Muang Thai Life Insurance offered parents advice on how to have smarter, happier babies during a seminar at Bangkok Hospital Pattaya.
BHP Director Dr. Piyaporn Thipyarath welcomed Duangjai Thangprasitiporn, assistant managing director of Muang Thai Life Insurance, and member of the company’s Smile Club to the April 25 workshop.
Duangjai said that the program’s objective is to boost the intellect and development of young children and babies.
The first three years of life are a period of incredible growth in all areas of a baby’s development. A newborn’s brain is about 25 percent of its approximate adult weight, but by age of 3, it will grow dramatically by producing billions of cells and hundreds of trillions of connections, or synapses between these cells, so it is necessary to build an infant’s IQ in the early years.
Children take part in activities to develop their IQ.
Weak posture control muscles are the primary problem with preterm infants, infants with Down syndrome, cerebral palsy and other at-risk infants, he said. Posture control plays a huge role in a child’s life. Those muscles stabilize the trunk to allow for good coordinated movement of the arms, legs, head, jaw, and even the eyes.
Strong postural control muscles allow good hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills (pincer grasp, handwriting and handling of small objects), speech and swallowing, higher level motor skills (jumping, skipping, walking on a straight line, etc), and stabilization of the eyes for reading and learning.
The best time to strengthen postural control muscles is the first year. After the first year, it is much more difficult and often times impossible if the child has high muscle tone to isolate and strengthen these muscles.
Without strong postural control muscles, a child will compensate for the lack of strength with abnormal movement patterns and “blocking” of joints to gain stability. This “blocking” significantly limits movement and coordination.
Activities included a workshop to test the ability of the children and infants, and a seminar entitled “Intelligence can be taught” was given by Piyaporn.
