When does learning really begin? Is it when the kids are in a classroom with a teacher for the first time? Or maybe it begins in the child’s toddler phase when they’re learning how to walk, talk and eat? Most people are under the belief that learning begins at the earliest stages of the child’s life; but, to answer that question – learning begins before the child is even born; learning begins in the womb.

For years now, doctors have believed that babies were born without any knowledge about the outside world. However, in recent times, researchers and their research are questioning that belief and assumption by offering clues to the unborn babies in the womb and observing what they remember and how that information shapes them and prepares them for the world outside the womb. Today, doctors realize that babies begin to engage in many of their senses and learn about the world around in them in the last trimester of pregnancy and maybe even earlier than that.

Babies only being hours old can distinguish between sounds from their native language from that of a foreign language, researchers suggest. Their studies indicate that sensory and brain mechanisms are developed by the 30^th week of pregnancy. In addition, new studies show that babies can hear their mothers talk during the last 10 weeks of pregnancy and can demonstrate what they’ve heard.

At the time of birth, babies can recognize and distinguish the voice of their mothers from others. In another study, day old babies were given pacifiers by doctors which were connected to tape recorders. Depending on the varying sucking patterns of the baby, the pacifier either turned on a voice recording which was their mother’s or of an unfamiliar woman; within a span of 10-20 minutes, the babies learnt to adjust their sucking patterns in such a way that the pacifier would turn on the voice recording of their mother. In addition, this research also showed that babies had their first lesson in their native language in the wombs of their mother’s.