What's In a Gaze?

What’s In a Gaze?

We bet you think your baby has gorgeous eyes and that you spent many hours gazing into them. Well, you may or may not be pleased to know that it isn’t a coincidence that you think that – there are developmental and psychological purposes behind it.

1. If you look at a model of a baby’s skull, you’ll notice that their eyes are initially much bigger in relation to the rest of the head. The eyes are initially the main tool that your baby uses to engage with the world. The first thing is that their large diameter enables your baby to absorb as much information as possible about their surroundings.

2. While absorbing information is obviously very important for survival, what’s even more important for survival is bonding, and your baby’s eyes are how they do it. Bonding ensures a baby’s survival, because it makes sure that their parent/carer will love them and want to attend to their every need. Given that they can’t attend to any of their own needs at all, it’s basically priority number 1 that someone reliably and consistently wants to do this for them, even in the face of how very needy they are and how difficult that is for those caring for them. If you think about it, the amount that babies need their parents is constant and exhausting in SO many ways that there needs to be a foolproof biological mechanism that ensures their needs are met, even when their parent is exhausted, stressed and anxious.

Bonding is therefore the number one key to survival for your baby, and bonding is a two way process, with both of you playing your part in creating the bond that exists between you.

Your baby’s eyes are vital for the whole process. They can’t bond through any of the normal ways we bond as adults – by saying or doing nice things, by expressing how much they care, by being there for us, but they can bond with us by making sure we find them absolutely irresistible. Notice how your baby’s eyes are proportionally bigger than the rest of their facial features – this is to make them seem more attractive to adults (have you ever noticed how in animations, characters are usually drawn with bigger eyes so that they seem cuter? Have you noticed how puppies and kittens have bigger eyes than adult animals? The concept is the same there too, for their parents – and for us!). With their big baby eyes, you are more likely to be drawn to gazing into them and developing a deep bond with them. 

Even as adults, we experience intimacy by looking into someone’s eyes, so your baby’s eyes represent their main tool for creating intimacy quickly.

But it doesn’t end there. Once you’re finding them irresistible, they need to keep your (bonding) attention, and they way they do that is through gazing back at you. Your baby will gaze intently back at you because they are programmed to recognise and respond to faces from birth. We are born with relatively few cognitive processes that are hardwired into our brains, but face recognition is one of them - so that your face catches their attention, causing them to play their part in bonding by looking at (i.e. responding to your gaze). By engaging with you and gazing into your eyes at the same time that you’re drawn to doing the same with them, a reciprocal bond will form between you. Research showed us long ago that babies who are just 9 minutes old pay more attention to faces than other shapes[1] and that they engage with faces in a unique way. 

It’s also been shown that babies aged just two days can distinguish their mother’s face from a stranger’s face.[2]

If we’re talking cognitive development, your baby’s gaze is also very important there. The ability to gaze at something comes first. Then the ability to pay attention to something develops, which leads to the ability to actually focus, or concentrate on it. The bonding gaze between you and your baby is actually also a key tool in helping their cognitive development along, because from gazing at you, your baby learns to follow your gaze, so that you develop the ability jointly gaze at something together. When your baby follows where you look (e.g. at a toy or an object of interest) you’re teaching them how to focus on other objects and to pay attention to them, without even knowing it. You’re teaching them about the world. So the bond between you has even more of a developmental functions than simply to make sure they’re cared for. 

It also means that the more time you spend engaging with them, the more time you’ll spend ‘leading’ their gaze, ‘teaching’ them how to focus their attention on something in the outside world and become familiar with it.

In the outside world, babies are attracted to different colours and visual effects, all of which are designed to help particular areas of cognition to develop at different times. This also means that food needs to be visually exciting and interesting, so that your baby wants to engage with it (yeah, we were always going to get a food reference in there!). Beige foods, for example, are not visually exciting, and will not catch your baby’s attention. The things that do catch your baby’s attention are going to become familiar more quickly because your baby wants to explore them and therefore spends more time in contact with them. The looks that pass between you and other objects help things to catch their attention.

But even that’s not all. Having a joint gaze, and then focusing joint attention on something is extremely important for language development skills, like comprehension, language production and word learning. Social developmental skills, like learning how refer to other people and how to have normal relationships, also comes from joint attention. So you might think: what’s in a gaze? But the answer is…a LOT!

image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

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[1] Goren, C.C., Sarty, M. and Wu, P.Y.K. (1975). Visual following and pattern discrimination of face-like stimuli by newborn infants. Pediatrics, 56, 544-549.

[2] Bushnell, I.W.R, Sai, F. and Mullin, J.T. (1989). Neonatal recognition of the mother’s face. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 7, 3-15.

We like to set our little ones a good example and encourage sharing. We don't mind you using any of the information, recipes and tips from our website, all we ask is that you credit us hard-working mummies here at Yummy Discoveries. 

Thank you x

 

  ©Yummy Discoveries Ltd.

Fish Pie Recipe

Fish Pie Recipe

Preparation time: 50 minutes

Cooking time: 30 minutes

Feeds: 4

To serve:  Baby carrots, green beans and/or warm garlic bread

Ingredients

For the Fish Pie:

2 skinless and boneless white fish fillets (cod, haddock or plaice)

4 large potatoes, peeled and quartered

1 leek, sliced

3 generous handfuls of chopped spring greens (or cabbage)

2 knobs of butter

2 tsp finely chopped parsley

Squeeze of lemon juice (optional)

Splash of whole milk

4 hard boiled eggs, sliced

For the Parsley Sauce:

25g butter

25g flour

3 heaped tsp of chopped fresh, parsley

300ml whole milk

Black pepper

Method:

1.      Pre heat the oven to 180°C

2.      Place the fish fillets onto a large piece of tin foil (big enough to wrap the fish in)

3.      Pop a knob of butter on each fillet then sprinkle with parsley, season with black pepper and as an optional extra squeeze the juice of half a lemon over the fillets 

4.      Wrap the fish loosely in the tin foil and place into the oven.  Cook for about 15-20 minutes

5.      Once the fish is cooked flake with a fork, whilst checking for any rogue bones, then set aside

6.      Meanwhile cook the vegetables;

7.      Heat a little butter in a frying pan and cook the leeks gently over a low heat until they are nice and soft.  Once cooked leave to one side

8.      Steam the potatoes for about 20 minutes and the chopped spring greens (or cabbage) for about 10

9.      Once the potatoes are cooked add a large knob of butter and a splash of whole milk and mash until you get a nice smooth consistency

10.  Stir in the cooked leeks and spring greens (or cabbage) into the mash

11.  Take an oven proof dish and place the mash around the sides of the dish leaving a well in the middle

12.  Take the flaked fish and place it into the well (ensure that the mash potato is higher than the fish so as to leave room for the eggs and sauce

13.  To hard boil the eggs; place the eggs into a small pan, cover with cold water and bring to the boil

14.  Simmer gently for about 7 minutes

15.  Once cooked place the pan under cold running water for a minute or two (to stop the eggs from over cooking) 

16.  When the eggs are cool enough to touch, tap the eggs against a hard surface and peel the shells

17.  Slice the eggs

18.  Take the dish and place the eggs into the well, on top of the fish

19.  To make the parsley sauce melt the butter in a pan over a low heat then stir in the flour, making a roux

20.  Pour in a little of the milk and stir using a whisk

21.  Gradually pour in the remaining milk whilst continuously stirring

22.  Bring to boiling point then simmer for a couple of minutes

23.  Remove from the heat and stir in the fresh parsley and season with black pepper

24.  Take the sauce and pour over the eggs in the well of the dish

25.  Place the dish into the oven and cook for about 30 minutes until the top goes golden

Oops! We forgot to take a picture! We'll aim to get one up soon but if you happen to take a picture of the pie or of your little one enjoying it, we would love to have a copy! Thanks!

We like to set our little ones a good example and encourage sharing. We don't mind you using any of the information, recipes and tips from our website, all we ask is that you credit us hard-working mummies here at Yummy Discoveries. 

Thank you x

 

  ©Yummy Discoveries Ltd.

Turkey Meatballs

Turkey Meatballs in Tomato Sauce

Preparation time: 25 minutes

Cooking time: 30-40 minutes

For the Meatballs:

500g turkey mince

1 egg

4 tbsp porridge oats or breadcrumbs

2 tsp parmesan cheese (optional)

½ tsp dried thyme

½ tsp English mustard powder

½ tsp chilli flakes (optional)

For the Sauce:

Glug or 2 of olive oil

1 onion

3-5 garlic cloves (crushed)

2 x 400g tins of chopped tomatoes

Ground black pepper

1 tsp dried thyme

1. Make the sauce by taking  a large pan with a lid and warm the oil, garlic and thyme
2. Meanwhile, blitz the onion in a food processor and set aside 2tbsp in to a mixing bowl for the meatballs and tip the rest in to the pan for the sauce
3. Now blitz the porridge oats or breadcrumbs in the food processor and add those to the mixing bowl too
4. Cook the onion on a medium heat until soft, stirring regularly
5. Add the tinned tomatoes and black pepper, turn the heat down and leave to simmer while you crack on with the meatballs
6. To the mixing bowl which already has the onion and breadcrumbs/oat mixture in, add the mince, egg, parmesan (if using), thyme, English mustard powder and chilli flakes (if using)
7. Squidge the mixture with your hands to mix and shape in to small balls
8. Drop the meatballs in the sauce and leave to simmer for 30-40 minutes or until cooked through.

 

We like to set our little ones a good example and encourage sharing. We don't mind you using any of the information, recipes and tips from our website, all we ask is that you credit us hard-working mummies here at Yummy Discoveries. 

Thank you x

 

  ©Yummy Discoveries Ltd.

Spring Slow-cooker Lamb Recipe

Spring Slow-cooker Lamb Recipe

Preparation time: 30 minutes

Cooking time: 8-10 hours

Ingredients:

500g Diced Lamb (we used chump)

1 onion (chopped)

1 tin of plum tomatoes

2-4 garlic cloves (crushed)

2 tbsp plain flour

500ml chicken stock

Squidge of tomato puree

4-6 sprigs of fresh rosemary (essential – the dried stuff just doesn’t cut it)!

Ground Black Pepper

6 rashers of bacon (optional)

Method:

1. Heat the oil on a medium-high heat in a large frying pan and add the lamb, stirring until it’s evenly browned
2. Remove the lamb with a slotted spoon and pop it in the bowl of the slow cooker
3. Add the bacon (if using), onion and garlic to the pan and cook for several minutes until the onion is soft
4. Stir in the flour  and add the stock, plum tomatoes, tomato puree, rosemary and ground black pepper and bring to the boil
5. Pour the mixture over the meat, pop the lid on and cook on low for 8-10 hours

This is yummy served with pasta, noodles or rice with a helping of veggies.

This recipe served 2 adults and a preschooler for dinner with enough left over for the preschooler’s meal which we served as a jacket potato filling.

 

We like to set our little ones a good example and encourage sharing. We don't mind you using any of the information, recipes and tips from our website, all we ask is that you credit us hard-working mummies here at Yummy Discoveries. 

Thank you x

 

  ©Yummy Discoveries Ltd.