Baby It's You

From the very first moment after birth, babies can see, hear, smell, and taste—and, just as quickly, they begin putting these senses to work. This program depicts several newborns interacting with their surroundings and relying upon simple yet deeply ingrained survival strategies. Intimate, awe-inspiring scenes of these strategies in action show how brand-new infants prefer to look at faces and listen to human speech more than anything else, how they motivate other people to care for them, and how, through these fine-tuned interactions, babies gradually start to make sense of the world. Sleep, feeding, and brain development are among several specific topics.

Sometimes even the smallest step can be the culmination of an epic journey. This program analyzes the long, painful, and ultimately euphoric struggle a child undergoes to roll, sit up, crawl, fumble around aided by furniture, and finally take one giant leap for humankind. Enthralling footage of adventurous, rapidly developing babies shows how they build muscle power and coordination, practice rhythmic kicking, deal with the weight of their large heads, adopt their own customized crawling styles, learn to climb stairs, and, even more importantly, learn to balance on two legs. Viewers discover how mental mapping skills and a crucial, built-in fear of falling come into play.

olding hands with a child is one of the great pleasures of parenting—but it’s also a manifestation of key steps in infant and toddler development. This program looks at the growth of manipulative skills in childhood, from a newborn’s primitive grasp to the creative tool-use of a 2-year-old. Viewers gain an understanding of how babies learn to pick up objects, drop or release them, and use them in combination, as well as how these skills are applied to the tools of everyday life: spoons, toothbrushes, crayons, and the like. Although manual dexterity starts taking shape within three months after birth and is directly related to survival, the video also emphasizes its link to creativity and self-expression.

From simple gurgles to the ingenious storytelling of a 3-year-old, this program illustrates how children learn to convey thoughts, feelings, and experiences. The development of nonverbal communication skills is examined as the film’s young subjects begin to parse out basic sounds and facial expressions, then apply what they discover in a way that becomes more proactive, verbal, and finally composed of logical sentences. Viewers can watch this process of language-building play out in fascinating, intimate scenes—starting with a single infant, then including his or her parents or guardians, and then encompassing an ever-widening circle of relationships.

Is a baby actually learning something when he knocks down a stack of blocks? What happens in a toddler’s mind when she “feeds” her teddy bear? Why does it take just as much work to bake an imaginary cake as a real one? This program explores the process through which young children begin to reason, plan, and solve both concrete and abstract problems. Emphasizing that babies are driven to make sense of the world in the same way that they are driven to walk and talk, the video shows how this urgent need to learn is fulfilled through play, which relies on both action and observation. Basic discussions of memory and cerebral cortex development are included.

Brothers, sisters, best friends, worst enemies—childhood is a world of constantly shifting alliances, but somehow it also produces lasting emotional bonds. This program looks at the challenges young children face as they cultivate one of the most tricky human skills of all: getting along with other people. Viewers are given insight into childhood social development as the video addresses a number of important questions: When do children acquire a sense of self? How do they understand the feelings of others? At what age should they be expected to forge real friendships? Information on tantrums, separation anxiety, and building a sense of humor rounds out the discussion.