. In the second half of his “first” life, the baby also hears what is happening outside, although in a slightly modified form due to the surrounding fluid and tissues of the mother’s body. It best distinguishes sounds in the range from 20 to 5000 Hz, which corresponds to the range of the human voice.

Very early, from three months, taste sensitivity appears, and by 5 months the baby reacts to a change in the taste of amniotic fluid with a grimace of pleasure or disappointment. He also expresses his feelings from different sounds, touches and other influences in different ways.

The last thing to develop is vision - after all, there is nothing to see in the womb, it is almost always dark there. But there are already eye movements: at 17 weeks the baby squints his eyes, and from 6 months he reacts to the illumination of the mother’s abdominal wall with orange light. But still, there is no specific information for the eyes yet, so only light perception develops, and the perception of the contour and other visual information is the task of the next, extrauterine period.

This is such an interesting life we ​​have before birth. In terms of the amount of information received and the intensity of its development, this is probably the “richest” period of human life: after all, all the main characteristics of the world (sounds, hardness and softness of the surface, taste, movement, the appearance and disappearance of stimulation, its rhythm, etc.) ) - have already been mastered, and all the child’s senses “know how” to work with them - there is something to rely on after birth.