Missing the Point

A colleague at UC Davis recently alerted me to a news report from a TV station in Washington DC that raised the concern that signing with babies might diminish interaction between babies and parents. Nothing could be further from the truth, as any parent who’s lived with a signing baby can testify.

First of all, modeling signs for babies means parents are (a) making lots of eye contact and (b) actively looking for opportunities to do so. A mom who might otherwise be content to simply plop a bunch of Cheerios in front a a baby, is likely to put a few down, stay close, and model the sign for MORE when the first ones are gone. Result? More, rather than less interaction.

Second, parents who are modeling signs are inevitably also anxiously watching their child to see if he or she is (a) understanding the sign, (b) imitating the sign, or (most exciting of all) (c) spontaneous using the sign to direct the parent’s attention. Result? Closer observation means more rather than less interaction.

Third, once a baby is able to request specific items with signs, everyone’s frustration is reduced. Result? Fewer tantrums and tears mean more time and emotional energy for pleasant interactions.

Fourth, once a baby is signing, parents begin experiencing the magic of having a window into their child’s mind. This means they can easily figure out what is fascinating their child at the moment (e.g., a butterfly, or the sound of a dog barking) and join the child in reveling in the experience. Result? Richer and more rewarding interaction for both parent and child.

So, next time you hear or read something so off-base as that signing reduces parent-child interaction, consider sharing these points—or better yet, your own experiences—with whomever it is that needs educating!

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

Baby Sign Language: A Boon to Multilingual Classrooms

Last week I wrote about how children being raised in bilingual households benefit from having signs added to the mix. As I pointed out, the logic is simple: When the baby, as an example, hears “leche” from Mom and “milk” from Dad and both parents pair the word they say with the MILK sign, the parents are making the job of understanding the equivalence of the two words much easier. Far from increasing a child’s confusion, it decreases confusion, thereby making the child’s task of conquering the individual languages easier.

Of course, signing has another advantage in multilingual settings, especially in child care classrooms where teachers and families speak different languages: The signs provide a common language so that toddlers who are learning the family language can still make themselves understood. Just such a situation exists at the Center for Child and Family Studies at the University of California, Davis, where graduate students from all over the world routinely enroll their infants and toddlers. In the 22 years since the Baby Signs® Program was first introduced, teachers and parents alike have been amazed at how much more smoothly daily life in the classroom proceeds. The signs have enable children who speak different languages to communicate with their teachers and each other. In one case, for example, a toddler from Israel and a toddler from Taiwan were observed reading a picture book together—with the first girl turning the pages and pointing at objects while the second girl made the appropriate signs!

Bottom line? Signing is clearly a boon to children facing the challenge of hearing multiple languages—an increasingly common occurrence these days—whether at home or in the classroom.

Visit www.babysigns.com for more information about Baby Signs® resources to help you and your baby enjoy all the benefits that signing can bring.

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

Baby Sign Language—A Boon to Multilingual Households

One of the most frequent questions I get is the following: “My baby is exposed to two languages at home. Won’t adding the Baby Signs® Program just make her task more complicated by adding a third?”

The answer is a strong and resounding “No!” The truth is that, no matter what form bilingual input takes, adding signing to the mix actually makes the child’s job easier, not harder. Here’s why.

In a bilingual household, babies hear two words being used to label objects, and what they need to figure out is that both words are equally valid—in other words, that they mean the same thing. For example, if babies hear both the word “leche” and the word “milk,” they need to understand that the words are equivalent.

And that’s where signing becomes helpful. Quite simply, signs act as mediators between the languages, making the equivalence of words obvious to the baby. For example, when the baby hears “leche” from Mom and “milk” from Dad and both parents pair the word they say with the MILK sign, the parents are making the job of connecting the object with the meanings of both words much easier for babies.

In other words, rather than confusing children in bilingual families, signs help smooth the road to understanding and speaking both languages.

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

Laying the Foundation for Chores

I’ll get to chores in a minute. First, I want to set the stage by reminding readers of how fundamental “habits” are to everyday life. Even when daydreaming we stop at stop signs and red lights. Many of us (admittedly, not all of us!) automatically hang up our towels neatly after using them. And most of us have a ritual we carry out when we first get up in the morning even if we’re still half asleep. These are actions that have been repeated so frequently that they have become firmly entrenched habits;.

Of course, these aren’t the habits we’re eager for toddlers to adopt. Instead, what parents need to consider is the long term advantage of starting early to establish a willingness to help with tasks that need doing, thereby laying the foundation for actual “chores.” Even though they are still too young to take full responsibility for most tasks (e.g., remembering to feed the dog), getting 2- to 4-year-olds in the habit of helping at a very young age will make the transition to true chores much easier.

The good news is that toddlers and young preschoolers love to help. In fact these days it’s often busy parents, understanding that it’s faster to do things by themselves, who demur. That’s a mistake! Taking advantage of this early eagerness will pay off in the long run. Here’s how:

Most parents are wise enough to reward volunteered help with praise and affection—two goodies that are powerful reinforcers for young kids. Such positive reinforcement tends to result in a behavior being repeated—which results in more goodies and more volunteering—which results in more goodies and more volunteering…and on, and on. In other words, the more times a child is taken up on his offer to “help” and leaves feeling good about himself, the more likely he will be to volunteer in the future. Pretty soon helping is an entrenched “habit,” thereby making the move to assigned chores when the child is older much easier.

So what can the 2-4 set help with? They are actually remarkably good at judging what they might be able to manage, so take every “I help?” seriously. The photos above give an example. Two-year-old Julia spends Thursdays in our Baby Signs office with her mom, Bonita. Here you see her accomplishing the task of unpacking rolls of paper towels from a box and stacking them on a shelf in the rest room. Needless to say, she received high praise from all of us Of course, it would have been faster for one of us to do it ourselves, but this way Julia had the satisfaction of a job well done –which you can definitely see on her face as she relaxes in the empty box!

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

To Foster Pride Let Directing Credits Go to Baby

Throughout my years as a researcher at UC Davis, and especially during the years Dr. Susan Goodwyn and I were working on our NIH-funded signing studies, I had the opportunity to watch hundreds of parents playing with their children. One individual difference I noticed, was that some parents were quite “bossy” in terms of dictating what form the play should take.

In fact, we all know parents who over-manage their children, parents who cram their children’s schedules with everything from Acrobats to Zoological Expeditions. What these children lose, according to Dr. Deborah Stipek and her colleagues at UCLA, is not only free time, but also the opportunity to pick their own goals and decide which are worth tackling. It turns out that giving children a chance to choose their own goals is even important for infants and toddlers, especially if parents want their children to develop pride in their accomplishments.

In one of Stipek’s studies in particular, children ages 13 to 39 months were observed playing with their mothers. What the researchers discovered is that when children throughout this age range were allowed to choose their own goals during play, they were much more likely to revel in their own successes. In other words, they would choose the toy they wanted to play with next, or which way the train would face on the train tracks. They showed pride in their accomplishments, calling attention to their success and smiling and clapping for themselves. Children whose mothers were more intrusive, directing their child’s activities toward goals they—rather than their child--had determined, were less likely to display positive emotions and more likely to simply look up at their mothers when they accomplished something (as if to ask, “Did I do okay?”). The difference, of course, is that the children whose mothers were less intrusive weren’t looking to others for validation. In contrast, they appeared to know instantly when they had something to be proud of.

These results support one of the major messages we try to convey to parents in all our Baby Signs® and On the Grow™ classes: It’s important to follow the child’s lead. Thanks to researchers like Deborah Stipek, it’s a matter of fact, not just opinion.

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

Doll House vs. Fire Station

In this post I’m going to be bringing together a number of different themes (and not signing with babies, for a change) that are salient in research on early child development: Sex differences in choice of toys; the fact that girls learn to talk on average earlier than boys, and the relationship between different types of play and language development. And I’m going to do all this by highlighting a a photo I took last week while taking care of my twin grandchildren, Nate and Olivia.

• First, sex differences in choice of toys: From the time they were old enough to make choices for themselves, it’s been clear (despite efforts from parents and grandparents to the contrary) that Nate was in love with anything with wheels and vroom-vroom noises and Olivia with anything pink, purple, and with the word “princess” or “baby” in the title. In fact, one of the most recent of Olivia’s favorites is a large pink and white plastic doll house complete with pink and white frilly furniture and a pink clad baby. Needless to say, Nate is not equally enchanted.

• Second, sex differences in verbal development: One of the most robust of all differences between boys and girls is the fact that—on average—girls learn to talk earlier than boys. (Note. This is true for learning words, but not signs. No sex difference there.)

• Third, relationship between types of play and verbal development: Dr. Susan Goodwyn and I discovered a number of years ago that pretend play, in contrast to manipulative play (where the child just moves pieces in some way—like shape sorters, hammers and peg boards, puzzles), helps facilitate language development. There are a number of reasons why, but the main one is because pretend play involves so much language itself! The child is thinking and often explaining out loud pieces of some kind of simple plot, either alone or in response to questions from adults. Susan and I suspect that one of the reasons boys lag behind girls in language is because the toys they are typically given (with some exceptions to be sure) are less likely to inspire pretending than the baby dolls, tea sets, and doll houses typically given girls.

So, how do these three observations relate to the photo above? Take a close look at the nature of the toy Nate is playing with. It is, in fact, a miniature structure. But instead of being a typical “doll house” like Olivia’s, it’s a pretend fire station. It has many of the same things Olivia’s does--a kitchen (firefighters have to eat after all), bathroom, bedroom and living area—but it also has a pole to slide down, a treadmill, an elevator, a fire truck, and a heliport! My point is that it has characteristics that Nate, like lots of little boys, value while at the same time promoting the type of play (i.e., pretending) that is so good for language development. And he loves it! I stood and watched him play for a long time and was amazed at the imaginary scenarios he was describing in words, both to himself and in explanation to me.

The lesson in all this is directed at parents and grandparents as they think about appropriate toys. Simply, keep in mind that pretending is critical to both boys and girls and that sex difference in preferences for pretend scenarios are often a fact of life, but that with a bit of creative thinking on our own parts, it’s possible to satisfy both requirements.

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

Sign Time, Rhyme Time #2

About a month ago I used this blog to post some of the little rhymes that appeared in the first 2 editions of my book with Dr. Susan Goodwyn, Baby Signs: How to Talk with Your Baby Before Your Baby Can Talk. These rhymes, which we created ourselves, were designed so that parents could accompany them with signs, thereby making it fun and easy for their baby to learn them.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t include them in the third and most recent edition of the book, but that doesn’t mean they don’t work. So below are a few more of our favorites.

Farmer in the Dell (can be sung)
The farmer in the dell
The farmer in the dell
Heigh-ho the derry-oh
The farmer in the dell
The farmer reads a book (BOOK)
The farmer reads a book (BOOK)
Heigh-ho the derry-oh
The farmer reads a book. (BOOK)
(Repeat with the following--)
The farmer drives a car (CAR) . . .
The farmer eats a snack (EAT) . . .
The farmer asks for more (MORE) . . .
The farmer buys a bird (BIRD) . . .
The farmer pets a cat (CAT) . . .
Etc….

When the Stars are Out
When the stars are out (STARS)
And the moon is bright—(MOON)
Blow out your candle (CANDLE—Blow finger tip)
And say, “Sleep tight!” (SLEEP)

All Gone
Into the clouds—
All gone plane. (ALL GONE, AIRPLANE)
Into the tunnel—
All gone train (ALL GONE, TRAIN)
Water in the bathtub (WATER)
All gone down the drain! (ALL GONE, DOWN).

As you may have noticed for yourself, it’s not hard to come up with simple rhymes like these—or to add signs to traditional rhymes (e.g., Jack & Jill). So, get creative yourself!

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