Whoops! It happened again. Your baby is investigating the effects of their actions on objects and people

Your baby is learning so much about who they are and what they're capable of. This is a long process, and, just now, they are making sense of how to understand their actions and movements. 

Tactile explorations 

Sometimes your baby might break something while playing. It most likely isn’t deliberate since they don't yet have the skills to understand how their actions could affect the things around them. 

They are constantly exploring, and accidents will inevitably happen. This is because your baby is further developing their sensory integration. 

Sensory integration 

Sensory integration is when we bring together information from our senses to understand what is happening.  

So, when your baby pushes a toy, they bring together what they see, feel and maybe hear to help them adjust their movements. This information will, in time, help them adjust their movements to push at just the right speed.   

Cause and effect  

Their play might seem careless at times, but really they are learning about cause and effect. Your baby is not deliberately breaking things or being messy, they are, in fact, being a scientist!  

If your baby likes to squeeze things, they probably have a lot of toys and other things to squeeze. However, if a sauce bottle is placed within their reach, they may squeeze it without realising that doing so will cause the sauce to gush from the bottle.  

Responding to actions  

Your baby may start to pull your hair – and that tiny but mighty grip can hurt! They’ll be unaware that pulling your hair is uncomfortable for you; they are simply exploring the action of pulling.   

Babies need time to think, find out and explore. The more they can create actions and watch what happens, the better able they will become at understanding what might happen.   

What can you do to help? 

It’s all about helping them on their road to discovery by providing play experiences that suit the kind of explorations you are seeing. If they want to push objects, perhaps offer a wheeled toy for them to play with, or build towers that they can safely knock down. 

Talk about what has happened. Did some toys roll away? Did they make a noise? The language you use to support their explorations will help them connect to what is happening.