Talk or sing with your baby, using their given name during your interactions. New Jersey Council for Young Children. (2013). New Jersey Birth to Three Early Learning Standards. Retrieved from: https://www.nj.gov/education/ece/guide/standards/birth/standards.pdf Lally, J. R., & Mangione, P. (2006). The uniqueness of infancy demands a responsive approach to care. Young Children, 61(4), 14–20.
Calling your baby's name helps them develop self-awareness as a being who is separate from the people in the environment. Research on one to two-month-old babies showed that infants begin to manifest a clear sense of their agency in the world at around two months of age.
Babies could start to control how strongly they sucked at a bottle to get what they wanted instead of allowing external factors to influence the process. This stage is known as the
Rochat, P., & Striano, T. (1999). Social cognitive development in the first year. In P. Rochat (Ed.) Early Social Cognition, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 3-34.
Rochat, P. (2001). Origins of self-concept. In G. Bremner & A. Fogel (Eds.), Handbooks of developmental psychology. Blackwell handbook of infant development (pp. 191-212). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Young children develop self-awareness when they have social interaction with adults. For example, when parents interact with their babies and acknowledge their responses by smiling back or expressing happiness when children smile, babies learn that their presence is affirmed.
Babies have a sense of self from infancy. Infants develop a concept of self through the adults' responses. These can include interacting with them face-to-face, talking to them and playing games that involve imitation, turn-taking and eye contact. These interactions help to build self-awareness, joint attention and hones babies' ability to respond to another person.