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Let’s talk about talking. The very experienced authority on early childhood development Dr Burton White gives
following advice. Allow your newly mobile child to explore your home. He’ll bring things back to show you and will have a need to be fulfilled when doing that. Stop, quickly look and see what that need is, and then respond to need. Dr Burton White says that secret to teaching language, whether it be verbal language or sign language, is to respond to that need with language and play on that need. Dr White is author of “First Three Years of Life” and “Raising a Happy Unspoiled Child”, and you can see and hear him giving this advice in Joseph Garcia’s “Sign with your Baby” video. And in my house, you can see me having a conversation with a toddler about a wet toilet brush he has just brought me.
How to increase your child’s mathematics ability? Studies have shown that studying music statistically significantly increases children’s math skills and spatial-temporal reasoning abilities. The question now is why. A “Today’s Parent” article at http://www.todaysparent.com/education/general/article.jsp?content=20030903_124111_1696&page=1 cites a brain-imaging “Mozart Effect” type of study that showed that same parts of brain were active when listening to Mozart as when doing puzzles and playing chess, suggesting that music is like warm-up exercises for brain. Another study cited in that article goes much further, suggesting that music is more than just a cultural artifact; that our brains are actually structured for music, just like our brains are structured for speech and walking. Brain patterns were mapped and assigned musical tones to mark changes in neural activity. When played back, instead of sounding like a random sequence of notes, it almost sounded like a melody of a recognizable style of music!
“No!” – We hear it from those terrible-twos toddlers. Well, Lise Eliot in “What’s Going On In There?” presents a study about effects of parents saying “No”, “Don’t” and “Stop it” on development of their children. Research established that children that heard a larger proportion of this type of negative feedback had poorer language skills than children whose parents kept their negative responses to a minimum and instead gave encouraging, positive and dialog-inducing responses. The online games at www.KiddiesGames.com provide a fun model of this positive pattern of interaction. When child playing a game gets something right, friendly child character on screen says “That’s right!” or congratulates player. When child playing a game clicks on wrong thing, upbeat child on screen doesn’t actually say “No” or “Wrong”. Instead, it explains in same positive tone what child playing just did and what another possible (and correct) answer could have been. The feedback is accurate and positively and cheeringly encouraging. As far as I know, there have been no studies done on effects that toddlers saying “No” to their parents have on those parents...
Can you remember all this information next time you’re interacting with your small child? Let’s summarize it all like current Canadian CBS Television campaign slogan – “1) Comfort, 2) play with and 3) teach your child”, in that order. This is how you water your child’s mind, and you’re probably already doing it. So follow your instinct, let your child lead way to play, go with flow and enjoy playing with your small child. While results of recent studies may be news to you, recommended actions are just a reminder!
The author, Emma Rath, is the creator of free, fun, educational online computer games for babies and preschoolers at http://www.KiddiesGames.com. These games encourage caregivers to cuddle their children on their lap while participating in games of open-ended exploration that never say “No”, except for one fun game whose serious mission is to undo the instinctive child behavior of hiding in the case of a house fire.
