| Home | 幼儿手工 | 简笔画 | 小游戏 | 树叶贴画 | 儿童画 | 幼儿舞蹈 | 幼儿园教案 | 幼儿园说课 | 儿教 | 育儿 | 婴儿 | 怀孕 | 海外 | 入园
Help Your Baby Learn to Talk           ★★★
Help Your Baby Learn to Talk
Author:163ED   UpdateTime:2010-11-20 23:22:39

Help Your Baby Learn to Talk
What's the best way to help your baby learn to talk? Follow your instincts.

Introduction
Eager for your baby to start talking, you read her eight books a day. You recite the alphabet nine times, play pat-a-cake ten times, and sing "Old McDonald" until you're too pooped to moo. And still you fear you're not doing enough. Should you try "genius" videotapes? Flash cards?

Relax. "People worry about teaching infants to talk, but it's unnecessary," says Lise Eliot, Ph.D., author of What's Going on in There? How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life (Bantam, 1999). "If children are raised in a normal, emotionally healthy environment, they will learn to speak." In fact, as more and more research shows, babies gain a surprisingly complex understanding of language in their first year alone. To help, all you really need to do is act on your loving instincts.

Instinct #1: Talk to Your Baby
Without realizing it, you probably do this a lot. You provide running commentary during meals ("I'm getting your bottle ready!"), during walks ("See the doggie?"), and even during diaper changes ("Hang in there, sweetie, we're almost done"). Plus, you probably do so in a way designed to penetrate your baby's brain -- the singsong, high-pitched speech known to experts as parentese.

"Parentese is remarkably universal among cultures," Dr. Eliot says. "Parents simply learn that babies pay more attention when we speak that way -- and studies have confirmed it." No wonder: When people speak normally, a newborn hears only an unbroken stream of sound. "By highlighting the ends of words, parentese helps the baby break what he hears into segments," says Leslie B. Cohen, Ph.D., director of the Children's Research Laboratory at the University of Texas. "It also exaggerates the melody of language, which makes speech more interesting for babies." One good reason for reading to your baby is that storytime can be a feast of parentese.

Instinct #2: Play With Your Baby
Games are more than a way to keep your baby amused -- they teach important lessons about being social. And children need to know the rules of human contact, along with the rules of grammar and syntax, if they're to communicate well.

When you playfully mimic your baby's movements, he learns that his actions influence others. When the two of you take turns cooing or babbling, he discovers that communication requires give-and-take. Games like pat-a-cake and peekaboo are particularly useful, says Rhea Paul, Ph.D., a professor of communication disorders at Southern Connecticut State University and the Yale Child Study Center. "With pat-a-cake, for example, the baby learns that after we clap a few times, we're going to throw our hands in the air. Through these repeated routines, she learns that social frameworks are predictable." Only when a baby grasps that concept can she understand that people communicate in dependable ways. Then she's free to focus on the words themselves -- and on what she wants to say.

Instinct #3: Love Your Baby
"Babies learn best in the context of a loving relationship," says M. Jeanne Wilcox, Ph.D., a speech-language pathologist at Arizona State University. "In such a relationship, the parent wants to talk about the things the baby is interested in. We get cues about those interests from watching what an infant looks at, what she points to, and what she selects to play with. So when you're looking for a topic of conversation, all you need to do is follow the baby's lead."

Studies indicate that babies whose parents respond to their cues understand more words and that children with chatty parents have larger vocabularies. "Our educated guess is that the richness of interaction between parent and child actually does have an effect," says D. Kimbrough Oller, Ph.D., a professor and chair of the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Maine. But researchers urge parents not to go overboard in an effort to turn their babies into prodigies. "We don't want to play pat-a-cake as if it were a language lesson," Dr. Paul says. "Communication isn't as appealing if it's forced." Other pressure tactics to avoid: talking to your baby nonstop or withholding something that she wants in the hope of making her ask for it by name.

The fact is, all babies learn the basics of self-expression sooner or later -- and the surest way to help in this natural process is to have fun with your child. "If your baby enjoys being with you," Dr. Cohen says, "you're probably doing the right stuff."

  • Back PostNews:

  • Next PostNews:
  •  
        What's New
    Guilt-Free Discipline
    Just-Right Discipline
    Tips on Communicating with Your Tod
    3 Golden Rules for Great Behavior
    The 5-Second Discipline Fix
    Four Ways to Deal with Whining Chil
     
     

    | Home | Add | Contact