(8 of 13)
Most current advice givers urge anxious parents not to take such standardization too seriously. Pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton (see box), who is publishing next month a revision of his 1969 bestseller, Infants and Mothers, begins by declaring: "There are as many individual variations in newborn patterns as there are infants." Still, though a child's development during its first year is far slower than that of a monkey or even an elephant, it is nonetheless so dramatic—from lying flat on its back to the first creeping across the floor to the first faltering steps around the corner of the kitchen table—that scientists persist in trying to pinpoint when and how it learns each new accomplishment.
Two months, eight months and twelve months seem to mark major periods of change: in brain developments, in various skills and perceptions, in sociability. At about two months, for example, the baby is awake much longer than it was, it smiles a lot and stares with fascination at a new discovery: its own hand. At eight months, the infant is acquiring the important sense of its separate identity, and even an understanding of what Piaget called "object permanence," the realization that an object hidden from sight is still there. It begins to develop fears of strangers and of separation from its parents. At twelve months, the golden age, the baby has begun to walk and talk, and knows that the whole world awaits. Sometimes, clinging to a chair, waving a spoon in a fist, the one year old will throw back its head and crow in sheer delight.
These physical and social achievements have long been obvious: any mother can see them in her own children. What the new research demonstrates is that babies' mental growth can be as early and as striking as the rest of its development. Robert Cooper, a psychologist with Southwest Texas State University, is even testing a group of ten- to twelve-month-old children on their ability to recognize different numbers. They can master up to four, but he adds that "beyond four, there's some controversy." By showing his little subjects various groups of objects, Cooper demonstrates that they can tell the difference between three and five, he says, though the difference between four and five sometimes baffles them.
The idea that infants can start acquiring an education has tempted ambitious parents for centuries. At the age of three, John Stuart Mill learned Greek, and Mozart was playing the harpsichord. Both were taught by their hard-driving fathers. Today, New York City's fashionable nursery schools not only interview two year olds (and charge their anxious parents $1,200 a year for two mornings of schooling a week), but they also report applications outrunning openings by as much as 5 to 1.
The vogue is spreading. Gymboree, a franchise operation that started seven years ago in San Mateo, Calif., now has 61 outposts operating in 14 states that provide educational play for about 10,000 children. "Learning to read begins at birth," says one of Gymboree's brochures, but the $4 classes are mainly physical, ranging from "wee workouts" for beginners up to "gymgrad" for tots as old as four. "We've tried to create a 'yes' environment for the children, to place them in a