Explore Scents Together
Parent introduces different gentle scents to baby using cotton balls — baby lotion, cinnamon, vanilla — and observes baby's facial reactions and attention. The agent coaches the parent to watch for olfactory awareness, scent differentiation, and visual attention shifts between scented cottons.
Opens a guided voice session in TogetherTime.
What you'll need
Baby lying on back, alert and calm. Three to four cotton balls, each with a different scent: baby lotion, cinnamon, vanilla extract, or similar gentle, baby-safe scents. Keep cottons in separate containers so scents don't mix. Never hold cotton directly against baby's nose.
How it works
- 1~20s
Let's start with a familiar scent — the baby lotion. Hold the scented cotton about three to four inches from your child's nose — not too close. Gently wave it so the scent drifts toward them. Watch your child's face very closely. You might see a change in expression, a wrinkle of the nose, widening eyes, a deeper breath, or a turn of the head. Any facial change counts as a scent response! What do you see?
Watch for: Baby shows facial or behavioral response to a scent held near the nose — expression change, nose wrinkle, head turn, or breathing change.
- 2~25s
Now let's try a very different scent — the cinnamon or vanilla. Wait a few seconds to clear the air, then present the new scent the same way, about three to four inches from your child's nose. Watch carefully — does your child react differently to this new scent compared to the lotion? A different facial expression, a turn of the head, or any change from the first reaction tells us they can tell the difference between smells.
Watch for: Baby shows a different reaction to a new scent compared to the first one, indicating olfactory discrimination.
- 3~25s
For our last observation, hold two different scented cottons — one in each hand — about arm's length from your child, one on each side. Does your child look at either cotton? Can they shift their gaze between them? Even though your child probably cannot smell them at this distance, we can observe visual attention to objects. And if you bring one closer so they can smell it, does your child look at it with more interest?
Watch for: Baby shifts visual focus between two objects held at either side.