When babies are born, interactions with parents are few. Many are barely even able to look at you a lot, and it all comes down to being calm if everything is fine or crying if they feel they need something. It is so until one day the baby begins to smile when we are ahead, initiating a relationship with us that we must correspond: When does that first smile arrive and why is it important to respond in some way to that gesture?
Babies already smile in the womb
If we talk about the first smile gesture we have to go to sometime during pregnancy in which the fetus is already able to make that face, so that when they are born they are also able to do it. We have all seen a baby on occasion smile while sleeping, as if he were dreaming of something funny.
However, it is not known very well why they do it, because a baby that has just been born has not had any experience that can make him laugh (nor the necessary reason for a memory to make him funny); so it is considered that it could be because the baby is at ease, perhaps excited by some internal sensation, or it could even be that it was simply a nervous reflex.
What matters is your first social smile
So what really interests us is not that smile that the baby makes a few days while sleeping, but the one a baby does when she is awake more or less when it meets the month of life, because he is happy to see an adult, or is trying to be nice.
That he does not think so, he does not say "I will see if these people like me"; it is just that as a social being, it reacts as established by the evolution it must do. Just as when you notice that you are alone you have the ability to cry, when you notice that you are accompanied, has the ability to smile.
It is as if he were educating us through his answers. "Dad, mom, if you manage to have me happy, happy and satisfied, I will smile at you. If you don't get it, I will cry." And so parents know when we are doing well and when we could improve.
His first "communication"
It is considered that the first smile, called social smile, is the first time that the baby communicates, that socializes, that emits a message. And when someone sends a message to another person, they wait for an answer.
That is why parents have to be close to babies when they are awake, do little things to them, talk to them, touch them, smile at them, sing to them, look at them, ... in short, issue answers to their smile, and be aware of their gestures, noises, looks, etc. ., because little by little they will be incorporating new ways of telling us how they feel about our way of doing things.
These interactions between parents and children make that the two know each other more and more and better, and that we can go from "look, I don't know what happens to the child", to "I think he is tired and wants to sleep" or "I feel like he wants you to listen to him and say little things".
In this way the relationship grows closer and sometimes the child "listens" to mom and dad, watching and learning from what they do to him, while other times it is the parents who "listen" to the baby, waiting to see what we He has to say with his gestures, gemiditos, smiles and groans. A very basic alternation in communication yet, but that can be very useful for the baby and that strengthens ties between parents and children.
In addition, the fact that your social actions, such as laughter, get a response, help you feel that you are able to influence your surroundings, and in some ways to connect with the environment and know that you have the ability to change it. If necessary. So you can feel that what you do and what you say is important to your parents, that you are heard and taken into account, and this makes you develop your self-esteem better.
Yes, it is very small, but since the first month of life comes its first act with social intentions, the normal and logical thing is that we begin to correspond so that he advances in his desire to tell us things and we will relate more and better to the baby. This is how parents and babies advance in this maternity with more security and can even take better those moments when the baby says otherwise, that it is not right, with his crying.
