a new studypublished in the journal Infancy got more specific, finding that verbally engaging with babies—listening to their gurgles and coos and then responding, conversation-style—may speed up their language development more than simply talking at them or around them.
Researchers from the University of Iowa and Indiana University observed a small group of mothers and their infants in individual unstructured play sessions over the course of six months, beginning when the children were eight months old, and coded the mothers’ responses to their babies’ babbling into two categories. “Redirective” responses involved turning the babies’ attention elsewhere, like showing them a toy or pointing out something in the room, while “sensitive” responses were ones where the mothers verbally replied to or imitated their sounds—though, as the study notes:
Imitations rarely took the form of imitating the sound that the infant made, but more often involved the mother modeling the word that the sound approximated and expanding on it (e.g., if the infant uttered “da-da-da,” the mother would say “Da-da is working. I am ma-ma”).
Constant Supervision & Feminism
It was early 2000s and I was watching some serial or other when I saw the following for the umpteenth time: a sympathetically portrayed mother loses her child because she “just looked away for 1 second!” Whether the child was ultimately recovered for not, the implicit message was clear. Children need constant, vigilant, 24/7 supervision. Regardless of the show, it was nearly always a working mom shown in this predicament. Occasionally a stay at home mom would be similarly afflicted, never a dad.
I was a woman in my 20s and the target audience for the shows. I may have been swayed if I hadn’t grown up latch key in the crime ridden NYC of the 1980s and reaped the awards. I spent entire summer days at playgrounds on the wrong side of Prospect Park. I rode the subway alone at 8 y.o. Before reaching middle school, my cousin and I had ventured off to Coney Island with nothing but our swimsuits and a $5.00 bill for emergencies. By high school, I had library cards for Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan and was intoxicated at the thought that NYC belonged to me.
Instead of being swayed by the message, I recognized it as a backlash against feminism. As women poured entered the workforce, the standards for mothering ratcheted higher and higher until they became impossible to meet unless a woman devotes her entire self to parenting or can pay others to do it. The trap now has the sharp teeth of the criminal justice system. And, men are being caught too.
Why Free Play Is the Best Summer School
Unscheduled, unsupervised, playtime is one of the most valuable educational opportunities we give our children. It is fertile ground; the place where children strengthen social bonds, build emotional maturity, develop cognitive skills, and shore up their physical health. The value of free play, daydreaming, risk-taking, and independent discovery have been much in the news this year, and a new study by psychologists at the University of Colorado reveals just how important these activities are in the development of children’s executive functioning.
.. In their terminology, “self-regulation” is the key to success both in school and in life:
Kindergarten teachers rank self-regulation as the most important competency for school readiness; at the same time, these teachers report that many of their students come to school with low levels of self-regulation. There is evidence that early self-regulation levels have a stronger association with school readiness than do IQ or entry-level reading or math skills, and they are closely associated with later academic achievement.
Why Free Play Is the Best Summer School
Unscheduled, unsupervised, playtime is one of the most valuable educational opportunities we give our children. It is fertile ground; the place where children strengthen social bonds, build emotional maturity, develop cognitive skills, and shore up their physical health. The value of free play, daydreaming, risk-taking, and independent discovery have been much in the news this year, and a new study by psychologists at the University of Colorado reveals just how important these activities are in the development of children’s executive functioning.