At birth, newborns can recognize their mothers – by voice and smell.  Then a week later, they can recognize familiar faces.  Babies look at their parents twice as long as they do strangers.  They prefer listening to their parents and their family members as well. By 5 weeks, they smile and make more sounds when their parents are in near proximity and more when in close proximity.  Near the 2nd month, they can typically look at the face of their loving parents with focused intensity and spellbound attention for as long as several minutes.

What stands out about the description of early child development is the dramatically interaction of the parents and child and gets further extend by the closeness of other family members.  The most recent update Urie Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory of Development has been come more focus on the primary child development of the closes parent relations with their child as being the most effective proximal effects as described below.

The word effective is emphasized to indicate that proximal processes as we have denned them are presumed to lead to particular kinds of developmental outcomes—
those that represent the actualization of potentials for (a) differentiated perception and response; (b) directing and controlling one’s own behavior; (c) coping successfully under
stress; (d) acquiring knowledge and skill; (e) establishing and maintaining mutually rewarding relationships; and (f) modifying and constructing one’s own physical, social, and symbolic environment.

Urie Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory of Development Diagram.

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