Teaching Gratitude

Thanksgiving is a wonderful time for us to focus on the many things for which we should be grateful—from obvious things like food to eat and a warm bed at night to the little, more subtle things like birds flocking to the bird feeder or a sunny day for a winter outing. The nice thing about Thanksgiving is that the specific focus on gratitude on this particular day makes it more likely that even very young children will “sit up and pay attention.”

However, I think we all can agree that feeling grateful and expressing gratitude shouldn’t be just a one-day-a-year thing. The more difficult challenge, therefore, is how to help children understand that these behaviors are important every day. It’s an important goal because research shows that kids who feel and act grateful tend to be less materialistic, get better grades, set higher goals, complain of fewer headaches and stomach aches and feel more satisfied with their friends, families and schools than those who don't.

That’s why I was so glad to see a list of tips for how to foster gratitude in children included in an article prepared under the banner of the child-advocacy organization, Zero to Three. Here’s link: http://www.zerotothree.org/child-development/social-emotional-development/raising-a-thankful-child.html .

One thing that we here at Baby Signs can add to the list for the littlest ones is teaching the sign for “Thank You” (place fingertips on chin and make arching movement outward). It’s amazing how early and easily signing toddlers pick up this important concept!

Happy Signing (and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook)!

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

Giggle Games Galore

One of the true blessings that come with being human is the ability to laugh. Adults often don’t realize that children begin honing their own comedic skills at impressively early ages. Supporting your child’s attempts at humor really is important because at its core, humor is creative. Even if your child is simply retelling a joke she’s heard elsewhere, she’s had to do a bit of mental gymnastics herself to grasp the humor. And on those occasions when she comes up with her own joke, she is demonstrating both mental flexibility and creativity no matter her age.

Find the particular giggle games that you and your baby both enjoy, and play them often so that your baby has a chance to enjoy predicting what comes next. For some babies and at some ages, these might primarily involve touch and movement, either in mild forms (like being wrapped and tickled in a towel after the bath) or no-so-mild forms (like being tossed in the air). Other babies may find weird noises emanating from your mouth particularly hilarious or absolutely crack up at seeing their big brother make funny faces.

Whatever the routine, remember that babies at all ages are good at learning what to expect. In fact, the giggling usually starts leaking out in anticipation of the event. The opportunity to form expectations like these, apart from the actual tickle or toss, is pleasurable all by itself.

Happy Signing (and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook)!

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

Number Sensitivity Begins Early

Here’s another detour from my traditional topic of baby sign language. Human infants come into the world looking for things to count. Mother Nature, it seems, figured out eons ago that if the human species was going to reach its full potential in this domain, she’d better arrange for the process to begin as early in life as possible. Given every human baby’s natural sensitivity to numerosity, it’s ironic that so many adults have grown oblivious to how pervasive numerical information is in everyday life. As a result, many parents overlook easy ways to give babies food for thought in this very important domain.

It’s easy to make numbers an obvious feature in any activity that involves repetition. Take the ever popular tickle game. The tendency for most people is to engage in triplets: “Tickle, tickle, tickle!” Try repeating the tickle triplets five or six times in a row, and then abruptly change to sets of two. Or do the opposite. The idea is to surprise your baby with this sudden change in quantity. You may not get an outward sign that she’s noticed, but trust me, she has. This same strategy can be applied to lots of different activities: blowing raspberries on your baby’s tummy, bouncing him on your knee, shaking rattles, splashing bathtub water. Almost any simple action that makes your baby smile can provide grist for the number mill!

Happy Signing (and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook)!

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

Modeling Imagination

Here's a tip I've drawn from Baby Minds: Brain-Building Games Your Baby Will Love, the book Dr. Susan Goodwyn and I wrote following publication of our book about signing, Baby Signs.

The natural inclination of children is to become less rather than more creative as they get older. However, there are ways you can support the development and survival of imagination as you child moves from birth to age 3 and beyond. One way is to model how to play make-believe. Young children naturally imitate what the important people in their lives do, from eating with utensils to dressing up in grown-up clothes. So doesn’t it follow that seeing you use your imagination will inspire them to do the same? At the same time you’ll also be giving them hints about how to go about pretending—that puppets can talk, that “plots “ can be silly, that blocks can be cars, and that even big people think it’s all a great idea.

Your efforts should begin at a very early age. Simply sipping imaginary tea from a cup or taking an imaginary bit of food from your baby’s cookie is a start. Many parents engage in such play intuitively, but our research shows that many who should—particularly parents of boys—do not. This type of play has the extra benefit of promoting language development because, unlike simply manipulating parts of toys, make-believe scenarios naturally involve talking. In fact, we can’t think of a single downside to joining your infant, toddler or preschooler in playing make-believe.

Happy Signing (and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook)!

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

Signing with Babies : An Easy Intervention

A new research study from Stanford University has revealed that low-income children have already fallen significantly behind in verbal vocabulary development by 18 months. In addition, Dr. Anne Fernald and her students found that this negative standing in comparison to higher-income children keeps growing. Specifically, by 2 years of age, the more affluent children had learned 30 % more words in the intervening months than had the lower-income children. One reason for the gap, research shows, is because low-income children simply hear fewer words directed at them each day—and learning a language depends on hearing that language!

Why is this early vocabulary gap a concern? One important reason is that vocabulary size at early ages is a good predictor of the ease with which children learn to read—and reading, by anyone’s estimation, is a key contributor to doing well in school. Another important reason is because verbal language is the vehicle by which children can ask questions and understand answers—also a key contributor to success academically.

Why do I bring his up in a blog about signing with babies? The answer is probably obvious to those of you who already enjoy signing with your child. Our NIH-funded research has shown that signing speeds up verbal learning, and one reason it does so, is because signing by a child pulls words from the adults around him or her, thus contributing to the overall number of words the child hears.

Think about how you would respond if your baby, during a stroll in the park, suddenly turned to you with a smile and signed “butterfly.” Would you ignore the sign or simply say “Yeah, that’s a butterfly”? Not likely. What is practically inevitable is a reply like “You’re right! That’s a butterfly! Oh look, there’s another butterfly. See how yellow they are?” etc., etc., etc. Without that sign, in contrast, parent and baby would be more likely to proceed in silence. In other words, signs enable babies to initiate conversations about things in which they are interested, and when one is interested in something, one is more likely to pay attention to what is said in return.

The larger point I’d like to make given what I’ve said above is that introducing low-income families to signing is an easy and inexpensive intervention that can help close the vocabulary gap. What’s more, signing would also bring lots of other proven benefits--like lower frustration and happier parent-baby interactions--benefits that make life easier and more satisfying to parent and baby alike.

Happy Signing (and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook)!  

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

Make Any Time Rhyming Time

I recently ran into a mom who felt that nursery rhymes were too “old fashioned” for her child. That has motivated me to share a piece of information that has been in this blog before but clearly bears repeating for today’s audience.

Reading requires something called “phonemic awareness,” a component that is one of the more challenging prereading skills that young children must master. What is it? Quite simply, it’s the awareness that the words they hear people say—even single syllable words like “cat”—are actually made up of individual sounds that are quickly combined: “ka+ah+t”. Kids gradually catch on; however, researchers have discovered that there is an easy way to speed the process along: listening to nursery rhymes and other simple poems and songs. In one classic study, researchers in England found that the greater a child’s knowledge of nursery rhymes, the more phonemically aware the child was. Why? Because the fact that rhyming words share their final sound draws attention to the existence of individual sounds in words. And what make this finding even more significant is that the greater a child’s phonemic awareness, the better his subsequent reading skills.

The lesson is clear. To help your baby start reaping the benefits of rhyming from the moment she is born, sing her to sleep with lullabies. Include songs and games with lots of rhyming words in your daily interactions. Captivate her attention by emphasizing the rhyming word pairs. Keep his enthusiasm up by substituting family names into the rhymes (e.g, “Daddy and Julia when up the hill….”). Use pictures of several objects with rhyming names to make a homemade mobile to hang over her crib or picture to tape to the wall. And don’t forget that tongue twisters (like the ever popular “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers…”) works in a similar way but focused on initial rather than ending sounds.

Happy Signing (and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook)!

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

"Baby Minds" Webinars

Did you ever wonder what goes on in your young baby’s adorable little head? I’ve never met a parent who hasn’t! Well, no one can tell you precisely, but over the past few decades developmental psychologists have come up with a wide variety of clever techniques to open that window at least a little bit. And what they have discovered about early thinking skills is really fascinating.

Some years ago, Dr. Susan Goodwyn and I made this research the basis of a book for parents entitled Baby Minds: Brain Building Games Your Baby Will Love. And this week, I’m drawing from that book, in addition to more recent work, to present a webinar with a similar name: "Baby Minds: Nurturing the Seeds of Intellectual Development." This is a 2-part webinar. In the first part (Weds., October 16, 2013 at 6PM Pacific Time), you’ll learn about how babies are Involuntary Observers, Natural Born Mimics, and Little Scientists. In Part 2 (Weds., October 23, 2013 at 6PM Pacific time), I’ll round out this modern vision of the baby to talk about how babies are Pattern Predictors, Creative Communicators, and Motivated Memorizers. In each case, I’ll be sharing not just what we know, but also how parents and teachers can use this information to create easy activities to help nurture these seeds of cognitive development.

Hope you’ll join me for what I’m going to try my darnedest to make a fun and informative opportunity to learn more about your baby. For more information and/or to register, click here.

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis