MOTHERS can give their babies a head start in life simply by understanding their feelings. A study of 200 mothers and their infants has found that in the first two years of life, the most important factor in a child鈥檚 development is not its mother鈥檚 education or wealth, but how well she interprets her baby鈥檚 moods.
Elizabeth Meins鈥檚 team at the University of Durham, UK, tested the babies鈥� language and play skills at 8, 14 and 24 months old. The researchers also assessed how well the mothers, half of whom had left school at 16, could read the mood of their child from video footage. They found that 鈥渕ind-mindedness鈥� was a better predictor of child development rates than background, income and status.
The better a mother interpreted her child鈥檚 mood, the faster it developed the ability to represent its thoughts and feelings through language and play. 鈥淭his is not to say that if you鈥檙e not 鈥榤ind-minded鈥�, your child won鈥檛 develop language or play,鈥� says Meins. 鈥淏ut being mind-minded appears to help children acquire these representational systems somewhat earlier.鈥�
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Other studies suggest that the mother鈥檚 status, education and wealth become more important for child development later in their lives. Meins is planning to follow the same families to see if this is the case.
