Chapter 10 has a section on Infant Motor Development, and the section on their reflexes particularly intrigued me. This part proved interesting because my cousin had twins during the last week of January, so I have spent the past two months observing their growth and development.
The book talks about their sucking and rooting reflexes. Both of these serve one extraordinarily important purpose: eating. The sucking reflex is the automatic response to oral stimulation. Meaning that if you put something, such as a bottle or pacifier, into an infant's mouth they will begin sucking. This is the more well known of the two reflexes, most people would probably tell you that they knew that. The rooting reflex, however, is much less well known. This reflex means that if you stroke an infant's cheek they will automatically turn their head and search for a bottle to suck.
The rooting reflex has taken affect in my life, but until I had to pacify a crying newborn I had no idea what it was. My cousin uses the rooting technique on a daily basis when trying to figure out the reason for her newborn's crying. The result is almost instantaneous from both of the twins; their heads turn very quickly in search of the food source.
The development of infants is fascinating, and I would venture to say that even as a newborn their reflexes are extremely impressive. The babies know what they want, and their reflexes are fine tuned to get it.
This is a very interesting subject in which it does make a lot of sense now that it is explained above. I find that it is so crazy how both the oral stimulation and the rooting reflex work with infants. It now makes so much sense how the correlation between pacifier and the bottle. They both include the sucking reflex which is what the infant wants. I also find it crazy how you can figure out if the baby is hungry or not by simply using the rooting technique.