This week, MommyGarten.com is on vacay, yet focused on Mommy’s needs.

We’ll use this week to make sure that all the mommies who come to MommyGarten.com are caught up on the lessons of parenthood. We’re giving new moms a gift unlike any other: Sugar-free peace of mind.

So, please enjoy this look back at excerpts from earlier posts on what Mommies need to know about language development.

Your baby’s first words (from March 2010)

As regular readers of this blog know, the newborn first translates her communiques into the language of the cry.  Within weeks after her birth, baby will have organized her cries into different sounding requests.  At about 3 months old, your baby will discover the joy of laughing.  By 6 months of age, she’s beginning to babble for entertainment, but for a purpose, too.

Scientists have discovered that babies between the age of 6 and 12 months are also ruthless editors — they simply don’t bother with sounds that don’t occur in what will be their native languages. Although babies’ brains are born ready to hear, understand, and produce all sounds of all languages known to humankind, the brain makes choices based on exposure, experiences, and usage.

Talkative toddlers defined (from March 2010)

Toddler

Well, to be precise I’ll define a toddler as someone who might or might not walk alone yet.  And if he does walk, he might or might not do it with unsteady steps, hence the word, toddle.

To be imprecise, yet ironically more accurate to the way the word is used, I’ll decree that a toddler is generally considered to be a child between the ages of 12 and 36 months.  A child with one or two birthdays behind him.

Talkative

The ability to use, understand, enjoy, practice, or respond to a developmentally-appropriate quantity of spoken language sounds, body language cues, and meanings.

Your 12 to 24 month-old will be talkative when he:

• Uses words and/or body language to express himself.
• Learns enough words to follow simple instructions.
• Has favorite songs, fingerplays, poems, or stories.  And enjoys hearing them repeated.
• Speaks baby jargon.  This interesting phenomenon sounds like “real” speech because of your baby’s ability to imitate grownup speech rhythms and vocal inflections.

More recaps tomorrow and every day this week. Check back daily for specific, realistic, age-appropriate child development tips.

Parents who learn how to perform a fast and easy checkup on baby’s hearing will know when it’s time to find medical answers for any potential concerns.

They’ll also know when baby is developing just fine — and everyone can relax and get back to the fun stuff.

Yesterday’s blog post covered why it’s important to check on your child’s hearing. Today’s post tells you how to test your child’s hearing at home.

Your baby won’t know you’re checking up on him.  He’ll just think he has, and deserves, your undivided attention.  Again.

It is important to administer a developmentally-appropriate hearing test, based on the maturation of your child’s auditory response.

Here’s  a quick guide to matching the checkup to baby’s physical growth:

Newborn

At birth, the middle ear has not finished maturing.  Newborns don’t hear as well as they will once the amniotic fluid in the ears dries up.  (Is that what people mean when they say “still wet behind the ears?”)

How to screen: First observe.  How does your baby respond to sound?  If loud noises startle your newborn, and  if he cries at loud sounds, as well as attempting to turn his head toward the source of the sound, then his response is on track.  You can perform the simplest check with a few claps of your hands, about 3-6 feet away from your baby.  Your infant should blink, or startle, or react as previously described.

Settled baby (3-6 months old)

Even young infants detect and prefer the human voice.  To check his hearing, call out to him at a time that he 1) cannot see you, and 2) isn’t busy with a new toy or fascinating activity.  Ringing a bell will work too.  Milestones: At 3 -4 months, your baby will improve his ability to turn in the general direction of a sound.  By 7 months, he’ll be able to find it with his eyes, if the sound is beside him (as opposed to behind or below him).

Older baby (8 months to 1 year)

By his first birthday, your child will respond to his name, enjoy toys that stimulate his hearing, and imitate your speaking patterns.  To check hearing, you can use your voice to call baby’s name, or you might use a rattle or other attention-grabbing sound.  From about 3 feet away, baby will turn toward a familiar sound. The key Milestone here is that your infant is now able to localize a sound he hears by either side, or below him.

The hearing connection is such a big part of development that infants who hear more words (from real people — not recorded voices or television) grow up to be toddlers who score higher on tests of intelligence and social competence.

The kids most vulnerable to ear infections (people under the age of 2) are also the ones least able to tell you directly that something’s wrong.  Parents should look for cues like fussiness, elevated body temperature, and ear-tugging.

But parents can also rely on their growing toolkit of parenting skills to assess baby’s hearing. It is quick, easy, and cheap to perform an at-home, low-tech hearing test on an infant. Tomorrow, I’ll tell you how to test baby’s ears. Today, I’ll tell you why you should.

Language development relies on good hearing.

The ears of a young baby can detect all sounds in any human language in the world. But between the ages of  6-12 months, baby ears and baby brains begin to make some very logical choices. They only make neuronal connections for the word sounds that are useful. For the word sounds that are used within earshot, so to speak. The first year of life and listening is an especially crucial time to make sure your child can accurately hear what he’s going to need to be able to say someday.

Additionally, receptive language ability precedes and fosters expressive ability. Long before your baby is able to produce words that others recognize, he can recognize what is being said to him.

Social development and emotional development rely on good hearing.

Hearing also impacts relationships as infants use communication with caregivers to help them regulate their emotions, energy, rest, and healthy growth.  An example of this complex interaction that only looks simple is that crying newborns often calm when they hear a human voice.  The human voice is what your baby prefers to hear, especially when that voice is calling out to him, letting him know that a loved one approaches to right whatever is wrong.

As the auditory response matures, a settled baby (3 months and older) might enter into a more reciprocal process with caregivers. After crying out, baby will hear and recognize loved one’s voice (words, too, after the 6th or 7th month), relax or calm more quickly, then look for the source of the sound, and perhaps even smile or change his mood.

Tomorrow: The simple parenting skills needed to test infant hearing.

If the commercial promised: “Your toddler can paint!” you’d have probably wondered: that’s what she thinks I look like?…..

Why is it easy to see that it’s inappropriate to push some skills on our babies — but not others?

When it comes to reading, some parents place a big emphasis on how soon, how much, and how well their young children can decipher which ideas (aka “stories”) have been compressed into squiggles (aka “words”), and affixed to a two-dimensional surface (aka “page”).

Literacy, like every other life skill that your baby learns, will at first depend completely on the parents.  Start by reading age-appropriate books to your baby.  Use only cardboard books with sturdy pages.  Your smart baby’s innate curiosity will prompt her to reach out and grab (and taste) whatever you’re holding — make sure it’s non-choking.

Yes, your young child can read — someday.  Here’s what she will need to learn first:

How to explore a book: Expect her to want to hold the book.  Perhaps even upside down.  Let that go for now.  When she starts paying more attention to the pictures, she will also sort out the right way to hold the book.  Through her explorations, she will discover that books are fun. The pages flap around, they taste good (if it’s a cardboard book), and there’s a picture on every page!  Don’t expect her to start the book at the “beginning” for now.

How to pay attention to a book: Expect your child to hand you a book, then snuggle in, and get ready to listen to your voice.  The older she gets, the more your infant or toddler will react to the storylines in books.  Although she may even have favorite pages and pictures to look at, she’s also going to know that you like to begin the story at the beginning.  As her language skills grow, she will be able to use her words to name the elements of the page art, or to “read” along with you by making familiar sounds related to the story or characters.

How to book her own appointment with reading: Your child’s literacy will also mature into that very recognizable stage of independence.  You will know this has happened when she ”reads” her favorites to a captive audience: her dolls or stuffed friends.  Your young child might also offer to “read” to you — with a sometimes surprising accuracy.  That surprising accuracy thing means her books are important to her, so she has little patience for your reading flubs.  She can and will correct you, Mommy.

You don’t need a special system to teach your baby how to use (aka “love”) books.  You just need books and a lap.

Then he’ll follow you with his eyes.  Within a couple of months, he will smile.  At you.  On purpose. While he’s awake.

That is called the “social smile.”  And it’s a big deal when he decides to lay one on you.

The social smile is such a huge milestone because it brings together many other elements of your child’s development.

Cognitive Development and Body Awareness

Let’s review:  Your baby smiles at you, on purpose, while he’s wide awake — he clearly recognizes your visual representation (aka “face”).  He has been carefully observing your mouth and facial expressions, then pairing that information with the sounds of what you say.  The rhythms, too. A baby who smiles socially, or smiles back at you when you smile, knows how to take turns.

Emotional Development

Your prompt, consistent attention to his needs means that as the newborn develops into a settled baby, he can stress less about his problems, and enjoy life, his body, his family, his home a lot more. Your smiling tot with the good memory enjoys the experiences he associates with you, and knows that the love fest goes both ways.  His smile is the product of your investment in plenty of pleasurable face-to-face time.

Social Development

Your amazing baby instinctively knows what adults need to research in order to realize:  that a large part of our communication is non-verbal.   A baby capable of the social smile is a baby who has the maturity to ask for what he wants (more face time!), in a positive way.  He has outgrown his 100% reliance on the earlier strategies of cries and cues.

For babies, “smile” is a big word, and a big part of their growing language and social skills. The baby who learns to take turns will be able to make “conversation.”  The toddler who takes turns will be able to make friends.

In the past children learned to sing from siblings, parents, and extended family, in a process that parallels learning how to speak words.

Nowadays (yes, I used that word) it’s a purple dinosaur who teaches us that it’s much easier to “clean up, clean up” with the help of background singers.

As more children and their families consume media-generated sounds or songs, traditional music might be getting less attention.

I think it’s important for parents to reclaim music in all its forms: songs, poems, fingerplays, chants, and nursery rhymes.  Music can help you entertain, soothe, and reminisce with your young child.  As an extremely useful tool in the parenting kit, music can be employed to signal or ease the transitions from active time to nap-time.  Then back again.

Ages and Stages of music:

The Lullaby – according to Amy Robbins-Wilson, an award-winning expert on music for babies, a lullaby is a” soft and soothing song, usually sung to an infant or small child.” Our blogroll has a link to Amy’s enchanting work.

The Chant – most appropriate for and most appreciated by babies under a year old.  A chant is usually a rhythmic song or poem that is spoken rather than sung to music.  Like Parentese, it often involves exaggerated facial expressions or gestures.  Pat-a-cake is a prime example.

The Fingerplay – involves the hands and fingers to act out the message of the music. Ubiquitous example:  Itsy-Bitsy Spider.  Babies will love to imitate the hand movements, toddlers will almost accurately execute the movements, and preschoolers will teach you a thing or two about repertoire and manual dexterity.

Musical toys – age-appropriate xylophones and keyboards.  In some cases, high-quality recording/playback toys are a good choice.  I prefer to use the recording feature of these toys to capture the child’s voice for playback.  Amy Robbins-Wilson concurs: “The real magic happens when the child is actively making music.  It teaches the child that they are creators — not just consumers of sound.”

Musical toys give multiple benefits in other develoopmental domains:

• Xylophones: upper body development (the large muscles, aka gross motor ability).
• Keyboards: eye-hand coordination (and smaller muscles, aka fine motor ability).
• Playback songs: memory, attention span, and sequencing ability (math skills someday).

Music also helps you encourage your child’s emerging, perhaps tentative, talking skills.  The driving beat of a poem, chant, or song lets little ones smoothe over any verbal bumps in the road and just keep up with the music of it.

Parents await baby’s first word with a vigilance that rivals the arrival of baby himself.

The ability to communicate is one of the markers of leaving babyhood and entering full personhood.  In about 17 years, this ability will also be a marker of leaving home, and entering college.  Got SAT scores?

Talkative Toddlers defined:

Toddler

Well, to be precise I’ll define a toddler as someone who might or might not walk alone yet.  And if he does walk, he might or might not do it with unsteady steps, hence the word, toddle.

To be imprecise, yet ironically more accurate to the way the word is used, I’ll decree that a toddler is generally considered to be a child between the ages of 12 and 36 months.  A child with one or two birthdays behind him.

Talkative

The ability to use, understand, enjoy, practice, or respond to a developmentally-appropriate quantity of spoken language sounds, body language cues, and meanings.

Your 12 to 24 month-old will be talkative when he:

• Uses words and/or body language to express himself.
• Learns enough words to follow simple instructions.
• Has favorite songs, fingerplays, poems, or stories.  And enjoys hearing them repeated.
• Speaks baby jargon.  This interesting phenomenon sounds like “real” speech because of your baby’s ability to imitate grownup speech rhythms and vocal inflections.

Your 24 to 36 month-old will be a talkative one when he:

• Speaks in sentences.  Two and three words, at first.
• Understands orientational words like under, over, on, behind, in, out, and front.
• Is able to follow more complex instructions.
• Remember the words to his favorite songs, fingerplays, poems, or stories.  He’ll even say the words along with you as you read.
• Enjoys naming things.  Pictures in books, body parts, environmental graphics and print.

Success Secrets Revealed:

1. Talkative toddlers began life as talked-to babies.
2. They were seen and heard.  Adults spoke Parentese to them, listened to their cues, respected their requests.
3. Their parents knew what to expect.  Their loved ones understood that babies can understand more words, and understand them sooner than they can express those very words.
4. Talkative toddlers are multimedia-savvy.  In addition to words, there are songs, poems, and storybooks in their world.
5. They had role models.  Their big people (parents, siblings) played with songs, poems, conversations, books —  words in general.

I’m talking about the ability to talk.  There are differences in temperament, learning styles, and personality that will determine some children’s communication preferences.  Those traits are for people to choose and honor as they grow.  It is the work of parents to make sure that children have words at the ready when they want to use them.

Your baby’s first word, like your baby’s first step, is a journey, instead of the finish line we sometimes think it is.

I’m not trying to spoil anybody’s fun.  Your child’s first independent step is such a thrill that it’s dizzying.  Not for baby — for parents, I mean.  And the first recognizable word? Nothing less than an event — hey, I know the date, time, and GPS coordinates for my first kid’s first word, okay?

I’m just saying…. while you await the first word, or the first step, why not enjoy the developmental signs that are posted along the route?

As regular readers of this blog know, the newborn first translates her communiques into the language of the cry.  Within weeks after her birth, baby will have organized her cries into different sounding requests.  At about 3 months old, your baby will discover the joy of laughing.  By 6 months of age, she’s beginning to babble for entertainment, but for a purpose, too.  Your child is practicing the way her utterances sound and feel in her mouth as she attempts them.

A big milestone in receptive language (what baby can comprehend or comply with) occurs around 6 months of age:  your infant will turn her head to the sound of her name, looking around to seek out the source.  Beautiful.

A milestone in expressive language (what baby can you know, express) occurs not long after:  at around 7 months old, baby starts making consonant-based sounds.  One-syllable sounds at first:  gah, bah, kah, dah, and mah — I know, I know! That “mah” thing is particularly exciting, but um…. it’s just a sound for now.  At around one-year old, your child will say “Mama” and “Dada” like she means it.  Because she will.

Within a month or two of producing the consonant-based sounds, your young talker will link the monosyllables together.  Then she’ll develop the ability to imitate on purpose the sounds you make.

A few more notes for the journey:

• Receptive language ability (figuring out what comes out of your mouth) is a much better indicator of language development than expressive ability (what baby can make her own mouth say), during the first three years.
• When your (approximately) 9-month old infant can follow your instruction to wave “bye-bye” while saying something that sounds like “bye-bye”, you will know that she has combined several developmental markers into one communication action.
• Multilingual households might see a shift in the timeline of language development.  But amazingly, developing twice (or thrice) as many languages doesn’t take twice or thrice as much time.  Just a little longer.  Sometimes.

Scientists have discovered that babies between the age of 6 and 12 months are also ruthless editors — they simply don’t bother with sounds that don’t occur in what will be their native languages. Although babies’ brains are born ready to hear, understand, and produce all sounds of all languages known to humankind, the brain makes choices based on exposure, experiences, and usage.

]]> http://www.mommygarten.com/language-development/your-babys-first-word/feed/ 2 http://www.mommygarten.com/language-development/shout-out-for-crying-part-1/ http://www.mommygarten.com/language-development/shout-out-for-crying-part-1/#comments Tue, 02 Mar 2010 03:35:21 +0000 Carly Jennings http://www.mommygarten.com/?p=103 Crying unnerves adults.

It sounds so urgent, looks so awful, and it does a new parent’s head (not to mention self-esteem) in when they feel unable to help their baby.

That’s kind of how crying is engineered — to be unpleasant.  To motivate you to solve the problem to which baby has just alerted you.  Yes, crying (“stress” translated into baby language) is contagious, but so is calm.

Before you pick up your baby, get a grip on yourself.  Do something to dissipate your anxiety  – something to calm you.  You could breathe … sigh … genuflect?

Clear your tension, so you’ll be able to focus on the work at hand.  Like translating your baby’s language of the cry.  By 3 to 4 weeks of parenting, you’ll have the skills to hear and decipher the different cries and their different meanings.

So your baby is speaking “Cry”, this mysterious, loud language.  Look on the bright side — by crying, your baby is expressing her belief in two important principles:  1) that her needs are important enough to speak up about, and 2) you will help her.  Later, she’ll add a third basic belief to her system:  Trust.

The calm and confidence of trusting you and the world you’ve provided will have a directly soothing effect.  She might even cry less.  Why shout when a whisper will do?

In an earlier blog post on emotional development, I discussed the varying states of consciousness (six of them) that newborns cycle through during the day.  During each day, which means they’re all normal states.  Only two of the states (so-called “fussy” state and the “crying” state) involve full-on howling.

Most of the rest of the time (in the other states of consciousness), your new baby has better things to do — like socializing, observing, listening, getting acquainted, nursing, or chillaxing (a fierce combo of chilling + relaxing).

If (okay, when) the crying does break out, however, hunger is understandably the usual suspect, and many new parents attempt to soothe a cry with food.  A rather safe guess, especially for breastfeeding moms.  It’s not easy to measure how much milk your child actually consumes during a session at the breast, and the amount quickly changes in response to changing nutritional needs.  So why not try that solution?

Then there’s the fact that babies often calm upon nursing.  So regardless of whether or not your infant was really hungry for that feeding you just offered her, the sucking might have soothed her.  Mystery solved, it seems.  Unless the crying continues.

Crying, without other hunger signals, could mean that hunger is not really the issue that baby needs your help to resolve.

More tomorrow on deciphering crying and what your baby really wants to say.

Yesterday, I talked about how crying is engineered to produce a response from parents and caregivers.

Just as an adorable baby is irresistible, an upset baby is difficult to ignore.  We have an instinct to want to make things alright.

I think crying is an amazing accomplishment on your baby’s part.  This is the sound of your resourceful baby, already organizing her communication skills into a message.  An attention-getting one, eh?

By the time you have been on the job for about a month, your skill level will catch up to hers!

You’ll begin to recognize and differentiate the tone, pitch, volume, and urgency of her cries.  You’ll respond more quickly, and more accurately.  She’ll learn to trust you to meet her needs.  In the process, you will all settle into being a securely attached and confident family.

Parents often suspect hunger as the cause of the cry.  With baby needing to take in nourishment 8 – 12 times in each 24-hour period, that might be a good guess some of the time.

Continued crying, without other hunger signals, could mean that hunger is not the issue that baby needs your help to resolve.

• She might feel sick. This possibility worries new parents the most.  You should worry less.  Most of the days of her life, she will have a range of needs that you’ll be able to respond to without medical help.
• Your newborn could be uncomfortable. She just relocated from her own personal climate-controlled nudist colony, to a diaper.
• Again, with the discomfort. She might cry if she’s too warm.  She might cry if she’s too cool.  Hey –  some things confuse even me, so that’s all I got on this one.  You’re welcome.
• She might be tired. Swaddling is a way to calm a new baby by helping her to regain some stability in her body, and control over her limbs.  Some babies like to be swaddled in a way that allows freedom for a favorite thumb.
• What if she’s lonely? Once she finds out all that cool stuff you’ll do for her, she’s going to want you to do all that cool stuff for her.  Like rocking, holding, counting her toes, gazing, smiling.
• Lonely, schmonely.  She might be overstimulated.  At first newborns will fall asleep to ward this off, but later, she will develop much more of an interest in spit bubbles, playing, smiling, all that.  How much goo-goo, gaa-gaa can a gal take?  She’ll let ya know.
• Then there’s the diaper change. A full diaper is a likely target of her disdain.  From day one, she’ll be producing a couple of wet diapers, and one or two soiled ones.  Within a week, she will QUADruple her daily output.

Your baby might be trying to tell you a number things in the relatively small amount of time she spends crying.  Most of the rest of the time, she will be busy with other things like bonding, finding her hand, looking at stuff.  When crying does come up, it is a natural sign of healthy development.  Especially language and emotional development.   A cry for help is her way of putting into words her expression of faith that the help will come.