Your baby needs feedback

Successful relationships are built upon effective feedback.

At work and at home we need to feel, valued, respected, listened to and loved. We all enjoy getting encouragement, praise and rewards. Whether it's in the boardroom or the bedroom, we can all benefit from constructive advice about where and how we can do things better.

The Gordon Ramsay school of feedback, with his constant effing and blinding is somewhat extreme. He knocks people down, then builds them up. His feedback style is always blunt and often brutal. He makes the X Factor's Simon Cowell look like a pussycat. Yet he leaves people in no doubt where they are going wrong and what they need to change to get the results they want. Judging by last night's Kitchen Nightmare, this can be a recipe for success.

Babies need feedback too, although not of the Gordon Ramsay variety. They need to feel that the world is a happy and safe place where all their needs will be met. They're constantly getting signals from you and others around them. How you speak to them, look at them and hold them. How you respond when they cry, when they pooh and when they feed - it all shapes how they feel about the world, which in turn must influence their psychological development.

With babies of Daniel's age it's pretty simple. They need unconditional praise and unconditional love. Get this right and you'll be rewarded by the greatest feedback of all - your baby's smiling face.