According to this interesting article, we may be concentrating on the wrong things when we try to improve our babies’ and toddlers’ vocabularies. Scientists found that it wasn’t actually TV that lowered their vocabularies or even how often parents talked to children.
It was how often they talked with them.
It’s the interaction, the listening back, that made the difference for these tots, ages 2 to 24 months. Language skills, speech and vocabulary went up the more the tots were talked with.
Of course, improved language skills or not, everybody likes to be listened to. 🙂
This I believe. I was just noticing, with my 14-month old, that I’m often underestimating how much she can understand and although I am often chatty with her and I often interact with her, it is less often that I really take the time to interact *verbally* with her. But the last couple of weeks I have been more careful to do that, and I can almost see the wheels turning when I take the time to say something simple like, “Should I put the shoe on you?” and wait for her to respond. Then she gets this big smile that lights up her face, and I know she has understood, and is really thrilled about it.
Rebecca
Yes! I notice that here, too. Alex is 2 but he’s a late talker. Or rather, he talks but it doesn’t sound like anything we know! He chatters like a really friendly, drunk alien. 🙂 I got so used to thinking of him as not a “talker” that I was tuning out his jabbering. I’ve noticed that I can ask him some pretty sophisticated questions and he’ll answer me in his own way and show that he clearly understands way more than he lets on though.