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Watering Your Young Child's Mind
By Emma Rath, Sat Dec 10th
Mary, Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow? Withsilver bells and cockle shells And pretty maids all in a row. It’s an everyday nursery rhyme, it’s simple to sing with yoursmall child, and apparently this nursery rhyme about a littlechild watering her garden is watering your little child’s mind! Early childhood educators have identified pre-reading skillsthat are necessary for the learning of reading and the masteryof language. They include phonological awareness, or theawareness of speech sounds and rhyme similarities, vocabulary orknowing lots of words, and the more a child loves the enjoymentand pleasure of using language, the more success they will havein reading and writing and academic studies. Nursery rhymes,with their words of imagery, rhymes and rhythm that childrenfind so fun, have all these qualities!
Let’s look at other ways that you are probably already simply,instinctively and effectively watering your child’s mind, andwhat the researchers are now saying about it. Let’s look at songs and music, activities that lots ofcaregivers instinctively share with their children. The NationalNetwork for Child Care athttp://www.nncc.org/Series/good.time.music.html explains whysongs, action songs, music and rhythm are important forchildren. They allow children to express their emotions, channeltheir energy creatively, gain confidence in themselves as theycoordinate their minds and their bodies together, learn newwords and ideas, and learn about themselves as they explore whatthey like, what they like when and what they can do. Learningthese physical and emotional controls, ways of expression andself-knowledge are necessary for a happy life now in childhoodand in their future adulthood. This is the real reason why welet our toddlers take out the pots, pans and wooden spoons andbang them, making a terrible ruckus. How about even simpler, even more unassuming activities, such ashaving fun blowing a dandelion’s seeds into the air. The childdevelopment psychologists Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn intheir book “Baby Minds: Brain-Building Games Your Baby WillLove” explain that such a simple yet fun and stimulatingactivity will stimulate your baby’s brain development. Thepractical conclusion that these researchers draw from the latestresearch is that “If your baby is not having fun, it’s probablynot worth doing”. Thus, the conclusion we can draw is “If your small child ishaving fun, then it’s probably stimulating your child’s physicaland mental development”. We already instinctively knew that, andso it’s wonderful to have researchers and experts confirming andencouraging this. Whenever my toddler pulls the toilet paperstill on its roll and runs around the house redecorating it intoilet paper, I just tell myself that this is a fantasticactivity for his brain, body and creative imagination. Actually, small children are programmed to learn and to engagein activities that will develop their minds and bodies. Itprobably has not escaped your attention that kids will naturallyinvent a fun and interesting game (fun and interesting to thechild) out of absolutely anything. The brain plasticityscientist Lise Eliot explains in “What’s Going On In There? Howthe Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life” thatthere are way too many connections in the brain andcommunications with the rest of the body – billions of neuronsand a quadrillion synapses at last count – for it to bepreprogrammed in genetic DNA material. Thus, and childrenare programmed to try things out and to repetitively practisethem for days and weeks and months, so that brain circuitry willsprout in the first place and then solidify to become permanent.Actually, this is my own layperson’s description. Lise Eliotrefers to it as neurogenesis, synaptogenesis and myelination.It’s the reason why kick in the womb, so that theconnection between the leg-kicking part of the brain and theactual leg can be developed. It’s the reason why my newly mobileson never tires of playing with the toilet brush in the toiletbowl, developing and practising his hand-eye coordination andhis understanding of the physical world, in this visual, audioand tactile activity of splashing water. We all know that cuddling our and children is importantfor their emotional and psychological development. Lise Eliotgives examples in the chapter “The Importance of
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Touch” of howtouch and physical contact increases physical and braindevelopment. Studies show that premature that receivecuddling and massages thrive measurably more and do better onvisual baby tests. Children with various medical problems hadbetter clinical outcomes after receiving massage therapy.Perhaps you have seen the famous “Rescuing Hug” (such as athttp://www.daurelia.com/spirit/rescue.htm orhttp://www.snopes.com/glurge/hug.htm), where the physical touchof her baby twin sister was responsible for the very survival ofa premature baby. Let’s talk about talking. The very experienced authority onearly childhood development Dr Burton White gives the followingadvice. Allow your newly mobile child to explore your home.He’ll bring things back to show you and will have a need to befulfilled when doing that. Stop, quickly look and see what thatneed is, and then respond to the need. Dr Burton White says thatthe secret to teaching language, whether it be verbal languageor sign language, is to respond to that need with language andplay on that need. Dr White is the author of “First Three Yearsof Life” and “Raising a Happy Unspoiled Child”, and you can seeand hear him giving this advice in Joseph Garcia’s “Sign withyour Baby” video. And in my house, you can see me having aconversation with a toddler about a wet toilet brush he has justbrought me. How to increase your child’s mathematics ability? Studies haveshown that studying music statistically significantly increaseschildren’s math skills and spatial-temporal reasoning abilities.The question now is why. A “Today’s Parent” article athttp://www.todaysparent.com/education/general/article.jsp?content=20030903_124111_1696&page=1 cites a brain-imaging “MozartEffect” type of study that showed that the same parts of thebrain were active when listening to Mozart as when doing puzzlesand playing chess, suggesting that music is like warm-upexercises for the brain. Another study cited in that articlegoes much further, suggesting that music is more than just acultural artifact; that our brains are actually structured formusic, just like our brains are structured for speech andwalking. Brain patterns were mapped and assigned musical tonesto mark changes in neural activity. When played back, instead ofsounding like a random sequence of notes, it almost sounded likea melody of a recognizable style of music! “No!” – We hear it from those terrible-twos toddlers. Well, LiseEliot in “What’s Going On In There?” presents a study about theeffects of parents saying “No”, “Don’t” and “Stop it” on thedevelopment of their children. Research established thatchildren that heard a larger proportion of this type of negativefeedback had poorer language skills than children whose parentskept their negative responses to a minimum and instead gaveencouraging, positive and dialog-inducing responses. The onlinegames at www.KiddiesGames.com provide a fun model of thispositive pattern of interaction. When the child playing a gamegets something right, the friendly child character on the screensays “That’s right!” or congratulates the player. When the childplaying a game clicks on the wrong thing, the upbeat child onthe screen doesn’t actually say “No” or “Wrong”. Instead, itexplains in the same positive tone what the child playing justdid and what another possible (and correct) answer could havebeen. The feedback is accurate and positively and cheeringlyencouraging. As far as I know, there have been no studies doneon the effects that toddlers saying “No” to their parents haveon those parents... Can you remember all this information next time you’reinteracting with your small child? Let’s summarize it all likethe current Canadian CBS Television campaign slogan – “1)Comfort, 2) play with and 3) teach your child”, in that order.This is how you water your child’s mind, and you’re probablyalready doing it. So follow your instinct, let your child leadthe way to play, go with the flow and enjoy playing with yoursmall child. While the results of recent studies may be news toyou, the recommended actions are just a reminder! About the author:The author, Emma Rath, is the creator of free, fun, educationalonline computer games for and preschoolers athttp://www.KiddiesGames.com. These games encourage caregivers tocuddle their children on their lap while participating in gamesof open-ended exploration that never say “No”, except for onefun game whose serious mission is to undo the instinctive childbehavior of hiding in the case of a house fire.
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