Infant education: the earlier, the better?

When is a baby ready for formal education? Chinese parents have begun to ask themselves this question as numerous infant education organizations offer varied training programs to their newborn babies. 

"Try it lest your baby fall behind others from the very beginning" is always the "open sesame" to the parents' wallets, as a large number of better-off Chinese parents are ready to do virtually anything possible to ensure a good future for their offspring. 

As a result, babies are encouraged to stand up, toddle and crawl with their parents' help shortly after they are born, and special exercises have been tailored to boost their muscle development at an early stage. 

Many toddlers, on the other hand, are taught to read and write, sometimes in several languages. 

"A proper early childhood education can facilitate a child's intellectual development and help him form good habits," said Wang Yuwei, a noted pediatrician in Jinan, capital of the eastern Shandong province. "But excessive expectations may hamper his development." 

Researchers in the northern port city of Tianjin have found that improper infant education can even lead to psychological problems. 

According to a recent survey conducted by the Tianjin Children's Hospital, 41 percent of its young patients who had problems concentrating on their work had been daunted by the high expectations from their parents during infancy. 

Miaomiao, an eight-year-old girl who had received diverse training since infancy and had an IQ of 124, proved a "problematic child" at school. Though she was still the same good, lovely girl at home, she had problems communicating with her peers and was scared of school life. 

And Miaomiao was just one example of improper infant education, said Prof. Sun Shaoqiang, a renowned specialist and vice president of the Tianjin Psychological Society. 

Early childhood education, Prof. Sun acknowledged, was more than reading, writing, reciting poems or playing a musical instrument and should be given in line with a child's age, innate talent and interest. 

"It's not right to make an infant do what older children are supposed to do," he said. 

Researchers from home and abroad have uncovered that 50 percent of a person's behaviors are picked up between his or her birth andthe ages up to four, so infant education, therefore, is crucial and should be given in an all-round manner. 

"Parents should help their children develop a pleasant personality, desire for knowledge, independence, confidence and perseverance -- things that are expected to benefit a child throughout his life and are therefore more important than literacy itself," said the psychologist. 

To that effect, a good way to boost a baby's brain development was to grasp and observe things "so that they can feel the different textures of different objects," said Wang Yuwei, the pediatrician in Jinan. 

Elder children should be encouraged to keep and observe their favorite animals, dismantle toys and make their own little toys out of plasticine, she said. 

"A child learns from his own experience -- by touching, crawling and capering in a carefree environment," she said. "Parents may actually impair their children's development by spoon-feeding them with book knowledge and keeping them from the joys ofinfancy.

A introduction to the acclaimed DVD work shop - Bringing Out the Brilliance In Your Infant : a practical guide for Montessori in the Home, by Montessori educator - Tamara Sheesley Balis.

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200311/25/eng20031125_128932.shtml

4 Fun Ways to Get Baby to Talk

How to teach your baby to learn and love language and conversation
By Matt Villano
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For months, in my family, silence was an enemy. No matter how hard my wife and I tried, no matter how much we read to and blabbed at our baby daughter, the kid wouldn’t speak a lick. Sure, she smiled and giggled when we acted goofily. And yes, she grabbed her stuffed walrus when we asked her to. Brain cells were clearly functioning correctly. But for months there simply were no words.

Maybe we were a bit neurotic. Around the baby’s 10-month mark, we were vexed; by 12 months, we became concerned. We were about to contact our pediatrician when the baby let out a loud “Mama.” She hasn’t stopped talking since. All that worrying! All those nights hunched over books about what to expect! Our Type-A panic was all for naught.

The truth is that helping our babies acquire language skills may be easier and more natural than we think, so say many speech pathologists and child psychologists. It turns out, those of us who have called this process “learning to talk” have had it all wrong; the art of communication is much broader than our babies acquiring new words and regurgitating them upon command. It requires a positive environment that fosters trust and celebrates success. It requires repetition. Most important, at least to Larry Gray M.D., assistant professor of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at the University of Chicago Medical Center, it requires fun.

“No matter what kind of expert you ask, the current thinking is this: Present parents who interact with their babies help create kids who’ll succeed,” says Dr. Gray. In other words, as long as you talk to your kids and keep them interested, you can’t go wrong. Here are four steps to help you be a present parent who rocks:

Conversation Starters
It’s never too early to instill a love for language; just ask Alice Finch of Seattle. Just after Finch’s first son was born, she and her husband engaged the boy nonstop, even going so far as to create a series of fabric books to spark an interest in words. The strategy worked wonders, and the baby said his first words at about 6 months old. “Tremendous brain growth is happening from day one,” Finch says. “I knew from the beginning I was going to provide lots of opportunities for exposing my kids to the details of life.”

The truth is Finch’s son likely started learning language even before these tactical forays into language immersion. Recent research out of the University of Amsterdam indicates that most kids start acquiring rudimentary language skills (such as cadence and beat) while they’re still in the womb. After birth, though communication skills may not “click” immediately, rest assured: Those baby-brain synapses are firing. Babies can take weeks to assimilate words they hear every day—often giving us parents no clues there’s learning going on behind the scenes, says Kathy Hirsh-Pasek Ph.D., a director of the Temple University Infant Laboratory in Ambler, Pennsylvania. “From day one, babies are hearing information, so they can later compute the frequencies of what they hear and figure out how words and phrases and sentences fit together,” Hirsh-Pasek quips. “They’re constantly constructing how language works.”

What you can do Remember there’s no such thing as too much exposure to language during your child’s earliest stages. Talk often. Get creative (like Finch’s fabric books). Be patient if all you hear at first are crickets.

Over time, the more words your child hears, the better. The Finches made a concerted effort to talk to their son as much as possible. For Kevin and Libby Frank of Cincinnati, the strategy with their firstborn was much more free-form. Sure, the couple tried quizzing the baby on certain key words. Ultimately, however, Libby says her daughter learned best through repetition. “One day after I got cut off in traffic, I heard this little voice from the backseat say, ‘num-nuts!’ and I knew something was working,” Libby remembers.

Experts say the “how” of language exposure doesn’t matter as much as exposure itself. The seminal study on this topic, the 1995 bookMeaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children, correlated the number of words a child hears by age 3 to that child’s success later in life. Modern experts agree that the more words our children hear as their brains develop most significantly, the better.

What you can do This isn’t as hard as you might think. One great way to achieve this goal is by using “self-talk,” the clinical term for a play-by-play of one's day-to-day activities, says Dr. Gray. “Imagine yourself as a radio announcer broadcasting details of your world to the most important listener of all,” he says. Dr. Gray adds that while the approach feels very awkward at first and you may feel kind of silly, parents end up sharing thousands of words an hour and “can turn the routine into a fun, language-based learning experience.”

Make Conversation
Words, however, can’t exist in a vacuum. Think of language skills like a garden; the more they blossom, the more they must be nurtured. This means consistent interactions as your child gets older. Just because your kid appears to be getting the hang of things doesn’t mean you can spend more time on your cell phone or on Facebook (or both). Now’s the time to emphasize the give-and-take nature of conversation: talking and listening.

Such is life for Dan and Susan Twetten of Chicago. Dan, an attorney, says he and his wife strived to embrace language-oriented activities to share with their daughter, including conversations and responsive readings or singalongs. That Susan stayed home with the baby made it easy to weave these activities into a daily routine—one that to this day comprises interactive language games designed to spark learning. “Our methodology, if you’d call it that, was to just stay involved,” Dan says, noting that the real language explosion happened between 20 and 24 months. “I know there are a lot of different theories on the subject of language acquisition, but it all seemed pretty straightforward to us.”

What you can do First, when speaking to your child, allow for a response, even if he isn’t old or verbal enough to give one. Second, be patient. If your child misidentifies certain colors or objects, be sure to acknowledge the effort in and of itself. Finally, turn off the television. Janice Im, senior director of programs for Zero to Three, a nonprofit in Washington, D.C., says even “educational” programs are no substitute for face-to-face, one-on-one interactions.

For parents without the luxury of staying home, many child-care facilities embrace similar tactics and plan curriculum around them. At KinderCare Learning Centers, the nation’s largest early-childhood education and care provider, for instance, educators emphasize reading, sing-alongs and word games such as rhyming and poetry. “It’s all about creating an environment where language becomes part of a bigger and broader context,” says Linda Nelson, a senior curriculum developer for the company's education department. “We all began to learn what we know about conversation at an early age.”

When our daughter picks up new words and phrases, we clap like cheerleaders and chant her two-syllable name as if she’s playing shortstop for the San Francisco Giants. We try to reinforce vocabulary development by singing duets where we take turns filling in appropriate words. For instance, a current favorite is “Clementine.” I sing, “Oh my” and she adds “darling,” then I sing, “Oh my darling,” and she finishes with “Clementine.”

What you can do Dance a jig the first time your baby strings together two or three words. Ask open-ended questions such as “What do you see in this picture?” Be sure to allow time for your baby to respond in her own way. Perhaps most importantly, engage your child and look him in the eye when speaking to him. “The more direct one-on-one interactions you can have, the happier and more engaged your baby is going to be,” says Nancy Tarshis, a speech and language expert at the Children’s Evaluation and Rehabilitation Center in New York. “Become excited but also reinforce what they say by responding contingently, either by getting them what they are requesting or by making a very related, relevant comment.”

In most cases, these steps should lead to (lots of) talking. And as a parent who has worried about his child’s language acquisition from the very beginning, I can attest: Silence is totally overrated.

LOOK WHO’S TALKING
Though every baby is different, there’s a predictable progression to his language skills. Here’s a look at what to expect when.

0 TO 4 MONTHS Mostly cooing and gurgling sounds; children mimic certain noises and are particularly interested in the pitch and level of your voice.

4 TO 7 MONTHS Babbling at first; sounds like B, D and M are evident.

7 TO 12 MONTHS Sounds diversify into grunts and squeals; first words usually emerge around baby's first birthday.

12 TO 18 MONTHS Vocabulary grows exponentially; multiple- word combinations are not unusual.

18 TO 30 MONTHS Small phrases, sentences and more.

STILL WAITING? If by 18 months your child isn't speaking at least 15 words, contact your pediatrician. Don’t write it off as a phase. The sooner you have the child evaluated for speech pathologies, the sooner you can help reverse the situation if something is awry—which isn’t always the case. Every baby develops at his own pace. Contact the American Speech-Language-Hearing Asso- ciation directly to locate a certified speech-language pathologist or audiologist and set up a formal screening. Visit asha.org for more information.

5 simple ways to engage, and educate, an infant

Here are several low-cost ideas to keep infants learning and interacting.


Special to The Seattle Times

Related
More Jan Faull


Q: Can you offer activities for my baby? He's only 2 months old, and most of the time he's eating or sleeping, but when he's awake and content, I'd like to interact with him in a meaningful way.

A: Here are five things that will hold your baby's interest:

Your face: 

Babies are fascinated by a face and all it can do. Your mouth moves and makes sounds, your eyes blink, your cheeks puff out, your head nods and shakes and your tongue moves in and out.

The very words you speak, your inflection and intonation all hold a baby's interest. Your head and face are readily available to engage your child in a context of love and social interaction. From birth, your baby is interested in copying your facial expressions.

A mobile: 

Most parents purchase a mobile to hang over their baby's crib. But babies, like all of us, get bored. So if they look at the very same mobile day after day, they'll soon lose interest.

Therefore, change the appearance of the mobile from time to time (not necessarily daily). So if your baby's mobile has five horses that dance around in a circle, one day tie ribbons around their necks. Another day add a bell.

Balls: 

Anything that moves, babies notice. Nothing moves more easily than a ball that ricochets off furniture, bumps into walls and rolls under tables and through tubes. Need a tube? Go to the post office and purchase a large postal tube. When your baby tires of balls rolling around the floor, drop a ball through the tube.

Blocks: 

Once your baby can sit well without tumbling over, purchase blocks. They need to be small enough for your baby to hold but big enough so that he can't swallow them. With the blocks, play "stack and tumble." Your part of this game is to stack the blocks; your baby's part is to knock them over. See how many blocks you can stack before your baby moves his hand quickly to knock them over. It's all about cause and effect. It's as if the child is saying over and over, "When I hit the blocks, they tumble over."

Vary the play by putting the blocks in a container; your child will love dumping them out. Once your baby can pull herself up to a standing position, stack the blocks on the coffee table. He'll love to knock the blocks to the floor, learning about gravity as she watches them drop.

Disappearance:

A major part of your child's early learning agenda the first year of life revolves around disappearance, realizing that objects and people continue to exist even when out of sight. Purchase a jack-in-the-box; play peek-a-boo; and later, when your child becomes mobile, play hide and seek. There are so many variations of these games, and there's no end to your child's interest in them. You'll likely tire of them far sooner than your child.

For more of my ideas on infant cognitive development and accompanying activities, go to BabyZone.com and search for "Your Brilliant Baby, Week by Week."

Infant education: When and how to start educating your baby

The term “infant education” sounds intimidating, but, actually, infant education can be a wonderful interactive experience for you and your baby. This fancy term refers to the parents’ ability to stimulate thinking in their newborn. Experts agree that if parents start infant education early, the child will have better thinking and reasoning skills as he/she grows. Determining how and when to start infant education is the hardest part for parents.

Most specialists encourage parents to start educating an infant early. In fact, theAmerican Pregnancy Association states your new baby shows awareness of situations at 3 months and is able to make language connections between the 7th month and the 8thmonth. But, infant education does not have to start on a particular month in the baby’s life. You can begin to gradually working in techniques that will stimulate your baby.

How do you start educating your infant? When most people think of infant education, Baby Einstein and other types educational DVD’s usually come to mind. These programs have fallen under heavy criticism recently due to DVD’s being used for infant entertainment and distraction. However, studies have shown that learning DVD’s can work when used correctly; you can visit HowStuffWorks to see how to correctly use Baby Einstein with your infant. While throwing in a DVD seems like a pretty easy option to educate your baby, there are other techniques to promote your child’s learning potential.

With very young babies, infant education can involve techniques parents use everyday. Parents can stimulate a newborn’s senses to aid in development of muscle coordination, memory, and attention span. Connecting sound to certain objects is a learned skill; try shaking a rattle one side of the baby’s head, waiting until the baby follows with his/her eyes or head, and then, moving the rattle to the babies feet or to the other side of the head. You can also try heating a teether in the microwave until it is just a little warm, getting another teether out of your fridge, and letting the baby feel the difference between warm and cold. Think of your own ideas to stimulate your baby to learn through the senses!

Simply interacting with your baby can be the best education of all. Repeat the coos and sounds he/she makes; this will encourage an infant to understand how communication works. Sing to your young infant and read books to promote the learning of pitch and tones. Finally, play games that encourage movement and identification, such as, touching the baby's hand to your a body part on you, stating the body part’s name, touching the baby's hand to his/her same body part, and repeat the name.

Come up with your own ideas and games to play to create learning. As long as the game is interactive, even a very young infant can start the learning process.

Why is early learning So Important?

The period from birth to age eight - and especially, from birth to age three - is a critical time in baby brain development.

This is because the first years of life lay the neurological foundation for intellectual growth into adolescence and adulthood.

From the moment of conception, the neurons (nerve cells) of the brain multiply faster than any other cells in a baby's body.

The rapid pace of baby brain development continues into early childhood: at birth, the brain weighs 25 percent of its adult weight; by age one, 50 percent; by age two, 75 percent; and by age three, 90 percent.

The brain of an adult has over 100 billion neurons, the majority of which were formed during the first five months in the womb! Recent research suggests that new neurons can be created throughout life - but probably only in sufficient numbers to replace those that have died.

Each of the brain's neurons is connected to roughly 5,000 others. In general, the more dendrites (branches between neurons) and synapses (connections between neurons) the brain has, the greater its processing power. More pathways mean information can travel in a number of ways, opening the door to faster and more complex thinking.

This is true in the adult, but not in the infant. Your baby's brain actually has more synapses than yours - but only because it hasn't passed an important developmental stage, known as pruning, in which the brain deletes unneeded neural connections in the interests of organization and efficiency.

"Use it or lose it"

The process of pruning is illustrative of the high plasticity (adaptability) of young brains, which are literally sculpted by the environments in which they are raised. Scientific testing of how exactly experience shapes the brain has led to the theory of "critical periods" - specific time periods in which stimulation must occur, or the chance to develop normal functioning will be lost.

In a now-classic experiment, kittens blindfolded for several months after birth were left unable to see properly once the blindfolds were removed. Their brains had not had the opportunity to develop the neural pathways needed to process visual information. Likewise, babies with cataracts must have them removed within the first few months of life or suffer permanent visual impairment.

Nothing is more disastrous for baby brain development than a dearth of stimulation.

Likewise, a surfeit of appropriate stimulation will produce better-than-average neural circuitry.

In one study, rat pups were placed in one of two environments - an "enriched" one filled with toys and obstacles, or an "impoverished," empty one. After 80 days, the rats that had been stimulated were found to have brains with a heavier cerebral cortex (the part of the brain that controls memory and perception), larger neurons, and more intricate dendritic networks.

The same principle applies to baby brain development in humans. Scientists have discovered, for instance, that certain areas of the brain are larger and more developed in children who play musical instruments than in those who do not. These include the cerebellum, which processes rhythm and timing, and the corpus callosum, which acts as the conduit for communication between the brain's left and right hemispheres - vital for musicians coordinating their right and left hands.
 
Giving kids a Head Start

Education initiatives such as the US's Head Start and Early Head Start are producing measurable cognitive and emotional benefits in children - benefits that can last into middle and even high school. Some of the Head Start programs, which focus on helping disadvantaged children, have produced boosts in IQ equivalent to eight IQ points. In general, the younger intervention is staged, the more significant and long-lived the effects. Full-day Head Start programs for infants have been shown to produce IQ gains lasting into adolescence.

The question is: why limit such programs to disadvantaged children?

Waiting until school to begin providing consistent intellectual stimulation to a child is no disaster. But in doing so, we miss a unique opportunity to enhance baby brain development.

The Fundamentals of Early Learning

There are a few fundamentals to remember when teaching babies, and most of them you already know in your heart as a parent.

But first, it's important to start from this premise:

If intelligence is the ability to learn, then babies are born geniuses!

While a baby's brain has the potential to learn just about anything, parents have an important role to play in determining just how much - and how easily - their baby learns.

Here, we discuss the key issues to bear in mind when teaching your baby.

A unique window of opportunity: 5 months' gestation to 5 years of age

The younger the brain, the more malleable it is - that's why young children are like sponges. A baby's brain builds itself by forming connections in response to the stimulation it receives. The fetus begins responding to sound during month five in the womb, when her sense of hearing becomes fully developed. This means that learning begins before birth.

After birth, the baby's brain continues wiring itself in response to the child's experiences of the world. Learning is faster and more effortless than it will ever be again. Acquiring our native language from birth guarantees that we will master that language, regardless of how linguistically gifted we turn out to be as adults. It's all about harnessing the power of a baby's brain. Likewise, anyone can master the skills of reading, math or music, so long as they begin learning at a young enough age.

  

Babies LOVE to learn!

A baby's brain is hardwired for learning, making babies the most avid students in the world. What's more, babies and small children carry none of the baggage that comes from being sent to school and being subjected to quizzes, tests and examinations. For babies, learning is pure enjoyment.

  

Teaching should never be forced

Regular practice is important, but not to the point of forcing. Above all, your child should enjoy the learning process. Hold lessons only when he is receptive, and end them before he loses interest.

  

Play is ESSENTIAL

Babies and children need time to explore the world around them, pick up objects and examine them, and get to grips with the laws of nature. Your baby should spend the majority of her waking hours engaged in hands-on play.

Relax and have FUN

Avoid focusing on having your child achieve specific knowledge goals. Treat lesson time instead as an opportunity for strengthening the parent-child bond. Teaching your baby should never become a source of stress for either one of you. If you feel this is happening, reevaluate your approach or trim down the lesson program as necessary.

http://www.brillbaby.com/early-learning/introduction-to-early-learning/the-fundamentals-of-early-learning.php