Education before your first step: Bengaluru's schools for newborns

BENGALURU: Every week in the past three months, Pritie Jain, founder of wedding planning firm Bling Mushrooms, takes her six-month-old daughter Hshvi to 'class'. Along with other young mothers, Pritie sings, shows her colourful pictures and flash cards, massages Hshvi and watches the little one respond to different shades of light. Pritie is one of the many well-heeled parents opting for a Baby Sensory programme.
“At this age, the child's receptive quality is at its highest. Even if they can't converse with you, they understand everything. Only once they start talking, you realise that their horizons are widened,“ said Jain.What's more, it also means spending quality time with Hshvi.

Baby Sensory is a year-long programme for infants between 0 and 12 months. Each weekly class has a different theme aimed at developing the child's cognition and motor skills. “These musical patterns, signs, colours and lights help stimulate the five senses of the child,“ said Anju Cherian, founder and director of AJ Plackal Eduventures that owns the master franchise for Baby Sensory in India. The programme, she says, enables infants to pick up languages faster and communicate before they learn to speak.

The parent-child programme is the brainchild of UK-based parenting expert Dr Lin Day . While the concept is well-known in the West, it is gaining ground among the expat, techie and NRI population in the city. In a year's time, Anju's centres in Banashankari and Whitefield have seen over 50 enrolments. After Baby Sensory comes Toddler Sense, for children between one and five years.

Dr K John Vijay Sagar, additional professor, child and adolescent psychiatry , Nimhans, says that in a fast-paced age where both parents work, children are often under-stimulated.“This experiential deprivation comes with the risk of cognitive, social, physical and linguistic developmental concerns. A child's brain starts developing when it is a foetus.So, adequate sensory stimulation is required right from infancy.“

He added that while parents must equally focus on aural, visual, tactile and gustatory stimulation, overstimulation might lead to children becoming withdrawn.

There is a chance that such programmes might diminish the variety of perceptions a child is exposed to, warns Gayatri RP , vice-president, learning delivery at Hippocampus, which conducts programmes for children starting from two years of age. “At home, there is the ringing of the bell, sound of the pressure cooker and smell of the agarbatti that might get dumbed down in classes,“ she said. “Also, some programmes make simple and intuitive concepts appear complex.“ On the brighter side, she added that these classes come to the rescue of young parents without support systems at home.

Sreeksha Shravan, business analyst at Accenture who enrolled into the Baby Sensory programme with her 3-month-old daughter, concurs.“Parents meet likeminded people of their age. We exchange notes and solve many parenting queries.“