Understanding the Baby Soft Spot

Most people are unaware that babies actually have a baby soft spot on the top of the head which is diamond or kite shaped (anterior fontanel) and another one at the back of the head which is triangular (posterior fontanel).

A newborn soft spot exists where the skull has not completely closed at birth. The anterior fontanel is generally about two inches wide and can remain to some degree until the baby is around eighteen months of age. The posterior fontanel is only half an inch wide and closes relatively quickly between the ages of six to twelve weeks.

A baby soft spot is very important to the baby's wellbeing. First, the gap in the skull makes the baby's journey down the birth canal easier because it allows the head to change shape. For example, you may have seen a baby born with a cone shaped head. The fontanel also allows the head to return to a normal shape after the birth. Second, baby soft spots allow the brain to grow and develop during the first year of life. A baby's brain grows very quickly during the first year of life and needs room to grow. Once closed, a skull cannot stretch or expand.

The baby's newborn soft spot is also used by doctors to help with diagnosis when your baby is unwell. A depressed fontanel, for example, indicates dehydration while a bulging fontanel can be a symptom of meningitis. A swollen fontanel could also be a sign of other infection. If a baby soft spot is either depressed or swollen, you need to have the baby checked by a pediatrician. When the baby is well, the fontanel will expand and move as the baby moves, breathes, laughs or cries.

Since there is no skull over the baby soft spot protecting the baby's brain, you need to be extra careful around that area. It is particularly important to ensure that older siblings do not push down on the fontanel when playing with baby. However, having said this, many people are overly worried about their baby's soft spots and afraid to touch the area for fear of doing damage. The fact is the baby soft spot actually protects the baby from most common forms of damage. The soft membrane cushions the brain so that he or she is protected from common baby falls and risks. Although the fontanel is soft, it is made of a tough, fibrous membrane. It is the uncommon accidents or pressures that become more dangerous without a closed skull, not the normal bumps and falls of babies learning to crawl and walk.

However, if you are concerned about your baby's newborn soft spot for any reason, ask your doctor at the baby's next check-up. This will alleviate any concerns you may have and make sure that your baby is healthy and well.

You can read more helpful parenting tips and safety guides at Baby-Care-Help-Center.

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How A Goal Setting Chart Can Make You More Productive

An interesting phenomenon is that of someone who enjoys goal setting but shies away from charting their progress. In my coaching experience the clients who regularly take a reality check on where they are with their goals, have an advantage of being able to adjust their approach based on relevant and up-to-date feedback. This article takes a look at how a goal setting chart can be an effective structure in moving you productively toward your goal.

Charting will work best with quantitative goals this is the type of goal that has a benchmark or metric that you can measure yourself against. For example if you set a goal to earn $10,000 net monthly recurring income or better, that is clearly a goal you can measure yourself against each month.

Setting a qualitative goal is nonsensical in my coaching experience -- mainly because it is impossible to reliably measure progress. So for example when a client tells me they have set a goal to enjoy building a business that helps job hunters improve their job hunting skills, I often challenge them on whether that is a goal or a vision. It is important to set a vision and a mission statement for any new business - and perhaps even for personal goals too, since career and personal lives are often intertwined. However, by their very nature they are usually more open ended than goals per se, and primarily fueled by expectation, emotion and desire in their phrasing. And that makes them difficult to measure -- which is fine because goals on their own are like flowers without soil, sun and water to grow in. Most won't make it and for those that do, they won't last long.

What works for many people is to set goals that are effectively objectives or milestones along the way to fulfilling the vision. Remember that a vision statement is often a lifetime or at least a vocational desire that can evolve as time moves on and life unfolds. By setting objective oriented goals and then charting their progress on a monthly basis, the effort and time put into achieving them is measurable and also contributes to the experience of living your vision and staying true to your mission statement.

How should you go about creating a goal setting chart? The easiest way to begin is to take a sheet of graph paper and write the months January to December along the horizontal axis. The goal objective is tracked on the vertical axis. For example if my goal is to publish a total of six information products in my primary market within 12 months, I can make the vertical axis start from zero and go up to 10. Then each month I can put a mark on the graph paper corresponding to the total number of products I have published. By joining the dots you can see graphically the results over time.

This graph then becomes the plain truth that you can choose to use as constructive feedback. If you also mark in a different color the predicted number for that month (you do forecast, don't you?) it is immediately obvious from the 2 colored lines if you are on track or not. In some cases, if your goal is temporarily too ambitious for the time, energy and skill level you can currently bring to it, the chart can help you to course-correct by perhaps changing the goal metrics or getting some additional resources to help you.

The numbers themselves really don't lie although our interpretation of them may sometimes be suspect! Nonetheless, once you get hooked on the constructive feedback available from a paper goal setting chart, you can move on to using software tools such as microsoft excel or the various alternatives to microsoft products. These allow you to quickly update the chart and to print a hard copy, as well as also publishing the chart online for others to see.

Find out how to make your goal setting chart a part of your goal creation map.

http://www.goalcreationmaps.com/art

Mark McClure is a certified career coach and goal setting fan.

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