Building Your Child’s Self-Confidence

• January 10, 2012 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

As parents, we want our children to have confidence but not conceit.  That is, we want our children to monitor the outcomes of their behaviors realistically, to be polite and considerate of others, but retain a sense of self that is positive and assured. I believe the mistake parents often make is thinking that constant praise of a child is the route to self-confidence. It is an easy mistake to make, especially in a society in which so much emphasis is placed on making our children feel loved and building feelings of self-worth.

I, like most new parents, constantly praised my oldest child for everything she did from swinging at the park without falling to reading a stop sign as we drove to preschool. But the problem with that is that excessive praise may create unrealistic expectations for the child when they are in the “real world” where people do not praise them all the time. I did not realize that for my daughter this was creating tremendous pressure to be successful at everything she did. Conversely, some children who hear constant praise at home may feel confused or dejected when others are not as enthusiastic about their feats and develop a fear of failure.

A young client of mine, whose mother worked very hard to build self-confidence in her children by praising them continuously, developed a host of voice problems associated with stress in elementary school.  I have worked with other children who developed a “need” for constant praise that affected their ability to enjoy competition if they could not win.

Since a large component of human brain maturation involves increased self-awareness and improved capacity for self-monitoring of behavior, parents have the opportunity to be instrumental in helping a child develop this advanced skill. By encouraging self-appraisal that is realistic while avoiding being overly judgmental, parents help their child build confidence. 

Instead of constant praise, parents can try to use praise more naturally to encourage behaviors the parent believes are worthwhile or beneficial. Statements like, “I like the way you shared your toys today” or “You seemed to be having a lot of fun on the climber, do you feel like you are getting better at that?” may help a child learn to value effort and progress as well as to self-evaluate.

It is important to remind ourselves that to adequately develop the ability to monitor our behavior we have to understand mistakes as well as achievements. It is very difficult for a parent to watch a child fail at something, but as adults most of us are well aware that some of the best lessons we had as we grew up came from our failures, as rough as they may have been at the time.

Building your child’s self-esteem ultimately will help them succeed in endeavors both in school and in life.  One of the most important jobs for parents is to help your child successfully through life’s challenges and successes, help them feel good about themselves along the way, and learn to accept mistakes as an opportunity to do better next time. 

Related Reading:

Ok, So You Made A Mistake. But Look What You Learned!

Shaming Some Kids Makes Them Aggressive

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Categories: Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: behavior, early learning, how children learn, play, self-esteem, toddler

Toddler Vocabulary Development: Shopping With Your Child

• October 11, 2011 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

There is no better time to teach your toddler the names of things than when you go out shopping together. The wonderful thing about shopping with your child at a grocery store or clothing store is that he can sit in a shopping cart and interact with you while pointing to all the interesting colors, shapes and objects around him.

Never mind that as he gets closer to two years old he may want you to focus on the candy aisle, or buy everything fuzzy or toy-like.  Use the time to provide names for all the wonderful objects you can see.

 “Wow!  Look at these oranges today—they are so big. They look like big balls don’t they?”

“Hey, those peppers are green and red and yellow, just like Christmas lights—what fun!”

“I see blue shirts and white shirts. What color do you like?”

As you talk about all the shapes and colors, your tot will begin to want you to tell him more names. If he can’t ask you “What is that?” yet, he will start to point to objects he wants you to name or let him touch. (Of course you don’t want him touching fresh food items or knocking down items on shelves, but there is no harm in letting him feel a soft cloth or looking more closely at the funny picture on a box of cereal.)

Here are some tips for making shopping both fun and educational for your child:

• Color, shape, and size: Notice colors, shapes, and sizes as you shop the fruit and vegetable aisle with your toddler. Tell your child that bananas are “long and yellow,” and that oranges, apples, limes and lemons look like “orange, red, green and yellow balls.” At the clothing store, “big pants” may be for “big daddy” and tiny shoes may be “just the right size” for your child.
• Texture and touch:  Clothing stores are all about touch. PJ’s are usually “soft,” and raincoats are “smooth and stiff,” while some coats may be “furry.” Your child will love feeling all the different textures.
• Questions: Note that celery has “leaves” and broccoli has “flowers.” Ask questions, “Why do you think cauliflower is named that way?” Point out that potatoes have “eyes” and wonder aloud, “Why do they have so many and we have only two?”
• My shopping cart: Some grocery stores have begun offering small grocery carts for young children to push around. You may want to wait until your tot is two or a little older, but it can be fun to let him choose apples, oranges or boxed cereals and push them in his own cart. At home you can use empty boxes to “play store” on a rainy day.

You might hear yourself saying, “not today” or “not now” as your child wants you to add everything to your basket (or his), but giving him the opportunity to explore the world around him is a valuable experience for both of you.  You get to cross a few items off your to-do list, while your toddler works on vocabulary development through conversation and play, with his favorite person—you.

Related Reading:

The Magical Combination of Love and Limits: Tips for Teaching Positive Behavior

Story Strategies for Building the Best Bedtimes

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Categories: Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: brain development, early learning, how children learn, language learning, learning through play, oral language skills, play, toddler, vocabulary

Connecting the Dots Between Infant Temperament and Future Success

• August 18, 2011 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

What factors will ultimately determine a child’s ability to succeed in life? While measures like socioeconomic status might allow a child to start off on the right foot, current research is delving into the nature of temperament and how that affects a person’s ability to successfully navigate life’s many challenges.   If temperament is pre-determined, there’s not much a parent can do, but if nurture plays a role, then how can parents help their child have the best quality of life?

While temperament has long been thought of as something innate, recent research has demonstrated that only some aspects are genetic, while others are environmental.

On the genetic side, as any parent will agree, much of an individual’s personality manifests very early on in the infant’s life. Parents with more than one child often note that one of their children seems easygoing from day one, but another child is demanding. One child may be outgoing and social, while their sibling may be more shy or withdrawn.

As we consider how these seemingly innate traits develop, we cannot ignore the fact that the environment – from parental attention to nutrition – exerts a strong influence on a child’s personality development. Current research tells us that a pregnant mother’s iron levels can affect the disposition of her child. Emerging data gleaned from animal research indicates that the quality of maternal parenting styles, such as the way a mother nurses her infants or the amount of maternal grooming, affects the temperament of her offspring.

An interesting question arises: How do these early manifestations play out as the child matures? For example, will an infant who is able to self-calm herself in stressful situations by turning away from aversive stimuli or sucking her thumb, for example, continue to exhibit self-regulatory behaviors as she gets older?

Considering the interplay between innate versus cultivated aspects of temperament, what actions can a parent take to affect the development of a child’s personality to give that child the best chance at personal satisfaction, academic achievement and successful relationships later in life? As the above research – and our own parental gut instincts – suggest, we can set them up by providing:

• Excellent nutrition
• Logical, predictable rules for living with others
• Optimal environments and schedules for sleep
• Lots of interactive play with family and friends
• Less screen time
• Lots and lots of parental love and affection

 

With parents providing these positive factors for their children, every child – from shy to outgoing, from tense to easygoing – will have the best chance at developing a balanced temperament as they mature.

For further study, read: Child Temperament and Parenting, by Samuel Putnam (University of Oregon), Ann Sanson (University of Melbourne), Mary Rothbart (University of Oregon). 

References:

Feder, A; Nestler, EJ; Charney, DS.  Psychobiology and molecular genetics of resilience.  Nature Reviews  Neuroscience 10 (2009) 446 – 457

Related Reading:

Building a Foundation for School Readiness for Low Income Children

The Magical Combination of Love and Limits: Tips for Teaching Positive Behavior

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Categories: Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: academic success, behavior, brain development, cognitive skills, decision making, early learning, how children learn, infant brain, Innate abilities, learning environment, learning through play, play

Ben’s Story: Intensive Intervention Helps a Young Boy on the Autism Spectrum Succeed

• July 14, 2011 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

Ben was just over two when his mother brought him to my office for a speech and language evaluation. She was a speech pathologist herself and knew he was late to start talking. She had seen another speech language professional before me but wanted a second opinion; that professional had told her she thought Ben might be developmentally delayed.

Both mom and I sat on the floor with a few toys, a car and a truck, trying to entice Ben to play with us. Ben ran around the room, very anxious, probably because of the unfamiliar environment and a new stranger, me, to contend with. He threw the car against the wall and began to cry uncontrollably. I suggested that I leave the room for a few minutes to let Ben settle down and acclimate to the surroundings with his mother. Waiting outside I could hear her attempts to calm him down being frustrated by Ben's increasing agitation.

Finally I reentered the room and mom told me sometimes Ben would settle down in new places if he could have some place to hide for awhile. I opened the door to my materials closet and in he ran, slamming the door behind him. While Ben was "hiding" I asked mom to recount his history. I had heard very similar stories many times before. Ben was a first child, a beautiful responsive baby. He began smiling when a few weeks old and sat and crawled by six months. But sometime around his first birthday he began to change. He resisted being held, threw frequent temper tantrums, and his early first words disappeared. He had several ear infections so mom and his pediatrician thought these might account for his delayed speech so he had an operation at 20 months to place tubes in his ears to reduce the fluid in his middle ear.  But when he still wasn't talking by his second birthday mom began to worry. She also noticed he had started rocking and biting his right hand when he became frustrated and screamed if she tried to take him shopping with her.

He loved riding in the car in his car seat but the second she unstrapped him and he recognized and unfamiliar locale, his back arched and he would thrash and yell. One day, she recounted, a woman who had apparently overseen such a display in the store parking lot, came over to her and told her she needed some parenting lessons. Devastated, Ben's mom said she called her pediatrician who recommended a local social worker who specialized in helping parents deal with problem toddlers. It was the social worker who recommended mom bring Ben to me.

Ben eventually emerged from hiding after I enticed him with his favorite toy from home,  Thomas the Tank Engine. He sat in the floor staring at the toy train car and quietly spun the wheels for several minutes. Mom and I sat silently because if either of us spoke Ben would cover his ears and start rocking.

I enrolled Ben in speech therapy sessions three times a week and recommended that he also receive Occupational Therapy to provide sensory integration therapy to help Ben learn ways to calm himself. After about six months of therapy Ben was talking some but most of his speech was repetitive. "Teeze an kako" was one of his favorite repeated phrases as a request for cheese and crackers that we used in therapy to reinforce his good behavior. Mom said she had stopped trying to take Ben out to dinner or to the store because everyone stared at him, and she felt, blamed her as a bad mother when he yelled or threw things.

By three and one -half Ben was very hyperactive, not yet potty trained, and walked on his toes with his hands flapping in the air. He was speaking in short sentences but his speech was still repetitive and sing-song like. A typical phrase was, "You Ben friend? You Ben Friend?" and, "Ben want Tom Tom! Ben want Tom Tom!"  At this time Ben was diagnosed with autism by a well regarded psychologist in the area.

For many years mom rejected the autism diagnosis. She and her physician husband felt Ben was very bright and that his behaviors and speech problems masked his other strengths. For example, by four years of age Ben had memorized many nursery songs, word for word.  By five Ben could name all the major dinosaurs and tell you the era in which they lived and whether they were plant or animal eaters. But Ben's parents were crushed when the expensive private school they enrolled him in for kindergarten rejected him for first grade.

By the time Ben was seven his parents had invested thousands of dollars in private therapies, private schools, parent counseling, and ABA (applied behavioral analysis) interventions. Ben's mother had hired several different daytime babysitters to help her when a new baby girl arrived, but all would quit after a few months because Ben was so difficult to manage. They had tried ADHD medications which helped calm Ben down during the day but then he could not sleep at night, so either mom or dad ended up, night after sleepless night, trying to supervise Ben as he ran around the house at two a.m.

I have worked with many children like Ben and their parents. These children are dear and very smart in many ways. Yet these children are often locked in a mental prison that keeps them in a perpetual internal turmoil when they are young. As they age and receive therapy they usually emerge, finding solace and relief in their passionate interests. But their unique interests and strengths are rarely as comforting for the parents who see their child stop being invited to birthday parties and play-dates. Parents watch with constant anguish as other adults stare as their child rocks, spins, or obsessively recites favorite poems or perhaps counts windows or red shirts, on planes, in restaurants, at the park.  As Ben's mother explained, "If Ben had a visual sign of impairment others would show compassion, I'm sure. But he looks normal, just acts oddly, so I know people think I did something wrong as a mother."

As we learn more about Autism Spectrum Disorders, we are able to identify signs earlier, and our therapy can begin sooner and have more profound effects. Ben (which is not his real name), I am happy to say, was one of an early group of children to go through an experimental computerized language program out of Rutgers University in 1996, shortly after his seventh birthday which is now available to parents as part of the BrainPro Autism service from Scientific Learning. The first change Ben’s mother and I noticed after he completed six weeks of the program was that Ben began speaking in full sentences and started to initiate conversations. One day shortly after the program ended, he told me that his sister had “opened his lose tooth,” meaning that she had knocked out a wobbly baby tooth.  His intonational contour also changed dramatically, from being rather stereotyped to emotional and natural. Within a month or so he began relaying other stories about home and for the first time started enjoying games that involved pretending. On a standardized language test administered before and after the program, he had gained almost two years growth in receptive language skills. Some of the growth on the test appeared to be attributable as much to his ability to pay attention to test questions as well as new language skills he had acquired from the language tasks within the program.

A few years ago Ben’s mother informed me that he attended a junior college program in computer technology and, as of my last communication with her, was working as a computer technician for a local computer retail outlet.  He lived at home then but had friends at work and a hobby, not surprisingly, of building dinosaur models. Mom said, Ben “seems happy now" and his parents did as well. They were encouraged by his job, circle of friends, and hobby. With the years of anguish they were trying to help other parents cope with the fears and pain that surround an autism diagnosis in the early years, but inform on the hope emanating from new research on early identification and new technological intensive interventions that can supplement therapies.

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Categories: Brain Fitness, Family Focus, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning

Tags: attention, auditory processing, autism, cognitive skills, emotions in learning, health and well being, intervention, learning disabilities, oral language skills, phonemic awareness, self-esteem

Left vs. Right: What Your Brain Hemispheres Are Really Up To

• July 12, 2011 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

In the 1980’s, brain researchers viewed the two sides of the brain as dichotomously opposed: the right hemisphere was seen as a gestalt processor, good at “seeing the big picture,” while the left hemisphere was attributed with detail processing skills. Other views at that time attributed the left hemisphere with being more logical and analytical while the right hemisphere was considered more intuitive.^[i]

Some went so far as asserting that men and women exhibited different right vs. left preferences: men were attributed with stronger left hemisphere skills and women better right hemisphere skills. Although this male-female distinction was never empirically verified through research, the somewhat “pop-psychology” view that the right hemisphere is important for skills like music and art, predominated. In fact, there were books written instructing individuals on how to “draw with the right hemisphere” or how to “teach to the right hemisphere”.^[ii]

It now appears that some of these notions need to be revised.  A current view is that, for the majority of us, the right hemisphere is a pattern recognizer that may develop before the left. From this perspective, the right hemisphere enables a child to attend to and appreciate the gist of a sensory experience within each cognitive domain. For example, in acquisition of mathematical concepts, the right hemisphere may enable a young child to appreciate quantities in terms of more vs. less prior to assigning numerical values to the quantities (which would involve left hemisphere skills). There is research demonstrating that babies can discern a group of dots in terms of general aspects of quantity.^[iii]

Patricia Kuhl at University of Washington in Seattle has shown that typically developing infants show an interest in human voices over other environmental sounds like a car horn or doorbell, and direct their attention to human voice when it conveys information that is interesting.^[iv] Ultimately this may lead to an understanding of how the melody of a voice is used to convey a person’s intent.  In other words, recent research suggests that the right hemisphere may be best at processing patterns like voice contour, facial expression, aspects of size and quantity, gestalt aspects of the world which, from a developmental perspective, represent the way children begin to learn about cognitive areas like music, art, mathematics or language.

Considering the cognitive domain of music, for example, the right hemisphere appears to have a fundamental preference for recognizing melody, which allows a young infant to be interested in and ultimately reproduce early nursery songs. In the realm of visual processing, the right hemisphere has been shown to be better at perceiving the form or outline of an object than the details contained within the object.^[v]. And, similarly, although many people regard the left hemisphere as dominant for language, newer research has shown that the right hemisphere is superior at processing information like vocal inflection (prosody), and perhaps going directly from word to meaning, especially in very familiar phrases like idiomatic expressions (eg., “it is raining cats and dogs”) while the left hemisphere is more important for processing aspects of language that depend on analyzing the specific sequence of the sounds and words which are essential for understanding grammatical form of language and perceiving internal details of words.^[vi]

Several neuroscientists have accordingly revised and expanded the early right-left dichotomy to see the right hemisphere as preferential in processing form, structure, and perhaps, direct links to emotion,^[vii]  while the left hemisphere handles complex, rapidly changing stimuli, in which discerning the specific sequential order is critical to perception (as in speech perception, for example, where one must discern and order very rapidly changing complex acoustic events very quickly.)^[viii]

Another revision to the older view of right versus left hemisphere complements the view that the right hemisphere is preferential for pattern analysis, and comes from developmental neuroscience which has reported research that supports the contention that for most cognitive skills the right hemisphere matures before the left.^[ix] This certainly seems to the case when one looks at the early stages of neuronal development and migration in the fetal brain,^[x] and also the building of early axonal superhighways, as well as the research on myelination.^[xi] In fact, it may be that when this typical right to left maturation does not occur, developmental neurological abnormalities result. For example, there is some early research evidence that Autism Spectrum Disorders may represent one example of developmental deviations in this typical right-to-left developmental hierarchy.^[xii]

Although it may seem somewhat of a stretch from the early research in this area, one can observe how this organization might be reflected in early childhood development in the stages children pass through in the gradual mastery of skills. For example, when a child first begins to enjoy music, the observant adult notices that the child moves his or her whole body to the musical rhythm. For nursery songs, like “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” the child often begins by humming the melodies. In both cases, this may represent right hemisphere processing.

In most cases, it will be a few years before the child will be able to read musical symbols which would presumably involve more left hemisphere skill. We do have research that shows that when three month old babies are first listening to oral language, the right hemisphere is much more active than the left.^[xiii] Patricia Kuhl has shown that mothers instinctively seem to match their speech to babies’ early developing perceptual preferences by exaggerating melodic inflection with young babies, probably reflecting their intuitive knowledge that they need to exaggerate the language cues (intonational contour and vocal inflection) that the right hemisphere seems to process preferentially while deemphasizing the production of the speech sounds themselves (left hemisphere preferences).^[xiv]
 

[i] Deutsch, Georg and Sally P. Springer. Left Brain, Right Brain: Perspectives From Cognitive Neuroscience . W.H. Feeman and Company/Worth Publishers. 2001.
[ii] Edwards, Betty. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Penguin Putnam Press. 1999.
[iii] Xu, Fei et al. (2005) Number sense in human infants. Developmental Science. Vol. 8. 2005.
[iv] Kuhl, Patricia. Early Language Acquisition: Cracking the Speech Code. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. Vol 5. 2005.
[v] Devinsky, Orrin and Mark D’Esposito. Neurology of Cognitive and Behavioral Disorders. Oxford University Press. 2004.
[vi] Hickok, Gregory and David Poeppel. The Cortical Organization of Speech Processing. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. 2007.
[vii]Cahill, L. et al. Sex-Related Hemispheric Lateralization of Amygdala Function in Emotionally Influenced Memory: An fMRI Investigation. Learning and Memory. Vol. 11: 261-266. 2004
[viii] Tallal, Paula. Improving Language and Liteacy is a Matter of Time. Nature Reviews Neuroscience Vol. 5. 2004.
[ix] Huttenlocher, Peter. Morphometric Study of Human Cerebral Cortex Development. Neuropsychologia. Vol. 28. 1990.
[x] Galaburda, Albert et al. From Genes to Behavior in Developmental Dyslexia. Nature Neuroscience  Vol 9. 2006.
[xi] Herbert, Martha et al. Brain Asymmetries in Autism and Developmental Language Disorder: A Nested Whole-Brain Analysis. Brain: A Journal of Neurology.2004.
[xii] Herbert, Martha et al. Ibid.
[xiii] Hickock, Gregory and David Poeppel. Ibid.
[xiv] Kuhl, Patricia. Ibid.

Related Reading:

A Gymnast, a Cursor and a Monkey Named Aurora

7 Amazing Discoveries from Brain Research

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Categories: Brain Research, Reading & Learning

Tags: auditory processing, brain development, cognitive skills, infant brain, Innate abilities, language learning, memory, musical training, phonemic awareness

The Magical Combination of Love and Limits: Tips for Teaching Positive Behavior

• June 9, 2011 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

Young children have so much to learn about life.  One crucial skill they work very hard at learning is how to get what they want or need in a positive way. 

Toddlers do not have very much control and for the most part cannot “think out” appropriate ways to handle frustration or anger. Your little one year old will act impulsively when he is angry with you or other children and may use inappropriate or unacceptable behaviors in response. This often becomes even more exaggerated when your child is tired. The calm, consistent and measured way that you and other caregivers respond to negative behaviors will shape your child’s ability to gradually develop self-control and learn appropriate ways to handle stressful social situations.  

Hitting and biting, as well as pushing, throwing toys, books, sand or mud, and yelling or temper outbursts continue to be treated as unacceptable behaviors you want to handle by enforcing time-outs immediately after the event occurs. Waiting even a few minutes to enforce a time-out makes it difficult for a toddler to understand what the time-out is for. Once your child has calmed down you can bring her back into the situation she was removed from. As she plays appropriately you can provide a little praise to help her understand the difference between positive behaviors and her prior unacceptable behavior.

By 18-20 months of age, begin to teach your toddler the word “sorry” so that if she does show an unacceptable behavior toward another child or an adult, she learns to pair an apology to the offended person with the behavior.  This provides a verbal scaffold with the action so that the child is building language to help his learning.  

You may often find that because of your fatigue and frustration with a young child who does not yet have very much self control you become tempted to yell or spank your child. You are human just as is your child and these are natural tendencies.  But, try to avoid yelling at your child or resorting to slaps, shaking or spanking in response to a negative behavior. By using a calm but firm voice with your toddler and the consistent response of moving your child to a quiet area removed from the current situation (time-out) you will model the kind behavior you are trying to instill in your child and give him, and yourself, time to calm down.

If your toddler seems to show temper outbursts very frequently or does not respond to timeouts and the undesirable behaviors continue, consult your physician to rule out physical problems that might be causing pain or discomfort. If those do not seem likely or have been ruled out, you may want to consult with a behavior specialist. These professionals can help you develop consistent, constructive approaches for managing the behavior of your toddler. A few sessions with a good child behavior specialist could save you time and money in the future if the negative behaviors persist or increase during the toddler years.

As your child progresses through the first year, continue to set limits for special types of play activity and behaviors that might be appropriate in some situations but not in others. For example, a child needs to have plenty of exercise but there are situations where your child may have to sit still. A dentist’s chair, the first haircut, airplane take-offs and landings are situations where your child needs to limit physical activity. Similarly, restaurants and other public places provide excellent opportunities to teach your child polite behavior and consideration of others. There are situations where it is acceptable to play with toys and others where it might not be, like a church service or solemn occasion, for example.

Setting limits teaches your toddler to be considerate and thoughtful of others and helps build social skills.  When your toddler learns how to use constructive behaviors to reach her goals, she will feel happier and more in control, and so will you.

Related Reading:

Traveling with a Toddler

Early Learning Success Leads to a Leg Up in Life

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Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!

Categories: Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: behavior, early learning, how children learn, play, self-esteem, toddler

Limiting Young Children’s Screen Time for Long-Term Health

• June 1, 2011 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

Technology, in the form of videos, television, computers, tablets, and video games increasingly dominates our entertainment time.  In the United States, there are videos and other technology products available for children as young as a few months old. For many, as soon as babies have the coordination to sit up by themselves, we have them looking to screens for entertainment. The success of these videos geared towards babies and toddlers speaks to our growing parental dependence upon screens to entertain our children.

The problem is that, while this media does entertain our children and can even be educational, too much can create serious, lasting issues. According to the Mayo Clinic, too much screen time can lead to obesity, irregular sleep, behavioral problems, reduced play time (obviously), and other problems. (See Children and TV: Limiting your child's screen time, Mayo Clinic.)

So, living in this modern, media-addicted world, what are some ways to that we can mediate appropriate access to technology?

 

1. Limit time. Pediatricians recommend that toddlers continue to limit TV time and exposure to baby videos.  A little time each day (1/2 hour to an hour), especially before dinner, when your child may become cranky or your need to do chores or prepare the meal, will probably not be detrimental.
2. Choose educational content. Try to find age appropriate educational programming on PBS. Public broadcast companies work very hard with child development experts to make certain their content is appropriate and beneficial for young audiences.
3. Avoid highly commercial programming. This is a tough one, but the commercials on network television can “glorify” toys that your child really does not need, and create expectations around “buying” new toys that are neither necessary nor constructive for your child. As your child gets older and plays with other children, which you do want to encourage, he will probably be exposed to plenty of commercial television. This is your chance to keep it to a minimum, at least in these formative young years. 
4. Unplug your toddler to free their creativity. Try to avoid toddler computers and electronic books for children this age. A one to two year old needs to master walking, running and climbing as well as speech and language. Electronic books, toys and games do so much on their own that they leave little opportunity for your child to “invent” new ways to play with them or new things to do.

In the grander scheme, it comes down to a question of time. Every minute of childhood spent in front of a screen is a minute not spent doing other things. Imagine what those “other things” could be: playing outside; riding a bike; building a castle out of rocks and twigs; reading a book; creating a piece of art.

The more mindfully we can help our children manage their time when it comes to screens and how that balances with their other activities, the better off they will be in the long run.

Related Reading:

Fun Science Experiments for Classroom or Home

Fit Bodies Make Fit Brains: Physical Exercise and Brain Cells

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Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!

Categories: Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: behavior, exercise, health and well being, learning through play, play, student growth, technology in education, toddler

Sensory-Motor Development and Learning in Children

• April 28, 2011 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

Spring is always a busy time of year for our private providers who are ramping up to serve Scientific Learning adaptive learning software to more children and their families over the summer months.  So, we like to bring our private providers together with some of our most inspiring speakers at the annual Visionary Conference for a weekend full of engaged learning. 

This year's Visionary Conference was so jam packed with great content, I've been chomping at the bit to share some of it with the rest of you.  One presentation that received rave feedback was by Cheryl Chia of BrainFit Studio, one of our international VARs from Singapore. She presented on sensory-motor development and learning in children. BrainFit Studio is located in Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Indonesia.

Cheryl’s team has developed programs for children to improve sensory-motor abilities and have a positive impact on their learning abilities and academic performance. She focuses on three aspects of brain fitness. The first two, Sensory-Motor and Visual Brain Fitness, she calls the “pillars” of her intervention: SMART Moves and SMART Vision. SMARTMoves, the Sensory-Motor pillar emphasizes proprioception ( the automatic awareness of the positions of our arms and legs), tactile sensation, and the vestibular system (balance and posture). SMART vision, the Visual Brain Fitness pillar, includes visual spatial perception, and visual memory—skills that are essential for handwriting and courses with spatial concepts, like geometry. Visual ability is also important for team sports and social skills. 

The third pillar is Computer-Assisted Brain Fitness Training that includes the Fast ForWord® family of products.

Cheryl shared her assessment protocol, a “cognitive map” prepared for each child that focuses on the three pillars. The cognitive map is used for determining which pillars to emphasize for each child.

View the full presentation to see video of the types of activities the children participate in under each BrainFit pillar and the outcome data. 

I hope you find it as compelling as I did!

Related Reading:

How Learning to Read Improves Brain Function

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Categories: Brain Fitness, Education Trends, Fast ForWord

Tags: accelerate learning, brain development, brain training, cognitive skills, how children learn, Scientific Learning events, technology in education

How Learning to Read Improves Brain Function

• March 16, 2011 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

Did you know that school is not just about learning new information; it is also about improving brain function?  Of course the content learned in coursework like social studies, science, geography and mathematics is very important. But, it turns out that learning to read does far more than impart a skill.  Recent research by the neuroscientist Stanislaus Dehaene indicates that learning to read actually improves the way the brain functions in several critical ways.
 
Dr. Dehaene and his colleagues compared the brain function of Brazilian and Portuguese adults who can read with those who had never learned to read. He reported the results in the journal Science in December. In the study the scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure brain function of adults while they responded to oral language, written language, and visual tasks. The adults were matched for socio-economic status (SES) so as not to bias the results by educational or income level. Thirty-one of the adults had been literate from childhood, twenty-two had learned to read as adults, and ten had never learned to read (were illiterate). What they found was that regions of the brain that all of us use to process visual information were enhanced among the adults who were readers; both those who had read from childhood and those who learned to read as adults. They also found that listening skills were better among both groups of readers than among the adults who did not read. The specific listening skill that was enhanced in readers involved the ability to perceive speech sounds more accurately.  
 
This research has important implications for those of us interested in education. It helps us to understand the importance of reading in the educational process, of course. But, perhaps even more important, it helps to explain why children who struggle to read fall so far behind in other school subjects as well. If, as Dehaene’s research suggests, the ability to read helps build parts of the brain that are essential for listening and observing, students who struggle to read may also have problems learning from auditory classroom instruction as well.  Thus they become hampered in three ways – they cannot learn to read, so will not be able to read to learn, and may struggle just as much with other forms of instruction.  
                                                                                       
Another issue is why children struggle to read in the first place. Dehaene’s research with adults controlled for this possible variable by controlling for socio-economic status and including adults who did not learn to read until they were adults. But in the United States as in other countries where education is mandatory for every child, there is a question as to why some children find learning to read so difficult.  Two new studies appear to shed light on that issue and seem related to Dehaene’s research. Bart Boets and his colleagues at the University of Leuven in Belgium have research that is to be published in the journal Research in Developmental Disabilities, that indicates a sort of double-whammy – children who in kindergarten have trouble with auditory perception, are likely to be diagnosed with dyslexia by grade 3.

Cassandra  Billiet  and Terri Bellis have also published research on the relationship between auditory perception and dyslexia in the Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research in February 2011 Both research studies suggest that problems with processing of rapid sound changes, like those that occur in speech,  may interfere with learning to read in the first place. When considered in light of Dehaene’s research, children who struggle to learn to read likely end up at a further disadvantage as school progresses  because auditory skills do not continue to develop which, in turn, will affect all classroom learning.
 
Most of us would agree that learning to read is one of the most important tasks a child undertakes when they enter school. This new research helps us to understand that reading depends on listening skills in the first place and then builds them as reading improves. The science described in this study is the same science upon which Scientific Learning’s Fast ForWord software is built, there is strong evidence of its validity, from a variety of schools/districts and independent research labs.  Reading builds brain functions essential for listening and learning:  good readers become good listeners become good students. Helping students as early as possible with the underlying cognitive skills that enable reading will have academic benefits for years to come.

 

References

Billiets, C and Bellis, T. (2011) The Relationship Between Brainstem Temporal Processing and Performance on Tests of Central Auditory Function in Children With Reading Disorders. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research Vol.54 228-242

Boets, B. et al (In Press) Preschool impairments in auditory processing and speech perception uniquely predict future reading problems. Research in Developmental Disabilities

Dehaene, S, et al.(2010)How Learning to Read Changes the Cortical Networks for Vision and Language. Science 330, 1359

 

Related Reading:

Fit Bodies Make Fit Brains: Physical Exercise and Brain Cells

Musical Training and Cognitive Abilities

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Categories: Brain Research, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning

Tags: brain training, child reading development, cognitive skills, fMRI, how children learn, learning to read, student reading growth

Goodnight Room: Story Strategies for Building the Best Bedtimes

• March 8, 2011 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

Remember Good Night Moon by Margaret Wise Brown? When I think of this book, I think about how the bunny is snuggled into bed, toys put a way, moon peeking in through the window, and everyone and everything is whispering “good night.” I’ve noted that the “old lady whispering hush” is rocking in her chair far across the room, and the book The Runaway Bunny sits on the bedside table; story time has ended for this little bunny and now it’s time for sleep.

Everything is perfect and quiet. What might the perfect story time have looked like in that “good night room” 15 minutes before the book opens? First of all, the old lady would have been sitting much closer, maybe on the edge of the bed. And her soft, clear voice would be helping that little bunny not only relax, but learn to love books as well as solidify the rudiments of language.

Whenever possible, make a consistent habit of 15-30 minutes each evening to tell or read stories before bed. Just as it did for your child at a year of age, for your tot it will serve two purposes: quiet him down and prepare him for sleep, as well as introduce the repetition of words and sentence forms that build the school-important left hemisphere. As your two-year old begins to develop a love of specific books or stories, you will have a wealth of material to settle her down on car and plane trips where sitting still for long periods is mandatory.

And remember, a bedroom is usually the quietest room in a home. All the soft materials (the bedding, window coverings, rugs, and even “goodnight socks and bears”) actually absorb what hearing specialists call ambient noise, rendering your speech clearer and easier to perceive.  Reading in this quiet room helps your child learn to discriminate the subtle differences in speech sounds. As a bonus, if you read or tell stories to your tot in the bedroom, where you will be sitting right next to him, you will be providing the best speech signal available.  The easy rule I use to describe this is, “An arms span, from mouth to ear, makes sure all bunnies’ hearing is clear.”

It probably doesn’t matter what stories you tell or read. It is the natural clarity of the speech signal that occurs in a ”goodnight room,” the repetition that results from your child’s own preference for certain stories, and the closeness and attention that the child receives from the most important people in her life that make this short period of the day so important to your child. And, it goes without saying that the benefit to you will be that after this small investment of time, you will have some time to yourself to relax, read, enjoy a favorite television show, or just interact with your spouse.

Related Reading:

Creating Reading Intention to Improve Reading Comprehension Skills in Students

Sleep: An Essential Ingredient for Memory Function

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Categories: Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: child reading development, language learning, learning environment, learning to read, phonemic awareness, sleep, toddler