On Baby Signing

This is an excellent article written on the topic of using sign language to enhance language and literacy skills. The bottom line is that signing can be fun and enjoyable and it doesn't hurt language development. But, it's not clear that it helps either. So, if you want to learn to use sign with your baby go for it. At the same time, don't feel that you MUST do this, young children can learn to talk without it.
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Social Skills

Newborns tend to prefer the sound of the human voice. So your singing, cooing, and talking to them soothes them. They’ve heard mommy’s and daddy’s voices in the last 3 months of pregnancy because their auditory system was already functioning, There are some reports of newborns recognizing their parents’ voices at birth. Newborn babies also smile reflexively. This smile typically occurs when the cheek or lips are touched or in light sleep. You’ll know it’s a reflex because the area around the eyes doesn’t crinkle— a significant difference between social and reflexive smiles. Nonetheless, this reflexive smiling helps to set the stage for face to face connection, attention, and continued learning. These early abilities probably help newborns to “tune in” to their parents and set the stage for parent-child attachment.

Hearing

Babies are born with fluid in their middle ear (behind the eardrum), so their hearing is not as sensitive as it will be in about 2 weeks when this fluid is absorbed. Nevertheless, they can tell the difference between loud and soft sounds and between short and long sound duration. The auditory feedback loop is already present and used by your newborn baby. The auditory feedback loop is the relationship between the ability of a baby to use sounds that she hears in order to control or monitor sounds that she produces. Experiments testing the auditory feedback loop examine a baby’s change in heart rate or breathing rate in response to presentation of the same or a different sound. Amazingly, within the first few days after birth, babies can tell the difference between sounds. Distinguishing specific sounds in words, however, comes later. But newborns are able to perceive a great deal right from birth.

Talking to Children

I read this article today on a new book, NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children. The emphasis is on what it is parents can do to nurture and support learning. It's worth a read.

My work with older (preschool children) on mediated learning shows that it's not only about exposing children to language that helps them learn it, it's helping them understand what to pay attention to and to learn to regulate their own attention-- essentially learning how to learn.

In some ways, this isn't all that different from mediated learning, but it seems to do a nice job in providing information based on the vast amount of scientific literature that is available.

How should parents help children learn to learn. One aspect is attention. Many homes around the world are information rich. There's a lot of information-- visual, auditory, sensory-- that babies and young children (and we as adults) need to learn to organize and grapple with. So, an important skill becomes learning how to attend to one thing at a time within the information stream. Parents are instrumental in helping children to pay attention to what's important (and to ignore what's not important). One way parents can do this is through repetition (and variation). Babies seem to like routine-- they find comfort in it. At the same time the novel is fun. By keeping the same basic routine, but varying one thing (or two) at a time, babies can learn to pay attention and look for the novel.

That's it for now. More on this and other topics later.