April 7, 2014

  

Nurture Shock continues to give and give.

 

Chapter ten is devoted to speech and language development. 

 

For years we have seen an increase in baby videos and music geared toward making an Einstein out of every kid on the block. Parents have spent hundreds of dollars trying to achieve this goal.

 

Dr . Andrew Meltzoff wanted to quantify the benefit of videos like the Baby Einstein series in regards to childhood language development. What they found was alarming. The more time a child spent watching these types of videos the worse their vocabulary growth would be. This seems backward until Dr. Patricia Kuhl teased out the reasoning behind the results.

 

She discovered that "babies' brains do not learn to recognize foreign phonemes off of video or audiotapes - at all". On the other hand they do learn from a live human speaking to them. The viewing of videotapes without a human face speaking had virtually no effect on auditory processing and later language development. 

 

If the video viewing event used a human with facial expression and audible speech, then the learning process was enhanced. However, this is not the end of the story. As one would expect, there is no substitute for a live human interaction for learning.

 

Merryman noted this reality in this statement:

 

"The information flow that matters most is in the opposite direction we previously assumed. The central role of the parent is not to push massive amounts of language into the baby's ears; rather, the central role of the parent is to notice what's coming from the baby, and respond accordingly--coming from his mouth, his eyes, and his fingers."

 

As with the nurturing model of positive feedback for stress reduction, we have a similar model here with appropriately timed parental response to a babys' sounds that code for objects enhances the language outcome. 

 

Can an over eager parent cause a problem? See below.

 

Dr. M

 

Can a parent overdue the positive feedback model?

 

Of course! As with any form of learning, a rest period is critical to solidify the newly acquired knowledge into the brain. Intermittent reward systems are proven to have a greater impact on desire then a constant reward pattern. So the over eager parent would do well to give a positive feedback loop in a 20 to 30 minute pattern. 

 

What is object labeling? According to Dr. Jennifer Schwade, this is when a person waits for the attended object to be tracked visually by the child before giving it a verbal label. You don't lead the child's eyes to an object, you watch their tracking and time your response to the period of time when they hover on an object. This sets up the learning pattern of my object just had a name given to it. They can now associate a sound to the object. 

 

Interestingly, if you try and guess at what your child is saying and you get the objects crossed, you slow their learning down. The authors caution parents to not try and guess at the child's words by picking random objects that might sound like their utterances. 

 

Finally, after all of this discussion, if a child is intelligent, he will eventually catch up to his peers despite the parents best efforts to mess it up. Kids who learn speech early often have no advantage by the school years over slower learners. 

 

So there you have it. My take away is simple:

 

1) Let your kids guide the learning

2) Over doing can be as bad as under performing

3) Education is important but desire is equally necessary

4) Be present with your kids, videos are no substitute

5) Intermittent positive feedback is useful

 

My thoughts,

Artichoke dip

1 Teaspoon fresh chopped parsley
1/2 Cup mayonnaise
1/2 Cup plain Greek yogurt 
1 Tablespoon Parmesan cheese
1 Tablespoon white wine 
S and P to taste

Directions:

In a food processor combine thawed artichokes, onion, shallot, garlic and parsley and pulverize. Add remaining ingredients and mix some more. Take all contents and place into baking dish and bake in 350 degrees F for 15-20 minutes.

Serve with vegetable sticks and enjoy. This will be your saturated fat budget for the day. 

Dr. M