The smile of the newborn: when and why does it start smiling?

Are you able to resist the newborn smile? No, no one can resist that gaze that captures every heart! This obviously applies to new parents, but also to all those who look after a newborn baby.

The first few times we see our child smile, tears well up in our eyes, a moment that is often marred by someone pointing out that the smile cannot be real, that it is simply a spasm.

Even many textbooks tend to consider the newborn’s smile in the first weeks of life as a reflection rather than a true expression of joy and happiness. But is it really so?

Until the second half of the 20th century, the behavior of newborns was considered mostly reflexive. Scientists thought that newborns had a limited ability to feel and express emotions.

It was even thought that infants could not feel pain in the same way as adults, meaning that they were sometimes subjected to painful surgical procedures without anesthesia.

Over the past 50 years, data has slowly accumulated suggesting that newborns are more than just reflective beings. They are in fact capable of actively managing their behaviors. For example, they may fall asleep to reduce stressful situations, or fuss and cry if they need stimulation or more interaction. They can also imitate smiles as early as the first 36 hours of life and can even learn from previous experiences from day one of life.

Some experiments have shown that around the fifth week of life, the newborn smiles if it sees a face approaching, but also if a cardboard shape with two drawn eyes approaches it. For scientists this reaction is automatic, i.e. linked to innate mechanisms.

However, if to the child’s smile the one who is close to him responds with words, caresses, phrases with a sweet tone, this contributes to the intellectual development of the child, who thus realizes that what is in front of his eyes is something distinct from he. The child understands that smiling brings pleasant results and thus begins to form that all-important bond between parent and child.

So from automatic the smile immediately becomes social and it already becomes so in the very first stages of life and not after 3-4 months as was once thought.

The stages of the newborn’s smile: from the belly to the first weeks of life

The baby begins to smile in the tummy, but the fetal smile is simply an automatic reflex to exercise a particular facial muscle, the risorius muscle or also called the Santorini muscle.

Once born, already in the second week of life, the baby could show smiles that follow a feeling of well-being, such as after a feed, for example.

If these smiles, as we have said, are followed by caresses, sweet words, pleasant situations for the child, then he is encouraged to smile at external stimuli such as the mother’s voice or a pleasant sound or a tactile stimulus. The child therefore soon understands that smiling is a way of communicating to obtain pleasant sensations .

Only after 3 months will he start laughing out loud.

Around 5 months the baby will begin to distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar faces and around 8 months will not smile at people he does not know. As the smile grows, it will acquire different nuances that can indicate happiness, embarrassment, joke, complicity … at the age of 2, therefore, the child will be completely master of the ability to laugh, which remains one of the most evident demonstrations of his state of well-being.

When does the smile become social?

Scholars are torn about differentiating innate from social smiles. When do the former become the latter?

Smiles have long been observed in the first days of life in response to stroking the cheek or belly. Newborns also smile in response to sweet tastes and smells. These results were published decades ago when smiles were thought of as purely innate reflexes. The reason scientists at the time didn’t interpret them as emotional was in part because smiles looked different from social smiles.

“Real” smiles, also called Duchenne smiles, involve not only the muscles in the mouth, but also the muscles around the eyes. Newborn smiles were thought to involve only the mouth region. However, when the scientists analyzed microscopic facial movements, frame by frame, using a dedicated coding system, they saw that smiles from the earliest days were accompanied by movements of the cheeks and eyes.

More and more studies have suggested that newborns smile when they are awake and that these smiles closely resemble social smiles. And when newborns are in an active, awake state, they smile twice as much as when they sleep. So it’s entirely possible that these newborns actually want to smile.

Children learn the power of laughter very early. Parents often smile at their newborns, but this behavior will depend on the state of the baby, in fact a parent is unlikely to smile if the baby is crying. As a result, children quickly acquire a remarkable ability to regulate their parents’ behavior. If a child maintains eye contact, and smiles, the parent will likely smile, making the smile rewarding.

The importance of smiling in child development

Encouraging a child to smile helps them develop self-esteem . The child gradually learns to understand that his feelings are important and that they can influence the environment around him. Smiling is also important for overall brain development.

Here are some tips to stimulate a smile in a two-month-old baby:

• Choose a time when your child is relaxed. A hungry child is not inclined to smile.
• Pick up the baby with his face very close to yours. Remember that at this age the child sees best at a distance of 20-30 cm.
• Smile and talk softly to him as only parents can

The newborn is growing up and starting to understand human behavior. He realizes that smiling attracts the attention of those around him and receives positive stimuli (caresses, sweet words ..).

If you can’t get your baby to smile don’t worry, it may take a few tries.
Does the baby avoid looking you in the eye? This is just her way of avoiding stimulation overload and exerting some control over his world.
If he was born prematurely, give him an extra couple of weeks or an extra month before you see his smile.

Respect the differences between you and your partner in how each of you plays with the child. Dads often elicit smiles from children while playing while moms are more relaxed. The child loves both approaches.