Keeping Mom No. 1

I remember vividly when my daughter-in-law called me in tears, worried that her twins would end up loving their child care provider more than they loved her. I assured her that this anxiety is typical of moms who have to have their children in child care, and I shared some tips with her. Here’s an important one:

Create fun routines that involve activities that are unlikely to be part of child care. Because they are only done at home, they will stick out in the child’s mind. Children find routines of any kind comforting and these home-only routines will become special times with mom and/or dad that your child can look forward to. Here are some possibilities:

· Bath time. Almost all kids love to splash in the bath before bedtime. Instead of thinking of this as one more chore to get through, appreciate it as an opportunity to share a fun experience with your child with which child care can’t compete. Bath time also has the advantage of being a chance to relate to more than one child at a time.

· Singing. Choose specific songs that only you sing to your child—maybe one for first thing in the morning, one for bedtime, and one for riding in the car. It’s not unusual for grown children to speak nostalgically about such songs and even repeat them with their own kids.

· Dancing. I’ve never met a baby or toddler who didn’t like to be held in Mom’s or Dad’s arms and jiggled up, down, and around in time to a favorite CD song. This might be a great routine for when you reunite.

· Watching a DVD Together. Many child care providers avoid DVDs and yet, cuddling once a day with a child in front of an appropriate DVD can be an intimate and cozy experience (being sure to talk about what’s on the screen—and, whatever you do, not using DVDs in place of books!). For example, my daughter-in-law uses the Baby Signs My Bedtime Signs DVD to cuddle and wind the twins down at night before book time, each one clutching his or her own Baby BeeBo.

I’ve got one more major tip that I’ll share another time. (By the way, it took only one bad cold during which the twins stuck to her like glue to convince her she had nothing to worry about in the attachment domain!)

Have fun!

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.

Co-Founder the Baby Signs Program

and

Professor Emeritus, University of California

“But We’re Not Laughing At You!”

Holidays provide more occasions than usual for extended families to get together. If there’s a 2-year-old around, it’s likely that at one time or another everyone will be laughing at something amusing she has done. Maybe she is busily eating chocolate cake, getting more around her mouth than in it, or maybe she is carefully trying to walk in her mother’s high heels. Whatever the behavior, as soon as the child becomes aware that she is the focus of attention she becomes upset. And no matter how many times she is reassured that no one is laughing at her, she remains inconsolable and is too embarrassed to continue.

Where does such embarrassment come from? Has some humiliation in the child’s past created an expectation of punishment or shame? Probably not. According to developmental researcher, Dr. Michael Lewis, such reactions are typical of children starting between 18 and 24 months. It’s at this age that children begin to experience embarrassment when they find they are the center of attention. It’s not that they think they’ve done anything wrong or shameful. It’s just that everyone is looking at them and it makes them extremely uneasy.

Why does such self-consciousness begin between 18 and 24 months? It’s quite simple. This is the age when toddlers first become aware of themselves as separate from other people, knowledge that is obviously critical to feeling embarrassed. In fact, Lewis demonstrated a direct connection between self-awareness and embarrassment in the following way.

First, he tested a group of toddlers to see if they could recognize themselves in a mirror – a classic test of self-awareness. The way to do this is to surreptitiously dab a spot of rouge on a child’s nose, set him in front of a mirror, and watch to see if he touches his nose. If he does, then it’s clear that he recognizes that the red spot on the nose in the mirror is a red spot on his own nose. Some the toddlers in Lewis study did touch their noses, while others did not.

Lewis then tested whether these same children would show embarrassment. He had their mothers urge them to dance in front of the experimenter to the sound of a tambourine. As you might expect, some children did so without hesitation while others refused, showing classic signs of embarrassment. Every one of these latter children, and very few of the former, were among those able to recognize themselves in a mirror, a lovely demonstration that the child’s developing mind and the child’s developing emotions are closely related.

Apparently the novelty of understanding that one is the center of attention is very unnerving. Whether or not there is a judgment involved is irrelevant; the child simply wants the attention itself to stop…now. The more mature understanding that one has done something that has violated some kind of standard of behavior won’t develop for another year or so. In the meantime, realizing that it’s the attention itself that toddlers dislike can help parents be more sympathetic. After all, would you want everyone watching you stuff chocolate cake into your mouth? I thought not.

(For more information about emotional development, check out my book co-authored with Dr. Susan Goodwyn, Baby Hearts: A Guide to Giving Your Child an Emotional Head Start.)

Happy Holidays--and Happy Signing!

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.

Co-Founder, the Baby Signs Program

Signs Can Make Great Names Too

I’m on a kick about grandparents, probably because I’ve been able to spend lots of time with my 18-month-old twin grandchildren over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Of course, I’m too young to be a grandmother—aren’t we all? Fortunately, the grandmother image I grew up with has slowly given way to a new view. When I was a child, grandmothers, including my own, were typically frail women with white hair drawn up into a bun, solid black laced-up old lady shoes, and flowered dresses about as form fitting as a garage around a car. Nowadays, grandmothers are vibrant women still right in the thick of things, with or without gray hair—but very seldom in a bun!

One thing, however, hasn’t changed and never will. Grandmothers of any era relish the first time a grandchild reaches out with a smile and murmurs some version of her name, be it “gamma,” “mimi,” or “nana.” The wait for this memorable event is often long—sometimes not until a child is over 2 years old—because learning to say words is such a struggle for young children.

Fortunately, there’s a way around this frustration and the need for guessing. The solution is helping babies and toddlers use signs to communicate with those they love. And included in these sign vocabularies for many children are signs for grandpa and grandma that function exactly like names. Here are some fun examples from our files:

• 13-month-old Claire used a rocking motion as her name for Grandma because Grandma frequently rocked her in a rocking chair.

• 12-month-old Kai picked up on the way his Grandpa always threw him up in the air and began raising his arms up high whenever his grandpa arrived—or even when he saw a picture of him.

• 15-month-old Sadie would enthusiastically do her version of the ASL sign for Grandma (thumb of open hand on chin, arched forward two times) when Grandma entered the house.

Being a grandparent is one of the sweetest experiences on earth, and now it’s easy to make it sweeter still. Check out the Baby Signs Program, start signing with your grandbabies today and you'll soon be enjoying the sense of connection and love that being able to communicate brings.

Grandparents as Signing Teachers

I was blessed this Thanksgiving with the chance to spend the day with my two 18-month-old, twin grandchildren—Nate and Olivia. What a treat! The fact that they are signing up a storm made it especially exciting. Nate was enchanted with the flowers on the table, on the napkins, and on the buffet, pointing and sniffing—his sign for flower; Olivia was enchanted with the food, as usual, and made good use of the “more” sign.

The chance to be with them and watch them sign brought to mind the fact that grandparents make ideal teachers of signs—whether it be to their own grandchildren or to other children in their communities. The reason is that the experience of raising their own children enables them to recognize how helpful signs are in avoiding the tears and tantrums that arise when infants and toddlers need to communicate but simply can’t.

Grandparents also tend to have the patience and wisdom that come with years of dealing with people of all ages, enabling them to approach both parents and children with confidence and caring. Finally, from their life experiences they truly understand that successful communication fosters love and understanding—a wonderful gift for any grandparent to give--and to receive.

That’s why we are pleased that more and more grandparents are joining our Baby Signs Independent Certified Instructor (ICI) team. Our ICI program enables individuals to set their own hours and work as much or as little as they want, all the time earning income while helping families and childcare centers enjoy all the benefits that signing can bring.

If you are a grandparent or or know of one who might make a great Baby Signs teacher, pass along this link to a video describing our instructor program: https://www.babysigns.com/index.cfm?id=107

Happy Signing!

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.

Co-founder of the Baby Signs Program

;

Helping Kids Feel Grateful

Thanksgiving is a wonderful time 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 your toddler making the baby sign for "more" for the first time 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 a worthy 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 .bab

Happy Thanksgiving to one and all!

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.

Co-Founder, the Baby Signs Program