By this Level baby should be well developed in feeling and knowing sensations such as soft, hard, warm and cool. The development of her ability to touch now becomes focussed more on her hands and fingers. The reason for this is that baby is now discovering her ability to use her hands as a ‘second sight’ as explained below. 

In tactile development Levels 4, 5, 6 and 7 parents concentrate on helping baby with her natural development of touch, using her hands as a ‘second sight’.  When fully developed the sense of touch is able to identify objects such as faces, typing keyboards and musical instrument controls, such as piano keys, by touch alone. Both good typists and good pianists can read while their fingers feel the keyboards and, as is well known, blind people can identify others by feeling their faces. Less well known is the fact that people who work with varying thicknesses of paper can just as easily learn to identify the fine differences between paper thicknesses and quality by using their sense of touch. An excellent sense of touch is able to measure distances from one piano key to many others and to accurately estimate paper or sheet metal thicknesses from micrometers to centimetres. The fingers and hands contain a great many nerves to send touch sensations to the brain, and baby’s brain grows as it receives new information about thicknesses and lengths from the hands.  It is worth noting at this point that a young child’s brain is able to grow more rapidly between birth and age 7 years than at any other time in her life. Consequently the effects of positive natural environmental influences on her brain growth at this time usually remain with her for a lifetime. Therefore, at this time of her life, the young child is able to develop the brain structure required to measure lengths and thicknesses by touch more easily than in the future.  This is a primary reason why it is found that great musicians often began playing a musical instrument in their early childhood. 

As a child, and as an adult, baby’s hands provide her with important information about objects; such as whether an object is wet, cold, round, sharp or soft. This touch feeling information helps her to identify objects and to decide if they are useful or dangerous to her. This is particularly important if she is feeling in the dark and can avoid knocking over breakable objects such as glass bottles, or when she can quickly pull her hand away if she feels a dangerous spider or animal. If objects can be identified and handled correctly by tactile feeling they can be used safely and injury can be avoided. Also, the ability to feel and hold well can significantly influence baby’s future. How well she can hold and feel objects will significantly determine the quality of her artwork, or her work as a surgeon or as a plumber, in future years. At this stage of development baby’s tactile OMSDEP is to develop the brain structure to feel depth just as she has learnt to see depth. To explain further; when an average adult looks into the distance she knows that some objects are closer to her than others. She sees depth. It is similar with the sense of touch. When an average adult lays her finger on an object such as a coin she can feel that part of it is closer to her than another part of it, and she can feel that the edge drops away to the table on which the coin is resting, even if she cannot see the coin. She feels depth. When we can feel the depth of an object we can feel our way around it without having to see it and we can decide how we will lift it, hold it or move it.  Motor mechanics, for example, sometimes have to feel depth when they fit difficult to see water hoses in car motors. They feel the pipe width with their fingers and adjust its position until it can be properly fitted to another pipe. Feeling depth is also what parents sometimes do when they reach far under low furniture to retrieve lost balls, toys or marbles that they cannot see. They also feel depth when they hold a button in a pincer grip. Musicians feel depth, and usually without looking, when they press lightly, moderately or heavily on piano keys or hold down the strings of a violin or guitar. Baby can practice feeling depth by picking up coins from a flat surface. As she learns to pick up coins from a flat surface her brain develops and she progresses towards being as skilled as a motor mechanic, dentist, surgeon or great musician. Parents develop baby’s ability to feel depth and help her with her OMSDEP by doing the following activity. Ten times each day they place a small coin on a flat surface and have baby pick it up three times.