Did you ever notice that there are days that your baby wakes up, and they seem to have grown an inch, or that they literally pop out of the bed with some new skill?
I know there have been so many times when we have woken up and Madhavi said to Anjali, “You are a bigger baby today!” There was a phase when Anjali would wake up from a nap, immediately stand up and reach for a book that we had been reading just before the nap…A sort of continued thought.
There is reason to believe that babies’ sleep patterns have a lot to do with developmental benefits. Sleep researchers believe that a baby’s light sleep–REM sleep–is when learning occurs.
It is known that blood flow to the brain is much higher during REM sleep–even double. Is it possible that learning is actually occurring during these phases of sleep?
In a baby’s first two years, their brains grow to nearly 70% of the volume of adult brains. That’s significant. It seems like the fastest times of growth, the newborn phases, are when babies are sleeping the most. I remember those early days when Anjali was sleeping up to 18 hours of the day.
So, it seems that the period of life when humans have the most active, or REM, sleep, is the time when the most brain development happens. It’s not just my imagination that Anjali seems to be learning in her sleep.
