Points of view

Babies, toddlers and very young children need an environment that is visually interesting without becoming visually overloaded. Commercial play materials for young children sometimes emphasise the 'need to stimulate'

under-threes for their visual sense, as well as other aspects of their early development. But very young children do not need to be pushed along and chivvied into stimulation. If they have an interesting environment, with people and play materials that they can easily access, then under-threes will manage their own 'stimulation' perfectly well.

Babies focus at a close distance, the gap at which they are naturally held for feeding. But they soon become able visually to home in on people and on objects of interest at greater distances. When babies learn to be competent crawlers, cruisers and then walkers, they use their vision together with physical skills and toddler planning power. Watch mobile young children and see them look, move across to their point of interest, often at speed, settle to get close to the object or person (large or small) and reach out to touch and experience, using all the fine physical skills they have at that moment.