Bright from the Start: The Simple, Science-Backed Way to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind from Birth to Age 3
Jill Stamm
Language: English
Pages: 368
ISBN: 159240362X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A cutting-edge handbook for parents from a pioneer in infant brain development
Should you really read to your baby? Can teaching a baby sign language boost IQ? Should you pipe classical music into the nursery? Dr. Stamm translates the latest neuroscience findings into clear explanations and practical suggestions, demonstrating the importance of the simple ways you interact with your child every day. It isn’t the right “edu-tainment” that nurtures an infant’s brain. It is as simple as Attention, Bonding, and Communication, and it’s within every parent’s ability to provide. Practical games and tips for each developmental age group will show you not only what the latest findings are but, more importantly, tell you what to do with them.
Rosewater and Soda Bread: A Novel
bloodstream. This chemical is then taken up into brain tissue, allowing researchers to measure the level of activity in various brain regions. In addition to measuring activity levels, when other types of tracer chemicals are used, researchers can measure blood flow, oxygen usage, and the release and binding of specialized chemicals that are used to communicate between neurons, called neurotransmitters. PET scans help to determine where in the brain specific mental functions take place. Because
University Press. CHAPTER 13 Christie, J., Enz, B. J., & Vukelich, C. (2006). Teaching Language and Literacy: Pre-School through the Elementary Grades (Third Edition). New York: Allyn-Bacon (Addison-Wesley-Longman). DeCasper, A. J. & Fifer, W. P. (1980). Of human bonding: Newborns prefer their mothers’ voices. Science. 208: 1174-1176. In this study, newborns could control whether they heard their mothers’ voices or the voice of another female by sucking in different ways on a
good visual discrimination and focus of attention learn better. Here are some activities that are fun for you and your baby and may help promote the development of a healthy attention system. I want to stress that these activities are for fun and are not predictive of any problem if your child does not seem interested when you play them. If this happens, come back and try them at a later time. Have fun! Following each activity, there are short sections that give you additional information to
from you at just the right times can be especially comforting to your little one. Not All Stress Is Bad Stress Scientists, in From Neurons to Neighborhoods, refer to three basic kinds of stress:• Toxic stress is the strong, frequent, or long-term activation of stress in the body. Poor quality care, a chaotic home life, or repeated threats to survival are the serious kinds of situations that might cause the body to have this kind of response. Some children whose lives were upended after the
babbles, reply; she’ll “talk” back to you. You are teaching her that conversation is a back-and-forth interaction. Stanford University researcher Susan Johnson, Ph.D., devised a clever experiment to show that a pre-verbal child understands that conversations are a two-way process of turn-taking. First a researcher speaking in English carried on a conversation with a faceless blob of a puppet making only nonsense noises. The child had never seen the researcher or the blob before. After witnessing