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Stimulating Intellectual Growth
Psychological research indicates that infants and toddlers can be stimulated to learn in informal ways that will benefit their intellectual development and help their school achievement later. Harvard psychologist Burton L. White studied hundreds of infants in their home environments over a ten-year period. White's research led him to conclude that no more than one child in ten receives the "education" he or she is capable of, especially between eighteen and thirty-six months.
What does White mean by "education"? For infants between five and-a-half and eight months, this includes someone talking to them in simple, concrete words that refer to things the baby handles. Reading simple stories to the baby at bedtime is recommended. The infant should be allowed to roam about in a safe area and explore new objects. Playing games such as hide-and-seek and placing easy obstacles between the baby and a favorite toy are recommended. All these approaches stimulate the infant's inborn curiosity, and some of them aid the earliest sensorimotor skills. So do toys that require manipulation, such as fitting one object into another.
Between eight and fourteen months, a child's understanding and skills grow rapidly. Parents can use a more vocabulary. But they shouldn't force learning on the child, White believes. They should introduce new kinds of playthings that require more skill to operate, for example, but help out when help is needed.
During the next ten months a child will be able to understand simple cause-and-effect relationships and play more complicated games. Most of all, parents should build on the natural enthusiasm for learning that the one-and-a-half- to two-year-old shows. Sharing this enthusiasm and showing strong approval for this reaching out for new information are both easy and beneficial.
During the third year of life, parents can encourage young children to learn in many ways. Parents should use new words with children, help them to deal with abstract terms, draw children's attention to small details and cause-and-effect relationships, and encourage them to do things which are a little harder.
A factor that is often overlooked is the importance of good nutrition to the infant's cognitive development. In the first two years of life, the size of the brain increases rapidly. During this growth spurt the number of brain cells increases significantly in the normal infant. Lack of adequate nutrition slows this growth. Children who eat poorly have many problems in language ability and intellectual development.
Will television speed up intellectual development in young children? This is an area of controversy. Television seems to increase a child's vocabulary, but too much television at the expense of active pursuits may be damaging.
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