NEW COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY

Over the last 6 months, comms has been a big a part of the first year foundations. From talking on day one, to pushing awkward moments aside – it’s all practice for the next 3-6 months.

Below are five specific ways to adjust how you interact due to how the baby is changing.

Note: The only thing in our control is how we plan for success. All kids take different paths to development. It may be hard to find the time for these things at times, but the great part is that it’s a game of averages. Find ways to go All-In on those really engaged moments, and then look for ways to drop development fun into routines that already exist…. meals, baths, wakeup time, bed, clothing and diaper changes, etc.

WORD SEGMENTATION

It is believed that kids learn language more effectively through something called segmentation. This is how the meaning of individual works is differentiated from the flow or grammar of a string of words.

Imagine if you heard someone speaking Turkish, Arabic, or Danish conversationally. You would likely have a hard time knowing when a word started or stopped. It would sound like a continuous up and down of sound. Pauses might only indicate full sentences. Well – that’s similar to how kiddo hears you. Language researchers believe that the continuous flow of sounds when someone is speaking is how we learn grammar and sentence structure, but it’s not as effective for learning specific words. When speaking or teaching words… like “nose” or “Lion” or “Car” – try to segment it out of the sentence and emphasize the individual word. “Look! A Car {pause} Ccccaaaaaaarrrrr”. This repeating, slowing, and emphasizing a particular word is what helps separate word meaning from sentence structure (tho both are needed to learn language).

Try this when you read or show them body parts or pictures. Slow down the speech and repeat it. The key concept is that they are learning patterns from the flow of how you speak naturally, but they learn word meaning by having that word segmented out.

SHAPE EMPHASIS

Shapes are thought to be a foundational concept in the human learning system and how the brain processes perceptual information. This comes from brain imaging research. The brain looks to shapes first, before attributes like color, material, texture, or other descriptors (big/small) or meanings. This covers basic shapes as well as the shapes that differentiate a cat from a dog. Or… as in the image below – a chair is a chair but b, d, p, q are all different (a topic for another day), but a good example of how the brain relies on shape for meaning.

Natural speech patterns will cover descriptive concepts, so try to emphasize and highlight shapes from time to time when teaching/learning names of things/objects.

Example:
Round tire, or a Circular tire… not just a tire or a black tire or rubber tire. If in a picture book, “The tire {pause, pointing} is a circle {pause} circle {repeated while drawing the shape with finger}. This could also be in pointing out the shape of a dog or a cat in terms of outline or shape of ears or tail, etc.

Work in shape emphasis where you can.

NARRATION

As baby begins to become more capable of more things physically, try to add in some passive narration when it makes sense. Think of yourself as a radio sportscasting calling the plays of the game. “You are grabbing the toy with your left hand”, “left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot”, “daddy is cleaning your spit up from his shirt”. This kind of narration likely helps baby understand how movements and interactions with the world are connected with words/sounds. And just like a sportscaster or radio personality – play with the variety of the narration – fast, slow, silly voices, emotionality.

ACTIONS AND LOCATIONS

Here is a more specific form of Narration – connecting actions to words through the use of verbs and location descriptions.

Example:
“Daddy RAISES his arm” while you raise your arm to connect word (verb) to the action.
“Mommy PUTS the bowl ON the counter” as a description of action and location.
“You are PUTTING the spoon IN your mouth” as another action/location description.

THE POWER OF SOUND

As kiddo starts to babble more, their brains will start to wire the feedback from these experiences – how muscles in the throat and mouth form a sound – the basis for speech! These sounds also help to convey all sorts of meaning including emotion state if you tune your ear for it (might be a little bit of “back to the drawing board” to decipher their growing ability to convey meaning, intent, and needs).

Sound, in general, is also powerful to connect from afar. We can’t always have physical contact with a child but science has shown that the “sounds” from parents can have a soothing and connective effect for a child, even at a significant distance. You may not always be right there physically, but they know you are close because sound and language can be used as a non-contact connector. Explore the way that you can use sound to engage, from rustling pots and pans, to claps and snaps, to a shush or hum, or a reassurance from the other room.

KEEP DOING THESE THINGS

Read Regularly: Reading to baby is a great way to expose them to new words, sounds, story structures, and language patterns. Choose books with simple, repetitive text and colorful pictures that your child can look at and point to. More on this soon.

Encourage the Babble: Babbling is an important step in the development of speech and language skills. Encourage baby to babble by imitating the sounds they make. Get excited when they do something cool. Work in those funny faces and expressions.

Pepper the Play with Language: Playtime is an excellent opportunity to get language skill reps in. Play simple games that involve pointing, naming, and describing objects, such as “Where’s the ball?” or “Show me the teddy bear”. Narrate, express location, point out contrast, identify actions!

Use Gestures: Use gestures when you talk to your child to help them understand the meaning of your words. Waving, clapping, and pointing all emerge naturally in kids, but you can make these more rich and dynamic by exploring them with baby.

In closing – while these things may seem tedious at times, they go a LONG way in helping the brain develop in the progression that scientists currently think it develops. It’s helpful to remember that it’s all about averages – because we all have times where priorities in our own lives may come above super dad best practices with kiddo.

FD27 was meant to be fairly straightforward. Communication, talking, language are all important parts of how humans interact with each other and the world, and more importantly – build relationships. The ability to understand and use language takes time and communication is a hard earned skill. The WHY do it for those reasons – to plan for success, regardless of their plans for development.

A Slightly Deeper Look at Segmentation

For verbal communications, the brain is incredible. Humans take audio input that typically has very little to no segmentation (it’s more of an utterance) and decodes it to add in the segmentation and create meaningful units of information – such as words, sentences, or topics/themes. Literacy (reading and writing), however, is designed around segmentation… each word or meaningful unit of information has spacing and punctuation to assist this.

Example:
Written word…

“The baby had a massive blowout in the car seat and now comes the joy of cleaning said car seat”

Spoken would look like this…

“Thebabyhadamassiveblowoutinthecarseat… andnowcomesthejoy… ofcleaningsaidcarseat”

Below is the waveform of this spoken audio – showing almost no segments.

Yet, your brain hears it as if you read it. The brain creates the segments. This is something babies have to learn. Segmentation of spoken word by the speaker makes this a little easier for the learner. And now you know… and…