Window on the World: How your baby’s Eyesight develops?
When my little ones entered the world, I didn’t know whose eyes were blurrier. Mine from crying tears of joy, or my babies as they opened to the outside world for the first time. With my first, I remember distinctly wondering, “Can he see me? What can he see?”
From the moment they open their eyes for the first time, a newborn's eyes begin a captivating process that lays the foundation for a lifetime of visual exploration. If you want to know what those tiny eyes can see or from how far away they can see your adoring face looking at them, then this blog is for you. We’re going to focus on baby eyesight development and hopefully help to make a fuzzy subject a little clearer. 😊
Fun Facts
A few quick and interesting facts on eyesight before we get into details;
Newborns prefer faces over anything else. Their attraction to facial features is a testament to the importance of human connection in early development. And more than this they are born with a strong innate preference for their mother's face. Talk about love at first sight! ♥️
Newborn's tear ducts aren't fully developed, so they may not produce real tears when they cry during the first few weeks.
Babies are born farsighted, with a natural ability to focus on objects that are farther away. It takes time for their eyes to adjust to seeing things up close. This is also why their pupils are quite small when they’re very little.
There’s a myth that babies can only see black-and-white until 6 weeks or older. It’s actually more likely that babies can perceive high-contrast patterns and many shades of grey from day one. Studies suggest that what colour see any colour rich
Lights & Smiles - the Early Days
During the first month, your newborn is gradually adjusting to the light and shapes around them. Those soulful gazes may not yet be directly focused, but your baby is absorbing the soft contours of faces and the gentle play of light in their environment. You may notice them drawn to shafts of daylight through a window or through a crack in the curtains at nap time. One thing is for certain, they are drawn to and aware of faces, their mother’s in particular. If you think about it this makes perfect sense… the first thing we learn is to recognise faces and expressions so we can form emotional and social connections (usually from 6 weeks to 3 months). And what is a smile but the light and shadows of our mothers face? 😊
✅ Top Tip: Engage in as much face-to-face interaction as you can. Your baby's developing eyes will be drawn to you, especially your eyes and mouth. It may not always be obvious but your exaggerated smiles, laughs and peek-a-boos will help them tremendously.
Focusing Skills
Your baby's efforts to focus on nearby objects will begin to steadily increase from about 1 month onwards. It’s endearing to see them trying (and succeeding) but this is also a crucial development for later milestones. Their pupils are learning to expand and contract to let in just the right amount of light. Our phones might do it automatically for photos these days, but if you’ve ever tried to manually focus a camera you’ll know what this process looks like.
✅ Top tip: To aid them, introduce textured and colourful soft objects within their reach. This will motivate them to reach out and explore, improving their focus and laying the groundwork for future adventures in object manipulation (that’s fancy words for using our hands 🙂)
Where did that go? - Movement Tracking
As clearer focused sight develops a next challenge emerges for our little ones. Movement tracking. We may take for granted moving our eyeballs in their sockets and our heads on our necks but this is a complex action. Once you observe your baby starting to follow movements with those curious eyes, you can encourage their pursuit skills. Moving a brightly coloured, high-contrast toy slowly from side-to-side and in and out will draw their gaze. Have some fun by “jumping” the object quickly across their field of vision. They can’t keep up so to them it will seem like the object is disappearing and reappearing magically. The more they practise and grow, the smoother their head movements will become. From rather jerky at first, by 3 months or so you will see greater head control and ability to follow objects smoothly.
✅ Top tip: this is not just important for eyesight development. It also helps with developing neck strength and coordination.
🌈 All the Colours of the Rainbow - Colour Vision 🌈
The pace at which colour vision develops is both remarkable and slow. Between 0-6 months babies will go from having almost no ability to distinguish between colours after birth, to a full spectrum colour vision. However, it won’t be until their late teens that full adult level colour vision will have grown. But let’s focus on those first 6 months. Contrast, lightness and intensity associated with different colours are very important to your baby’s development. Put simply, they’ll love bold strong contrasting colours that their young eyes can practice on. Create a play environment with a variety of colourful toys and objects. Be mindful of over stimulation however (especially in those early days) just starting with one or two strong colours at a time is a good idea. As they approach 4-6 months, they’ll be able to categorise and associate objects by colour (roughly speaking they’ll know bananas are yellow as an example).
✅ Top tip: When speaking with your little one day to day, describe and speak about colours regularly. “This banana is yellow. The sky is blue. The grass is green.” Don’t underestimate their ability to absorb information. We’ll talk more about speaking with your little one in our blog on Sound.
Two eyes are better than one - Depth Perception and Binocular Vision:
Around 3 months little ones will start to reach for and grasp objects. This involves a critical development step where their two eyes and brain will all begin working together. They take the two different images from the left and right eye and turn into the rich 3D world we understand. The technical term for this is Binocular Vision. And its what makes our depth perception possible. Don’t believe me. Close one, and try to reach out and place your finger tip directly down on top of something. Not that easy is it.
✅ Top tip: Introduce games that involve reaching and grabbing. Placing a toy at varying distances or dangling them from a play gym encourages your baby to practise these skills in a playful and interactive way. We’ll explore these skills in much more detail in our blog on Touch.
The development of your baby's eyesight is a marvellous adventure filled with curiosity, colour, shapes and connection. There are few things as joyous as seeing the recognition in your little one’s eyes of your face or the magic of the world around them. Enjoy every minute.
Look after your little one. Look after yourself.
Juliet. 💛