The iPad Generation? What’s a Parent to Do?

It was just a few years ago that all parents had to worry about was whether or not their young child was watching too much TV and/or too many DVDs. Now, however, fundamentally different media experiences have been added to the mix. I’m talking about the interactive platforms provided by smart phones (e.g., the iPhone) and tablets (e.g., the iPad). As the photo above of my twin grandchildren, Nathan and Olivia, indicates, the pros and cons of time with these platforms is an issue even in our family.

How prevalent are these items these days? A recent Wall Street Journal article, citing a survey from last year by a non-profit group called Common Sense Media, reported that 39% of 2-to-4-year-olds and 52% of 5-to-8-year-olds have used some form of touch screen platform. Given that the popularity of such devices seems to be growing by the proverbial leaps and bounds, I would bet those percentages are even higher now!

On the plus side, the educational games available as “Apps” are, for the most part, interactive—meaning that they enable even toddlers to make decisions and effect changes by simply touching the screen. This is very different from the primarily passive experiences that TV and DVDs typically provide. And the small amount of research that does exist suggests that well designed games do promote learning.

On the negative side--as anyone who’s tried to wrest an iPad out of the hands of a child can attest to—these devices could be called, as one parent described them to me, “crack for kids.” In other words, kids love themn and don’t want to stop playing with them. The concern is that time spent playing with them is time not spent romping around with other kids, building with legos, nurturing one’s imagination through pretend play, or having conversations with the big people who love them.

So what’s a parent to do? Until we have more research, my best advice is “all things in moderation.” What this means is setting consistent, logical limits by saying “No, enough is enough” and taking the device away. In fact, think of this as an opportunity to get some really helpful practice setting limits—a skill that, trust me, will continue to come in handy until your child leaves home. With short term or long term limits in place that your child can come to understand and anticipate, this will also be a valuable lesson for her as well.

Visit us on Facebook and tell us what you think? What have you tried with your kids that might work for others. This is definitely a discussion worth having!

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

How to Make the Most of Book-Reading

In last week’s blog, I talked about how signing spurs language development by increasing a baby’s enjoyment of books. Part of the explanation that I gave for this positive relationship between books and language development involved something researchers call “Dialogic Reading” Quite simply, this term means engaging your child in a conversation about what’s on the page rather than just reading the text and moving on. What I want to do today is provide some specific tips for how to get such conversations going.

• Instead of only asking for labels (like “What’s that?”), ask questions that require some thought to answer (“Where do you think Goldilocks is running to?”) In general, good openers include “Why….?” “How….?” “Where…?” You’ll find you naturally expand on whatever answer your child provides, thus providing more words for your baby to ponder—and learn (e.g., “Too big? Yes, Goldilocks was too big. She was just too heavy for that little bitty chair.”).

• Ask about things that are more abstract, like feelings or predictions about the future. “How do you think Goldilocks felt when…?” “What do you think Goldilocks told her mommy when she got home?” Parents really underestimate children’s ability to think about such things. What’s more, helping your child identify a character’s feelings will indirectly help her identify her own.

• Ask questions that relate the book’s events to your child’s own life. “Have you ever seen a bear?” “What would you do if you woke up and saw three bears?” Like the rest of the human race, babies are more interested in things that have direct relevance to their own lives.

• Relax, laugh a lot, and “go with the flow.” Don’t worry if your child gives the wrong answer—or no answer at all! The point is to make talking fun. A child who genuinely enjoys such give and take will be motivated to get better at participating. A child who doesn’t, who feels “interrogated” and put on the spot, will emotionally withdraw and see book-reading as aversive. In other words, “Dialogic Reading” is not—I repeat—is not an IQ test! It’s just a simple way to enrich the experience of cuddling up with Mom or Dad and a good book.

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 Sign Language and Books: A Wonderful Partnership

As most of you know by now, Dr. Susan Goodwyn and I discovered through our federally funded research

that signing actually speeds up rather than slows down the process of learning to talk.

There are a number of reasons why. The one I’m going to focus on here is the fact that signing makes book-reading more fun. And how does that help language development? Think about the books you read with your children. First of all, the pages themselves provide lots of things with names—both in the text and in the pictures. For babies just learning to talk, these names are often novel. That means they are getting exposed to new vocabulary items—and every time you read the same book again (which we know babies demand), they get the repetition needed to add these names to their repertoires.

The second reason books help language development is through what psychologists call “Dialogic Reading.” This is a fancy term for something very simple. It means engaging the baby in a conversation (i.e., dialogue) about the things on the pages, conversations that include questions for the baby to answer, even if in very simple terms. (“What’s the doggie doing?” “What do you think the baby owl is feeling?”) Research by Dr. Grover Whitehurst has shown that this “eliciting” of words from the baby during book-reading does promote language development.

So, there you have two reasons why book-reading with young children is good for language development. But, back to the initial assertion--that signing increases a child’s interest in books. The reason is because signs provide a baby with a way to actively participate in book reading at much younger ages. Instead of merely listening to Mom or Dad name things in a book, the baby can name them him/herself—with signs. And they do! Click here for an adorable example on YouTube (title "Baby Signs Julia"")—and notice how Baby Julia can point out things she thinks are interesting that her mother hadn’t really noticed, things she wanted to talk about. That really makes reading books more fun for babies! (By the way, the mom is Bonita from our home office and the videographer is Noah, Julia's 12-year-old brother.)

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

Linda

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

It May Look Like a Scribble, but It’s Really . . .

This week's entry is something I've taken not from the Baby Signs book but from another book Dr. Susan Goodwny and I wrote for parents called Baby Minds

.

If you’re like most parents who mount their little tykes art work on the refrigerator, you’ve “oh-ed” and “ah-ed” over lots of scribbles, still waiting for the day when the drawing of “Mommy” is at least a stick figure with recognizable head, torso, arms, and legs. What most parents don’t realize, however, is that even those supposedly random scribbles can truly represent something as far as the child is concerned. How can you know?

Ask your child what she has drawn. If she says “Mommy,” ask her to point to where Mommy’s hair is, Mommy’s belly button is, Mommy’s feet are. Chances are good that by age 2 ½, she’ll point respectively at the top, middle, and bottom of her scribble. If instead your child say’s it’s a “car,” ask him or her where the roof and the wheels are. You get the idea.

According to developmental psychologists, this ability to endow a scribble with “representation” is, itself, worthy of sincere “ohs” and “ahs.” The reason is because it’s a sign that the child is carrying a symbolic relationship (between the real object and the scribble) in his/her head, an indication of a great developmental leap in intellectual flexibility.

So, next time your child proudly produces a scribble rather than something recognizable, smile, secure in your new found knowledge that there’s truly more there than meets the eye!

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

Linda

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

Parents as Memory Motivators

Babies start remembering things from the day they are born—which way to turn my head to get fed or that Mom’s likely to come when I cry. But these memories are not available to conscious memory. They are the result of repetition of experiences and are laid down automatically. It’s what we call learning!

When language begins to click in, whether signs or words or both, a whole new tool set is available to help boost memory. The availability of words to hang memories on, so to speak, really increases a child’s ability to remember and to do so at a conscious level.

The dawning of language, however, helps memory development in another, less obvious, way. It provides a stronger motivation to try to remember—and parents play an important role here. As children begin to comprehend what is being said around them, they become motivated to join in the conversations, and many of those conversations involve things that happened in the past. “Remember what we did today? We went to the zoo! And do you remember what animals we saw?” What’s more, it quickly becomes clear to children, that Mom and Dad are especially pleased when the children themselves remember.

The implication is clear. If you crave cozy interactions with these big folks, then learn to play the memory game! And how do they go about learning it? By paying attention as adults model good storytelling. Adults literally teach their children about beginnings, middles, and endings by structuring their own narratives in an organized way: “Remember we saw the flamingos when we first went through the the gate? And then we went into the snake house…..”

Given all this, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to learn that children whose parents engage their young children in more conversations about the past are more likely to have better memories.

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

Promoting “Emotional Intelligence” in Your Child

As most of you know, Dr. Susan Goodwyn and I are the authors of Baby Signs, the book based on our NIH-funded research that launched the sign-with-babies movement back in 1996. What many of you may not know, is that we followed up with two other books for parents, Baby Minds and Baby Hearts, both drawing from child development research and full of fun games, tips, and advice to help parents meet the challenges of raising kids.

One of our goals with Baby Hearts was to point out to parents that helping children identify emotions—both their own and others’—is a critical ingredient in enabling them to interact in a constructive and self-evaluative way with other people as they grow up. What’s more, it’s important that the emotions include not only positive ones like happiness, gratitude, and empathy, but also negative ones like anger, fear, frustration, and jealousy.

So, how can you help your child achieve such “emotional intelligence?” Below are a few tips:

Play the “show-me” game. Make a game out of matching words to facial expressions by taking turns naming an emotion for the other person to demonstrate.

Use emotions in pretend play. As you play “tea party,” “grocery store,” or any other pretend scenario with your child, remember to involve emotions. These are especially good opportunities to help your child express negative emotions like frustration, anger, and sadness.

Encourage puppet play. Puppets enable children to distance themselves from feelings they might be afraid to express otherwise. (In fact, eavesdropping on the pretend scenarios in which your child engages on his/her own is a good way to get a sense of what your child’s inner world is like at any given moment.)

Play the “Silly Song” game. Take turns singing familiar songs, such as the “ABC Song” or “Mary had a Little Lamb” with different emotional intonations and facial expressions. Your child will have fun suggesting what you should do next. (“Sing it like you’re angry!”)

These are all fun and easy ways to not only give your child practice with emotions, but also to send the important message that you are open to talking about even the “not so nice” ones.

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

Linda

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

Say Good-bye to Diapers in Honor of Earth Day!

Yesterday was Earth Day, a good time for all of us to reflect on what we can do on an individual basis to promote the health of our environment so that our children will inherit a verdant, health-inducing world rather than one increasingly beset with man-made environmental (and health-reducing) problems. Well, one thing many parents can do is get their baby out of diapers a lot earlier than is the norm these days. The mean age in the United States is about 37 months—and climbing as bigger and bigger disposable diapers become available. This is a far cry from earlier, pre-disposable diaper times when children where routinely trained by 18 months. What the trend toward later and later potty training means for the environment, of course, is more diapers and human waste in our landfills—where the remnants will remain for 500 years per diaper or more! (If you’re interested in a few more shocking details about diapers and the environment, watch the National Geographic piece on the topic at www.pottytrainwithbabysigs.com.) As many of you know, we at Baby Signs are anxious to help parents get their babies out of diapers as soon as possible—hopefully by age 2—both for their own benefit and for a healthier environment. To this end, we’ve developed a potty training kit complete with step-by-step instructions and tips for Mom and Dad as well as resources to motivate babies younger than 2-years to “Climb on board the Potty Train!” After all, being motivated is really what “being ready” for potty training boils down to once children. The bottom line? If kids in the past were trained by 18 months, there’s no reason that can’t happen today—especially with a little help from the Baby Signs® Potty Training Program. Happy Signing (and don’t forget to visit us on Facebook)! Linda Linda Acredolo, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus, UC Davis and Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program