The Secret of Happy Children: A guide for parents

In this particular experiment, rats were placed in a special cage, with food and drink, and a little lever. They ate, drank and ran about, and eventually asked themselves the same question you are asking: ‘What’s the lever for?’ They pressed it (being like children, they wanted to try everything) and, to their surprise, a little window opened in the cage to reveal a film being shown on the wall outside. The window soon closed and the rat had to press the lever again to get more of the movie.

TALKING IS BRAIN-FOOD FOR KIDS…

By the time they reach school age, some kids can talk very well and have a wide vocabulary. Some on the other hand are very limited in their verbal skills. This can be a real disadvantage – for one thing, teachers often use talking skills as an indicator of intelligence and ability, and so your kids can be either deliberately, or unconsciously, labelled as ‘slow’. How can you help your kids to be good with words – not little Einsteins, but able to speak up for themselves? Here’s how…

It was found as early as the 1950s that parents fall into two distinct groups in their approaches to talking to children. Some parents are very abrupt and short in what they say to their kids:

‘Dwayne, shut that bleedin’ door!’, ‘Get here’, ‘Eat it!’ and so on. Others were the opposite: ‘Charles sweetheart, would you mind closing the door – it’s blowing quite a draught on little Sebastian, there’s a good boy!’

You don’t have to be a professor to see that young Charles is going to have more words in his little head than Dwayne, and more ways of stringing them together. (Though on the other hand Dwayne may also know some that Charles doesn’t!)

A lot of parents now are more aware of talking to their children, explaining things and just chatting to them for the pleasure of it. They have realised the first rule of children and language – they always understand more than they show.

Here are the basic steps…

1) During pregnancy make lots of sounds to and around your baby. You can start by singing or crooning when you feel like it, having music playing (quite loudly is fine). If you’re a Dad, snuggle up and talk to your wife or even directly to the baby! This way your child will come to know and feel safe with your manly voice and be easier for you to comfort when they are little. Repetition and familiarity helps – the sound of TV’s Days of Our Lives theme music has been found to soothe new-borns who ‘listened’ to it with Mum during pregnancy!

2) With infants continue all this talk, singing, and music exposure once the baby is born. Moving or swinging them about will add to their delight and sense of rhythm, which is a necessary part of speech. (Special movies have been used to show that we all do a subtle swaying dance as we speak – that it is almost impossible to be still while speaking.) If you can carry the baby about with you in a sling or harness as you work, all the better.

As you go through the day with toddlers, tell them about what you are doing, using simple words, but not all baby talk. Use repetition of those words they say to you, so as to polish up what they are saying.

3) As toddlers start to talk more you can help by echoing and adding to what they say to you, so they are both encouraged by the response, and helped to get the words right.

‘Buppa!’. ‘You want the butter?’, ‘Want buppa!’ and a little later

‘Pass butta ayy?’, ‘You want me to pass the butter?’, ‘Pass me butter?’ and so on!

The best way to do all this is casually – as a game – with no undue pressure or expectations.

A recent TV series featured interviews with ‘superbright’ or ‘hothouse’ kids. It gave us some mixed feelings – these kids were certainly high achievers, but some by adulthood had turned into real oddballs! One family though stood out – for the naturalness and balance of their kids. All four daughters ranging from eight to sixteen in age were friendly, relaxed, very down-to-earth, and yet extraordinarily advanced in their skills. The sixteen-year-old for instance had simply skipped primary school (at her teacher’s suggestion – the parents had been quite happy for her to go) – She was now doing doctoral research into spinal cell damage. Asked how they had raised such genius kids, the father said ‘It couldn’t be genetic – I haven’t had the sperm bank knocking on my door!’ (And he did look, well, rather ordinary!) The mother added that ‘We just explain things to them…’ She explained that as she vacuumed the house, for example, she would tell the baby she was carrying on her back about what she was doing, that the noise was made by the motor inside the vacuum cleaner, which was electrical and turned very fast, that the air it blew through made a lot of noise, and so on…

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