Your baby's vision and the tiny muscles around their eyes are developing and both components need to be exercised simultaneously. For the first several weeks of your baby's life, they can see contrasting colors, light and movement more acutely than anything else. Your baby's eye muscles are not yet coordinated, so she may appear cross-eyed at times. Babies can see objects best when they are 10-12 inches from their faces. Incidentally, babies prefer to gaze at mommy and daddy's faces and the faces of other children and babies more than anything else.
Tips for vision development:
- Provide baby with black, red and white toys; hang mobiles above their cribs.
- Allow baby to look at himself in the mirror or cut out pictures of babies from magazines and hang for baby to look at while in thecar seat.
- Switch sides half-way through feeding so that your baby has the opportunity to gaze at your face from both sides.
- Occasionally move baby’s crib to another side of the room so that they have to turn their head to look at the light source or mobile.
- Jiggle a playing card in front of baby’s eyes. Once they are able to focus on it, move it in horizontal and vertical arcs 8-10 inches from their face encouraging baby to track the card with their eyes.
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