by Beth Butler

Remember high school? You could choose French or Spanish. What you couldn’t choose was to be the right age to learn a new language easily. You memorized verbs, but you probably didn’t learn to speak fluently.

Today, enlightened school systems know better. Second languages are introduced in elementary school. Little kids do learn more easily than high school students.

But current research says to really do it right, start even earlier. Start when the child is learning a first language. Babies have an astonishing ability to absorb. And in today’s complex world, a second language is not a luxury – it’s a necessity.

We know now that studying a second language offers surprising benefits to children. Research has demonstrated improved ability to communicate, better cognitive development, richer cultural awareness and, ultimately, better job opportunities for those who know a second language.

What’s more, today’s children will all be required to have command of two languages by the time they reach college.

Research suggests that from birth through age 10 is the best time to introduce new languages to a young child. The child will learn the language faster, retain it better and most often speak it with near-native pronunciation. Recent research indicates a young child up through age 5 can learn and process up to five languages!

Many parents deliberate over how to bring a new language into their little one’s life. Many experts agree the bilingual approach for the very young child is best. Teach the new language alongside the native language. It’s as easy as pointing to a cat and saying “cat” then following with “gato.”

This bilingual method provides continuing education in the child’s native tongue while acquiring skills in the new one. Language experts agree the strong sense of pride, higher self-esteem and long term retention are all reasons to introduce the new language with this bilingual/dual-language approach.

Today’s parents know the importance of being bilingual. Now they just need to know where to turn for assistance in finding fun and affordable bilingual products that will bring the target language into their child’s life. The internet has made their search much easier than five years ago. Look for bilingual programs that allow you to sample their visual or audio products on line so that you get a good feel for the content and style of the language learning within that particular program.

Remember to make it fun! Remember to start early! There is a reason Time and Newsweek both ran feature articles on the “window of opportunity” to learn a new language is between birth and age 10. The experts agree, the earlier the better. Don’t miss out on the prime time of your child’s development to provide your child with a lifetime of language skills.

About the Author
(c) 2005 – All Rights Reserved. Beth Butler is the creator of the BOCA BETH Program – a bilingual educational program geared towards helping young children get a head start on becoming bilingual. She motivates and assists educators in developing a bilingual environment for children, and she has developed a program that makes bilingual education a fun and easy part of the normal, child-raising routine for today’s parents. For more information, visit www.bocabeth.com.

By Susan du Plessis

Most parents can hardly wait for their baby to say its first word. This usually happens between the nine months and a year. From about two years, the child should be able to use simple phrases, and by three he should be able to use full sentences. By four, he should be fully able to talk, although he may still make grammatical errors. By five, he should have acquired basic language.

There is little doubt that language acquisition is one of the key milestones in early childhood development. Much of a child’s future social and intellectual development hinges on this milestone. A language delay can lead to isolation and withdrawal, and to learning difficulties and poor academic performance. Recent research has revealed a dramatic link between the development of spoken language and written language among children, and the importance of language acquisition to basic reading skills.

Many parents believe that the term “language development” implies that the child’s acquisition of language is an automatic process. This, however, is not the case. There is nothing that any human being knows or can do that he has not learned. This is especially true of language acquisition.

The child begins to learn language from the day he is born. From the very first moment it is the parents’ responsibility to lay a proper foundation that will enable the child to acquire adequate language skills. Just like parents must ensure that a child follows a healthy and balanced diet for optimal physically development, they must take steps to ensure optimal language development.

How Language is Acquired
Parents should start talking to their little baby from the day he is born. Some mothers are by nature quiet and reserved. Others have the unfortunate idea that it is foolish to talk to their babies, knowing that they do not understand. The mother, who does not talk continually while feeding, bathing and dressing her baby, is laying the foundation for a late talker.

The baby learns language in one way only, and that is by hearing language as the parents talk and talk to it. The more a parent can talk to a child, often repeating the same words, the same phrases, the same structures over and over, the sooner the child will learn language.

An important thing to note here is that by the time a baby is about nine months old he should be able to understand simple words and commands. He may perhaps also be able to say a few simple words already. Invariably, however, one finds that the baby understands much more than he is able to say. In fact, this remains so of any person throughout his life. One is always able to understand more of any language, even one’s mother tongue, than one is able to use in active speech. This is even more so of any second or third languages that a person is able to speak.

This shows that we have two more or less separate masses of language knowledge, our PASSIVE knowledge (also called receptive language) on one hand, and our ACTIVE (expressive language) on the other. When we listen or read, we make use of our passive vocabulary, and when we speak or write, of our active vocabulary.

An important thing to note here is that the child’s passive vocabulary came into being through constant and continual repetition of words, phrases or structures. Once a word, phrase or structure has been repeated often enough, it also becomes part of the baby’s active vocabulary. This shows that the active vocabulary can only be improved VIA the passive. Research has shown that a child who is just beginning to talk must hear a word about 500 times before it will become part of his active vocabulary. Long before that it will already form part of his passive vocabulary. This means that parents should create as many opportunities as possible in which their baby can hear them talk.

The Secret of Reading to Your Child
Parents should read to their children as often as possible. The secret, however, which will lead to optimal language development, is to read the SAME stories over and over and over.

In the “good old days” there was not the abundance of storybooks that there is today. Parents were compelled – it was also part of the child-rearing traditions – to tell over and over to their children the few stories that they knew, or to read over and over to their children the few books in their possession. They also spent a lot of time teaching their children rhymes and songs. As I discovered for myself through my own son, this over and over repetition of the same stories and rhymes was extremely beneficial for the acquisition of language. In fact, I took this tradition to the extreme, exposing my son to only ONE book for nearly two years.

Soon after my elder son, Gustav, was born, I bought him a book with the story of Pinocchio. The book was aimed at four-year-olds. Except for talking to him continually, I started to read to him from this book when he was only two or three months old – as often as I could, over and over and over. I found this tedious, of course. Gustav, however, loved it, and the results of this experiment made all my efforts worthwhile. Not only did he start talking much sooner than most children do, but when he was just over two years, he could recite nearly all the pages from Pinocchio. When turning to a new page, one only had to read the first word or two on that page and he would recite the rest of the page like a parrot. In itself this may seem quite useless, but of great importance was that the vocabulary in this book soon became part of his everyday speech. In terms of language development, he was soon miles ahead of his age group. In fact, to this day, his vocabulary and his ability to speak with clarity are quite astounding.

When a child is a bit older, one should start teaching him nursery rhymes. Research has shown that knowledge of nursery rhymes among three-year-olds was a significant predictor of later prereading skills even after the children’s IQ and their mothers’ educational levels were partialed out.

While an apple a day keeps the doctor away, talking forever makes your child clever!

About the Author
Susan du Plessis (BD; BA Hons) is an author of five books on learing and learning disabilities. You can visit her website at www.audiblox2000.com and contact her at susandup@audiblox2000.com.

By Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, PhD, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, PhD, and Diane Eyer, PhD

How can we help children blossom socially and emotionally? Read on for some specific tips.

Look for opportunities to discuss other people’s feelings
By explaining how other people would feel if a particular act occurred, you teach your child to take the perspective of others. “If you hit Irving over the head with that truck, he will probably feel very bad and cry. Do you want that to happen?”

Creating a sensitive human being takes work! It often seems a lot easier to just stop vexing and dangerous toddler behavior without explaining what consequences would follow and why, and how someone would feel as a result. Of course, tomorrow someone will probably come out with a video that claims to teach your child how to work and play well with others. But that product would be a drop in the bucket compared with the power that comes from ongoing human relationships where both mind and heart are learning together. What fills the bucket is the interaction children and adults experience: a product of basic social need.

Watch your language
One way to bring up the perspectives of others is to ask your child about the characters in the stories you read together. Ask questions such as “How do you think this person (the character) feels? How would you feel if you were this person? What do you think the person’s friends could do to help him to feel better?”

In fact, many of the current social and emotional programs that teach children about how to be a good person use games in which children adopt different perspectives. One example is the Interpersonal Cognitive Problem Solving program for elementary school children, which was developed by Professor Myrna Shure of Drexel University in Philadelphia. After the adult shows the children pictures of scenes or verbally describes scenarios such as a fight in school or a moment of frustration, the children are asked, “How do you think this person felt in the story? How might you feel if you were that person? How would you want others to react to you?” At Pennsylvania State University, Professor Mark Greenberg created another program of this type called PATHS (Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies) that helps children talk about their feelings. These programs have been maximally effective in reducing aggressive behavior and are training children on how to understand others’ minds. They are now used widely in school programs.

Explain to your child that there are causes for people’s feelings
Research by Professor Judy Dunn and her colleagues at Pennsylvania State University examined the conversations that fifty 33-month-old children had in their homes with their mothers about feelings and about what causes them. For example, a mother might say, “You broke my glass (the cause) and that makes me sad (the outcome).” Such conversations were just what Professor Dunn and her colleagues looked for in the parent-child dialogues.

She found that at 40 months, children differed widely in their appreciation of emotions and other minds. The results of this study tell us that talk about emotions and what causes emotions impacts children’s developing theory of mind. Hearing an explanation for others’ behavior does at least two things. It may help stunt the natural anger that arises when you are thwarted so you can respond more constructively. It may also help you look for such mitigating explanations on your own in future altercations. And these differences, in turn, will influence how well children interact with their peers and teachers.

Stop bullying in its tracks
The extreme example of children who are not thinking of the welfare of others is the bully. If your child is frequently the target of bullies, it may be a sign that she is less socially competent and, therefore, has fewer friends and is seen as vulnerable. It turns out that children who are more socially competent and who have more friends are less likely to be bullied.

Researchers have determined that both the bullies and the bullied tend to have certain typical characteristics: The majority of victims, for instance, reinforce bullies by giving in to their demands, crying, assuming defensive postures, and failing to fight back. Victims tend to have a history of overly intrusive parenting, with parents who are controlling and overprotective. These parenting behaviors prompt anxiety, low self-esteem, and dependency, which combine to radiate vulnerability. Bullies often bank on their victim’s dependency and vulnerability; they know the other child won’t fight back. This makes the bully feel powerful. Of course, bullies have their own social deficits. They tend to come from families where there is little warmth or affection. The families also report trouble sharing their feelings. Sometimes parents of bullies have very punitive and rigid discipline styles. Finally, bullies feel less discomfort than average children at the thought of causing pain and suffering.

So what can be done for bullies and their victims? Preschools and kindergartens where peer socialization is integrated into the curriculum are good places to start helping them. Anxious, withdrawn children will benefit greatly from developing just one good friendship. And even when they have conflicts with their peers (yes, conflict is inevitable), they’ll be learning valuable lessons in how to interpret social cues accurately. But in addition to the teaching of social skills at school, it’s also important to evaluate the relationship you have with your child, especially if you suspect that he’s a bully. Remember: Bullies tend to come from families where there’s a lack of affection or little sharing of feelings. Take the time to ask your child how he’s feeling and to really listen to his answer. When he expresses anger or rage, work with him to help him regulate his negative emotions and find peaceful ways to resolve them. Finally, when he talks about problems he’s having with his peers, brainstorm with him to come up with skillful ways he could resolve them.

Finally, children who are not bullies or victims have a powerful role to play in shaping the behavior of other children. Teach your children to speak up on behalf of children being bullied. “Don’t treat her that way; it’s not nice.” “Hitting is not a good way to solve problems. Let’s find a teacher and talk about what happened.” For more examples and role-play situations, check out Sherryll Kraizer’s The Safe Child Book.

Make space for social time
Children sometimes just need to hang out with others or to be by themselves. It might seem as if they are doing “nothing,” but there’s a lot to learn from unscheduled time on their own or with other children. Children need to be able to be spontaneous — to be able to just goof off! Creating playdates for our children helps them diversify their social world and develop additional social tools for dealing with a greater variety of social challenges. And social interactions give you opportunities for discussing emotional situations and others’ perspectives. This cannot be obtained on the fly, in the car between activities, but only from real social interaction that you are present to observe and comment on and coach as the occasion arises.

If your child is in child care or preschool, be sure to build strong connections with your child’s caregiver or teacher
You want your child’s emotions taken seriously when he is not with you, too, and you want that emotional coaching going on whenever a conflict comes up. If you talk with the caregiver on a daily basis about how your child is doing and ask questions about how he gets along with his peers and how disagreements are handled, you’ll have a better sense of whether emotional coaching and mentoring is going on. Get in the habit of building strong ties to the people whom your child spends time with just as it makes a difference when children get consistent messages from their parents, it’s important that the messages they receive from their child care providers are consistent as well.

While there are many things we can do to foster social development, here are some general suggestions for helping your children to tune in to their own feelings.

Avoid ignoring or belittling your child’s feelings
Although often you’d wish such moments would just go away, times of emotional upset can be understood as key opportunities for teaching children how to avoid or resolve such situations, while also taking the feelings of others into consideration. View these times as opportunities to teach your children how to make lemonade out of lemons, while still allowing them to experience their feelings of hurt or disappointment. A versatile recipe for lemonade will be very useful for dealing with life’s inevitable frustrations.

Try to see the world through your children’s eyes
Once you do, you’ll recognize that the things that cause our children pain are often different from the things that cause us, as adults, pain. You don’t want to treat your children any differently than you would want to be treated when you express your emotions. How would you feel if you confided in a friend about something that bothered you and she made fun of you and laughed? Make a point of teaching your child that it’s okay to show negative emotion, such as sadness or fear. Likewise, try to demonstrate positive ways of coping with your own anger and negative feelings. Remember: Your children are watching you for lessons on regulating their emotions.

The bottom line is to talk to your children and invite them to talk to you. The more you try to understand how they feel and help them understand how an event happened, the more coping skills your child will develop. And, as we have documented, social skills are essential for doing well, both in school and in life.

Reprinted from: Einstein Never Used Flash Cards: How Our Children Really Learn — And Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less by Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Ph.D., and Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Ph.D., with Diane Eyer, Ph.D. © 2003 by Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Ph.D., and Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Ph.D.

About the Authors
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Ph.D., is a member of the psychology department at Temple University, where she directs the Infant Language Laboratory and participated in one of the nation’s largest studies of the effects of child care. The mother of three sons, she also composes and performs children’s music. Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Ph.D., is the H. Rodney Sharp Professor in the School of Education at the University of Delaware, where she holds a joint appointment with the departments of linguistics and psychology and directs the Infant Language Project. She has also been a recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship and is the mother of a son and a daughter. Together, the authors were featured on the PBS Human Language series and are the authors of How Babies Talk. Diane Eyer, Ph.D., is a member of the psychology department at Temple University and author of Motherguilt and Mother-Infant Bonding.

For more information, please visitwww.writtenvoices.com.

Six simple ways to support your baby’s healthy development
As new parents, you want the best for your baby, and you’re willing to do whatever it takes to ensure his well-being. Therefore, you’ll buy all sorts of fancy gizmos, and pour through mountains of information about all of the products and resources that claim they can turn your infant into a “super-baby” who will be intellectually advanced, happier, or “improved” in some miraculous way. However, all of the gadgets and gizmos in the world can’t give your baby what he or she needs most – which is YOU!

In actuality, infant development experts have discovered that your behavior – how you interact and respond to your baby – is the key to stimulating your infant’s emotional and intellectual growth. During his first years, your baby’s brain will develop billions of pathways. Everything that your infant sees, hears, or touches during his earliest years of life will strengthen these pathways. As the pathways mature in your baby’s brain, they will enable your baby to think, learn and eventually talk.

To stimulate growth, infants don’t require expensive toys; they learn by doing. In addition to loving, nurturing care, what they most need are new things to try. Therefore, if you want to provide nourishment for your infant’s mind, offer experiences that stimulate your baby’s senses, as well as encourage his interaction with his surroundings. For example, holding, cuddling, playing, talking and other similar kinds of nurturing activities all stimulate brain development. And they are all free!

Here are six simple ways you can support your baby’s healthy development:

Language
Talk to your baby to help him develop language skills. Long before babies begin to form words, they are learning language and creating “conversations.” Encourage your baby’s vocabulary to grow by repeating the sounds he makes back to him. Play a face-to-face game as you interact. Enunciate each word clearly so he can see how your mouth moves. Imitate your baby’s sounds and gestures, and add to them. When he makes a certain sound, tell him actual words that start with that sound. Then, pause for a moment and give him a chance to respond.

Touch
Touch is one of your baby’s most effective methods for exploring and learning about the world around her. Your baby’s hands are her first tools, and she will be fascinated by what they can do. Not only will she use her hands to explore new and interesting objects, she will use them to become aware of the boundaries of her own body. Let your baby touch and handle a variety of textured and smooth objects, as long as they are nontoxic and safe. Try materials that are gentle to the touch, such as velvet, fur, silk, or terry cloth. Wooden building blocks, plastic balls, rubber squeak toys, cloth books, or crumpled paper can also provide another set of interesting textures.

Scents
Introduce scents to your baby since pleasant aromas will enhance his sensory awareness. Try lotions, perfumes or after shave—any mild pleasing scents. Use everyday activities to explore the discovery of scents. For example, while you are cooking, let him smell the cinnamon, then the vanilla, or cut up pieces of fragrant fruit or fresh herbs and hold them under his nose. When you are outdoors, introduce him to the scents of nature. Let him feel the soft petals and smell the fragrance of fresh blossoms or cut grass.

Play!
Floor games offer a wide variety of play options, as well as the opportunity for your baby to perfect her new motor skills. Since babies are fascinated by objects that move, use brightly colored balls for bouncing and rolling fun. As your baby gains better physical control, try placing one or two colorful toys just out of her reach. Give her a few minutes, and see if she wiggles or scoots forward while trying to reach the toys.

Rhyme Time!
Recite nursery rhymes. Rhymes and poems that demonstrate an up-and-down rhythm and tone emphasize the musical characteristics of language. Rhymes will help your infant link certain words with certain actions. In combination with gestures, rhymes will also aid in improving your child’s memory and anticipation skills. As your child grows older, these familiar nursery rhymes will also help in the beginning phases of reading. So, build a repertoire of songs and rhymes, and sing, say, or play them frequently.

Get Silly!
Silly face games are great fun for you and your baby. Different facial expressions and sounds help develop your baby’s vision and hearing. Sing a song and use exaggerated facial movements and gestures. Smile wide, act surprised, blink your eyes, or wiggle your nose. Make different sounds—pop air through your cheeks, yawn, or sneeze. You can even make peek-a-boo toys out of cardboard toilet paper tubes and paper towel cylinders. The more animated you act the more delighted your baby will be.

Always celebrate and praise each little step your baby achieves as he develops. By recognizing his behavior, he will learn that his actions matter. Acknowledge his attempts as well as his accomplishments, since both are equally important. As you consistently validate his achievements, you will also help him to establish a positive self-image, which is critical to the development of his personality. If you give your baby the opportunity to develop this positive awareness of himself right from the earliest stages of his life, his feelings of success will further his incentive to achieve.

About the Author:
Susan Stelfox, mother of one, is the author of Baby Be Loved: Growing and Learning Together During the First 24 Weeks. To learn more about infant bonding and play visit http://www.BabyBeLoved.com

By Susan du Plessis

Most parents can hardly wait for their baby to say its first word. This usually happens between the nine months and a year. From about two years, the child should be able to use simple phrases, and by three he should be able to use full sentences. By four, he should be fully able to talk, although he may still make grammatical errors. By five, he should have acquired basic language.

There is little doubt that language acquisition is one of the key milestones in early childhood development. Much of a child’s future social and intellectual development hinges on this milestone. A language delay can lead to isolation and withdrawal, and to learning difficulties and poor academic performance. Recent research has revealed a dramatic link between the development of spoken language and written language among children, and the importance of language acquisition to basic reading skills.

Many parents believe that the term “language development” implies that the child’s acquisition of language is an automatic process. This, however, is not the case. There is nothing that any human being knows or can do that he has not learned. This is especially true of language acquisition.

The child begins to learn language from the day he is born. From the very first moment it is the parents’ responsibility to lay a proper foundation that will enable the child to acquire adequate language skills. Just like parents must ensure that a child follows a healthy and balanced diet for optimal physically development, they must take steps to ensure optimal language development.

How Language is Acquired
Parents should start talking to their little baby from the day he is born. Some mothers are by nature quiet and reserved. Others have the unfortunate idea that it is foolish to talk to their babies, knowing that they do not understand. The mother, who does not talk continually while feeding, bathing and dressing her baby, is laying the foundation for a late talker.

The baby learns language in one way only, and that is by hearing language as the parents talk and talk to it. The more a parent can talk to a child, often repeating the same words, the same phrases, the same structures over and over, the sooner the child will learn language.

An important thing to note here is that by the time a baby is about nine months old he should be able to understand simple words and commands. He may perhaps also be able to say a few simple words already. Invariably, however, one finds that the baby understands much more than he is able to say. In fact, this remains so of any person throughout his life. One is always able to understand more of any language, even one’s mother tongue, than one is able to use in active speech. This is even more so of any second or third languages that a person is able to speak.

This shows that we have two more or less separate masses of language knowledge, our PASSIVE knowledge (also called receptive language) on one hand, and our ACTIVE (expressive language) on the other. When we listen or read, we make use of our passive vocabulary, and when we speak or write, of our active vocabulary.

An important thing to note here is that the child’s passive vocabulary came into being through constant and continual repetition of words, phrases or structures. Once a word, phrase or structure has been repeated often enough, it also becomes part of the baby’s active vocabulary. This shows that the active vocabulary can only be improved VIA the passive. Research has shown that a child who is just beginning to talk must hear a word about 500 times before it will become part of his active vocabulary. Long before that it will already form part of his passive vocabulary. This means that parents should create as many opportunities as possible in which their baby can hear them talk.

The Secret of Reading to Your Child
Parents should read to their children as often as possible. The secret, however, which will lead to optimal language development, is to read the SAME stories over and over and over.

In the “good old days” there was not the abundance of storybooks that there is today. Parents were compelled – it was also part of the child-rearing traditions – to tell over and over to their children the few stories that they knew, or to read over and over to their children the few books in their possession. They also spent a lot of time teaching their children rhymes and songs. As I discovered for myself through my own son, this over and over repetition of the same stories and rhymes was extremely beneficial for the acquisition of language. In fact, I took this tradition to the extreme, exposing my son to only ONE book for nearly two years.

Soon after my elder son, Gustav, was born, I bought him a book with the story of Pinocchio. The book was aimed at four-year-olds. Except for talking to him continually, I started to read to him from this book when he was only two or three months old – as often as I could, over and over and over. I found this tedious, of course. Gustav, however, loved it, and the results of this experiment made all my efforts worthwhile. Not only did he start talking much sooner than most children do, but when he was just over two years, he could recite nearly all the pages from Pinocchio. When turning to a new page, one only had to read the first word or two on that page and he would recite the rest of the page like a parrot. In itself this may seem quite useless, but of great importance was that the vocabulary in this book soon became part of his everyday speech. In terms of language development, he was soon miles ahead of his age group. In fact, to this day, his vocabulary and his ability to speak with clarity are quite astounding.

When a child is a bit older, one should start teaching him nursery rhymes. Research has shown that knowledge of nursery rhymes among three-year-olds was a significant predictor of later prereading skills even after the children’s IQ and their mothers’ educational levels were partialed out.

While an apple a day keeps the doctor away, talking forever makes your child clever!

About the Author
Susan du Plessis (BD; BA Hons) is an author of five books on learing and learning disabilities. You can visit her website at www.audiblox2000.com and contact her at susandup@audiblox2000.com.

By Lily Carter

From birth to one year your baby will go from crying to cooing to talking. Those are amazing milestones for your baby to accomplishment in such a short period of time as he develops his speech and language skills.

Keep in mind that these stages of your baby’s development are broad and that no baby will fall exactly within the timeframe of these expected milestones.

One month: Your baby will understand speech long before he begins to speak. From birth he will look at your face and listen to your voice. He will make a small range of noises that will start to mean something to you, such as his way of exhibiting hunger or pain. These noises will include crying and certain sounds that your baby makes while he is breathing. When your baby is feeding he will make sucking noises and sound of contentment.

Your baby’s cry is an important way for him to communicate. Crying lays the foundation for speech as your baby learns to control the air that comes from his lungs and learns how to use his vocal cords. Crying is your baby’s way of telling you that he is hungry, upset, or cold. By listening carefully to your baby and responding to his cries you are letting him know that he is important. This is how your baby first learns to communicate with you.

Two months: Your two-month old baby is starting to pay more and more attention to his world. He will be fascinated by the sound of your voice and will follow it around the room with great concentration. The different tones of you voice will keep him interested for short periods of time.

Your baby will respond with a variety of cooing sounds, vowel-like sounds, and sometimes some consonant sounds such as a “k”. You will find that your baby has quite a collection of cooing sounds that she uses to communicate with you as well as discover how to use the sound of her own voice.

Talk to your baby as much as possible to encourage her cooing response. Look directly into your baby’s eyes to show that you are listening. This helps to establish signals of communication between the two of you.

Three months: Your baby will recognize your voice and will turn towards you when he hears you talking. He will be starting to laugh out loud and will often startle himself until he learns that he is the one making the sound. Your baby will be making sounds such as “ahhhh gooo”. He will squeal when he is happy and content, again often startling himself as he learns his own abilities.

Continue to talk to your baby as much as possible, as well as sing to him and read him stories. The more you communicate with him and let him know that you are listening the more he will attempt to communicate with you.

Four months: Your baby is learning more and more ways to communicate with you. He will be smiling spontaneously at everything around him. His soft babbling will have an almost singsong sound to it, often ranging into a high pitch that delights him as he learns to like the sound of his own voice. There will be lots of repetition to the sounds that your baby makes.

Make sure that you respond to your baby’s “oohs” and “ahhs” with your own voice tones. This is your “chat time” with your baby and you should take advantage of these chatty times as he learns what conversation is all about. Your baby may also be starting to let you know when he’s not in the mood for talking with you. He will turn his head in the other direction and may put his arm over his face. He may be showing signs of anger or frustration by crying out, especially if something is taken away from him.

Five months: Your baby is becoming better at communicating. He may start to mimic sounds and gestures which allows him to express his needs. He’ll be able to let you know if he’s happy or sad. When your baby wants attention he’ll start to babble until you respond to him. If you respond to his cooing, laughing sounds he’ll repeat his noises often because he knows that he can get your attention this way.

Your baby will now be watching your mouth when you talk. If you talk to him from across the room he’ll be able to locate you easily. He is learning to control his vocal sounds as watches your response to his sounds.

Six months: Your baby is now using consonant-vowel combinations. He has discovered his image in the mirror and is probably having conversations with his new “playmate”. Your baby’s language is becoming much more precise. There are several ways that you can help him to continue to develop his language skills by:

• Speaking clearly, slowly, and accurately.�
   
• Identify objects as you say their names.�
   
• Use short sentences.�
   
• Use repetition when singing songs and nursery rhymes; the repetition will help him to learn.
• Read as often as you can to your baby, asking questions about the pictures in the books so that your baby is interacting with you.�
   
• Never talk “at” your baby, let him respond in his own way.

Seven months: Your baby continues to learn how to use his language skills. He has learned how to wave goodbye and may accompany his wave with babbling sounds. He can say “mama” or “dada”.

Eight months: Your baby is playing games such as pat a cake and peek-a-boo. Even though he can’t speak the words that belong to these games, he can babble and talk to himself. Your baby understands the word “no” means, even though he doesn’t like hearing them?

Nine months: Continue to play lots of games with your baby, especially those games that involve singing. Your baby is responding to small sentences, such as “Take mommy’s hand.”

Ten months: Your baby’s language skills continue to develop. He is using his own gibberish language to interact with you and have a conversation.

Eleven months: Your baby can now say short, one syllable words such as “bye” and continues to talk in his conversational gibberish language. There are several ways that you can help your baby as he learns and practices his language skills:

• Talk often to your baby using simple words to identify objects in his life. Name trees, numbers, colors, and animals as you take your baby for a walk. Use your baby’s name as often as you can so he starts to recognize it.
• Be patient and listen when your baby talks to you. Respond to his talk in a positive way, often repeating one or two of the words he has used correctly.�
   
• Introduce concepts to your baby, such as the “big” dog or the “little” mouse.�
   
• Give your baby time to get his words out; don’t be tempted to complete sentences for him.�
   
• Continue to read to your baby as much as possible. Reading should be part of your daily routine.

Twelve months: At the one year mark your baby’s language skills are continuing to progress as he discovers more and more about the world around him. Before you know it your baby will be talking non-stop as he masters his language and vocal skills.

About the Author:
For More Honest Parenting Advice, Information, Tips, and Product Reviews go to www.babytownsite.com today!

By Caroline Jackson Blakemore and Barbara Weston Ramirez

Chapter One covered the wide-reaching benefits of reading to your baby. In this chapter, we present a few simple suggestions to help you and your baby begin a journey together that will enrich your lives. Besides the calming and bonding benefits, you’ll develop a conversational resonance through everyday ideas and events that children’s books inspire. In the very beginning you may feel like it’s a one-way monologue, but before you know it, you’ll be in a dialogue in which your baby responds to you by locking her eyes in rapt attention on your eyes, your mouth, and the book. She’ll wiggle her legs and arms, and breathe faster. In return, you’ll read more to her, and the read-aloud dance is underway with all its lifetime benefits of increased vocabulary and language skills.

1. Newborns Need a Quiet Reading Environment
As your baby makes the transition from a uterine environment to our noisy, well-lit, open-air world, many physiological changes are taking place. A newborn’s perceptual system does not screen out everything that her eyes see, her ears hear, or her skin feels. Be sensitive to your newborn’s needs by providing quiet time when she can listen clearly to your voice as you talk or read to her. When reading to your baby, turn off any competing noises, such as the television, stereo, or radio. In early infancy, it is especially important to prevent over stimulation or stress. During read-alouds, allow your baby to hear only you rhythmic voice without the disturbance of background noises.

2. Newborns are Comforted by the Sound of Your Voice
Initially, right after your child’s birth, you have a lot of leeway in what you may select to read to your baby. One parent told us he read aloud from the stock market pages of the newspaper. Since babies are mostly focusing on your voice at the outset, you could read anything aloud. However, since babies love your melodious voice the best choice right after birth might be any kind of rhymes, such as Mother Goose.

Some parents start right out with board books, such as Goodnight Moon, and note that their babies become so accustomed to these books that they continue to request them for the first year or longer. Gradually you will become aware of your baby’s favorites and select books that you know he would like. As babies mature, they become pickier and let you know what they like through their body language. Whatever you choose to read, become aware of the effect of the sound of your voice on your baby. Notice your baby’s excited movements when you read with enthusiasm or change the pitch of your voice.

3. Hold and Cuddle Your Baby When You Read
The most important thing to remember when reading a book to your infant is that you are providing love, attention, and intimacy while giving important language input. When babies are old enough to begin to choose books and bring them to you to read, often what they really want is to cuddle and be given loving attention.

When you first hold a newborn it can feel awkward, especially before they can hold their heads up. Imagine holding a book and the newborn at the same time. After a little practice, you’ll find the most comfortable position, whether it’s in your favorite rocker with a “boppy” (a donut-shaped lap pillow often used by nursing mothers) or lying next to your baby on the bed.

4. When Choosing a Book, Allow Your Baby to Be Your Guide
There is no prescription from pediatricians, educators, or psychologists recommending a list of books for each stage of a child’s early development. This is a good thing, as we have never encountered identical lists of books from parents we interviewed. Each child is unique and has his own preferences. One size does not fit all. Parents begin early with books they think their child will like and then reread many, many times those that get a favorable reaction. In each of Chapters Three through Eight, we provide detailed reviews of several age-appropriate books with tips for how they can be used to launch rich interactions between you and your baby. You can readily adapt these tips to whatever books you and your baby prefer.

Newborns benefit most from hearing your familiar voice reading poems or books with rhythm and rhyme when they are awake or asleep. After the first two or three months, your baby will react favorably by looking back and forth with interest between your face and the book, wiggling her legs and hands with excitement, or smiling happily. Conversely, if your baby is not enthused about a book she may look away from your face and the book, push the book aside, or fall asleep. By the time your baby is a year or more, she will select the books she wants you to read from the shelf, pile, or basket.

Your choice of books is not as important as making the choice to read to your baby on a regular basis. By making that choice, you will give your baby a powerful boost of language development, the benefits of which will last a lifetime. More importantly, your baby will associate reading with cuddly love and attention.

5. Start Reading at Any Page
You don’t have to finish a book, or even start at the beginning. You can go right to the part you know your baby likes best and have fun on one or more pages by dramatizing different parts with a variety of voice inflections and tones. Your baby may even want to switch back and forth between one book and another. Often baby books do not contain stories, but illustrated rhymes or labeled pictures. Skipping around the text is easy in these types of books. If there’s a story line, it still doesn’t matter if you pick and choose pages that interest your baby.

6. You Don’t Have to Read All of the Words in the Book
Sometimes you’ll find that your baby prefers that you merely point to the illustrations and name some objects, or that you make up your own words or story as you go along rather than reading what the words on the page say. Your baby will let you know. For example, when you select a favorite book for your baby, if you know from previous readings that your child prefers a certain page, you can turn directly to that page. You can read it in the way your baby loves to hear, perhaps dramatizing certain sentences or words by speaking them more loudly or in a squeaky voice. How will you know what your baby likes best? She may wiggle her arms and legs or gaze at the page with great interest. She might also look at the page longer than other pages.

For a wordless picture book, like Tana Hoban’s White on Black, you may dream up anything you want to say about the pictures of simple objects. Your baby will show you which pictures she’s most intrigued by. In this interaction with your baby the most important element is listening, observing and following your baby’s cues. Your baby will let you know what pages she prefers and how long to remain on a page. Usually, at this stage it’s best to remain on a page for only a few seconds.

7. Repeated Readings are Good for Baby’s Language Development
As soon as your child can speak in phrases some of the first words you’ll hear are “read it again.” Hearing language from books repeatedly helps children memorize it. Eight-month-olds can remember certain words that are read to them after two weeks of hearing repeated readings. Reading the same books over and over again may seem an interminable task, but the language benefits as well as your child’s joy will keep you going.

Even at birth babies have been shown to prefer hearing books that were read to them in utero. Researchers gave newborns a choice between hearing their mothers read a new book or hearing a book read repeatedly before birth. Using a sucking device, babies responded by increased sucking when they heard the familiar book read to them before birth. Rereading of traditional nursery rhymes starting at birth helps your baby identify and learn the sounds of his language. A good knowledge of sound discrimination forms the basis of later reading and writing skills.

8. Use “Parentese” when Reading and Talking to Your Baby
If you think reading to babies is having a quiet baby on your lap soaking up every word that you read straight from the book, think again. Reading to babies looks and feels very different from reading to older children. The principal difference in reading to babies as opposed to older children is the way you interrelate using your voice and a baby book. This way of talking to newborns is called “parentese.”

When parents are in intimate, face-to-face contact with their babies, they speak in a sing-songy, higher-pitched, slower, louder voice. When reading, you’ll use the baby book primarily as a vehicle to converse and dialogue with your baby using your parentese voice. You may use none, some, or all of the words in the book to have this kind of conversation.

Studies show that beginning at around five weeks, babies prefer parentese, rather than regular adult conversation. Parentese is the best way for babies to hear and learn language. Studies show that it takes babies twice as long as adults to process information. With parentese you speak more slowly so babies can hear the individual sounds and words in the stream of speech. This helps them distinguish the unique rhythm of the language spoken in the home.

Babies learn language best when parents speak with their parentese voices using face-to-face, personal, baby- directed talk. The more parentese babies hear before the age of two, the more words they’ll learn. A large vocabulary will lead to higher intelligence and academic achievement in school. Parentese aids in the process of learning the sounds, grammar, and structure of language necessary for effective speaking, reading, and writing.

About the Authors:
Caroline Jackson Blakemore and Barbara Weston Ramirez have a combined experience of over fifty years helping thousands of elementary school children with reading difficulties. They have given workshops on read-alouds to thousands of parents of babies, preschoolers, and school age children.