Category: Infants and toddlers

How can we help the child’s brain?

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The growth of the human brain is at its highest in the first five years of age. At birth, the brain is about 25% of the size of adult brain and, by 4 years old, it reaches 90% of the adult brain. This fact alone makes the first five years of age very important in a person’s lifespan.

Information is transmitted to the nervous system and to the rest of the body through grey nerve cells called neurons. We are born with 100 to 200 billion neurons with each neuron comprising of approximately 30,000 cells (Johnson, 2003, as cited in Garvis et al., 2019).

Neurons transmit and receive information through their endings called synapses. We are born with 2500 synapses per neuron. However, this number increases to 15000 per neuron by age 3. As we grow up, the brain eliminates the neurons and the synapses that are not used.

The elimination is a natural part of development as long as it is not due to an imbalance in stimulation. Connections thrive through rich visual, auditory, or emotional stimuli. According to Graham (2001, 2011), the process unfolds as follows:

Visual stimulation: Vision can be stimulated by exposing the child to different colors, contrasts, and levels of brightness. Problems in vision that are left unattended might cause the eye to lose its connection to the brain.

Emotional stimulation: Children develop feelings of calm, relaxation, tension, and distress early in their lives. The brain wave patterns function better when positive emotions are triggered. Unresponsive relationships with the child can negatively impact the brain’s development.

Language simulation: Infants are programmed to focus on sounds and especially the human voice. Engaging with the child verbally using different tones and maintaining eye contact helps the child register the words and the context in which they are used.

Movement stimulation: Children need to be given opportunities to develop their large as well as their fine motor skills and their eye hand coordination. Experimentation with movement registers in the brain and movements get more refined as the child grows up.

Restraining children hurts their development and makes it harder for them to grow abilities in all areas of development as their peers. On the other hand, a positive environment supports children’s brain development and widen their opportunities to succeed to in a global world.

References:

Garvis, S., Phillipson, S., Clarke, S., Harrison, L., McCormack, J., & Pendergast, D. (2019). Child development and learning. Victoria, Australia: Oxford University Press.

Graham, J. (2001, 2011). Bulletin #4356, Children and brain development: What we know about how children learn. Retrieved from The University of Maine Cooperative Extension Website: https://extension.umaine.edu/publications/4356e/

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Hand Washing for Children and Adults: When and How

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Hand washing is important for preventing communicable and infectious diseases. Parents, educators, and children should regularly wash their hands.

In a childcare, educators (most situations apply to parents as well) and children should wash their hands as follows:

  • Upon arrival to the childcare and before leaving,
  • Before and after handling food,
  • After blowing own nose or wiping a child’s nose,
  • After using the restroom,
  • After changing nappies,
  • After cleaning up, handling art materials, or collecting garbage,
  • After playing outdoors with sand or touching animals, and
  • Before and after administering medications.

(Marotz, 2015; National Health and Medical Research Council, 2013)

In addition, Marotz (2015) indicates that when handling food, hands should be washed as follows:

  • Before touching food,
  • Before wearing and after disposing of gloves,
  • After handling raw meat, poultry, seafood, or eggs,
  • After touching dirty dishes or garbage,
  • After coughing, sneezing, or blowing own nose,
  • After using tobacco, eating, or drinking,
  • After touching hair or skin such as ears, nose, or arms.

Washing procedure:

Washing thoroughly with soap and water remains the recommended method. Although alcohol-based gels are increasingly gaining popularity, they should not substitute hand washing. Alcohol-based gels could be applied when hands are not very dirty and the rubbing of the hands should continue until the hands are dry.

When rubbing hands and wrist with water and soap, the friction breaks down the germs. The rubbing should continue for 15 to 20 seconds. It is better to wet hands before applying soap, so the hands don’t get dry by repeated washing.

In the case of infants and toddlers, it is important to disinfect the floor and play areas until they develop an understanding of diseases and illnesses. The baby’s hands should be washed after crawling on the floor and before eating or sucking fingers.

How can we help children remember to wash their hands?

  • Educators and parents could post the steps in the bathroom in pictures.
  • Children could be taught a song that gets attached to hand washing.
  • Parents and educators should model washing hands and verbalize what they are doing.
  • Educators could include activities where children role play the correct procedure for hand washing.
  • Educators should communicate the importance of hand washing to parents so children listen to the same message at home and in the childcare.
  • Washing hands should be a fixed daily routine; otherwise, it is going to be difficult to implement consistently.

To build the concept of hygienic procedures for children, parents and educators could start by alerting children to wash hands before eating and to not touch eyes, ears, nose, or mouth while playing as those areas are the most common means for the spread of communicable and infectious diseases.

Hand washing should be part of an overall wellness program that highlights health promotion as a priority for children and adults. In a globally connected world, it becomes important to practise hand hygiene along with other preventive health measures.

References:

Marotz, L. R. (2015). Health, safety, and nutrition for the young child (9th ed.). Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.

National Health and Medical Research Council. (2013). Staying healthy: Preventing infectious diseases in early childhood education and care services (9th ed.). Retrieved from https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/about-us/publications/staying-healthy-preventing-infectious-diseases-early-childhood-education-and-care-services

 

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What do infants listen to?

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It is important to realize that newborns are alert and can discriminate sounds.

By one month, infants differentiate speech sounds (phonemes) such as /p/ and /b/ (Trehub & Rabinovitch, 1972). By 6 months of age, infants discriminate two syllable words such as /bada/ and /baga/ and recognize a familiar syllable inside a string of syllables (MacWhinney, 2011).

Infants also discriminate speech sounds of familiar and unfamiliar languages. However, this ability diminishes considerably for unfamiliar consonant contrasts by one year of age (Dietrich, Swingley, & Werker, 2007). Examples of contrasting consonants are pack-back; pie-buy; and rope-robe.

In one experiment, Werker, Maurer, and Yoshida (2010) showed that by 6 to 8 months, infants discriminated most foreign consonant pairs and some foreign vowel pairs. However, by 10 to 12 months, infants barely heard any of the foreign pairs. Examples of vowel pairs are boat and fruit where usually the second vowel is silent. Examples of consonant pairs are /p-b/ and /t-d/ where one letter is voiced using the vibrations of the vocal cords and the other letter isn’t.

The tone in which the language is conveyed also makes a difference. Fernald (1993) found that 5-month-old infants will respond with a smile to a positive tone and not to a negative tone even when the language was unfamiliar.

Last but not least, infants can respond to their own names by 5 months old (Newman 2005).

The above findings highlight the importance of speech interactions with the child and the role of both the environment and experience on speech perception. Widening children’s listening experiences is a window for them to learn many languages and to engage in successful communication styles. Ultimately, high quality listening experiences ensure success in a global world.

Reference:

Boyd, D., & Bee, H. (2012). The developing child (13th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

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How do newborns see and hear the world?

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Boyd and Bee (2012) discuss how children interact with the world around them. How do newborns use their senses and how could caregivers help them in their life journey?

Newborns can see a person located around 8 to 10 inches (20 to 25 centimeters). They can also see the colors red, green, orange, and yellow in a week’s time but need a bit longer to see blue and violet (allaboutvision.com).

Babies can also track a moving object in the first few weeks. At about 6 weeks, the tracking becomes more defined with the accuracy improving dramatically by 10 weeks.

Babies’ visual acuity reaches 20/20 by 6 months of age; that is, babies can see at 20 feet – 6 meters- what other people with normal vision can see at that same distance.

With regards to their other senses, newborns hear in the general human hearing range and turn their head in the direction of the sound; they differentiate sweet, sour, bitter, and salty tastes; and they discriminate the smell of their mother.

To help children use their senses efficiently, it is important that the caregiver holds the newborn closely, looks in their eyes and converses with them. Caregivers should not assume that newborns don’t see them. In effect, newborns focus on and respond to the caregivers’ signs, sounds, and touch.

Caregivers need to welcome the child into this world. Positive people and nurturing environments give children the confidence and the ability to succeed in a global world.

Reference:
Boyd, D., & Bee, H. (2012). The developing child (13th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

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Planning activities for infants and toddlers

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Many infants and toddlers are attending childcare. It is important not to think of them as passive learners that just need to eat and sleep during the day.

The first two years of life provide the foundation for later development. Educators and parents need to make optimal use of this period.

To plan activities, Greenman, Stonehouse, and Schweikert (2008) recommend the following:

– Educators need to take into account theories on children’s development as well as the progress of individual children.
– The children’s families and background cultures need to be accounted for in the planning. Children bring different home experiences to the childcare and those experiences need to be used as starting points for planning.
– The plan should help children transition from the earlier activity, include a clear indication on how the children will start engaging with the activity, state the needed material, indicate the expectations upon engagement, and finally specify the transition to the next activity.
– Documentation of children’s learning should start prior to the plan, during the implementation, and after the completion of the activity.

By following clear guidelines, we can ensure that learning is taking place in a positive environment.

To read more, refer to:
Greenman, J., Stonehouse, A., & Schweikert, G. (2008). Prime times: A handbook for excellence in infant and toddler programs (2nd ed.). St. Paul, MN: Redleaf Press.

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