Children become smarter through quality language and reasoning

San Francisco Chronicle//Lauran Neergaard, AP Medical Writer, 2/13/14. "More talking, longer sentences help babies' brains."

Fixing Pacifica is not rocket science

....  "New research shows that both how much and how well parents talk with babies and toddlers help to tune the youngsters' brains in ways that build crucial language and vocabulary skills — a key to fighting the infamous "word gap" that puts poor children at a disadvantage at an even younger age than once thought.

....  The idea is to connect words and meaning, so the brain becomes primed to learn through context: "Let's put the orange in this bowl with the banana and the apple and the grapes."  "You're building intelligence through language," is how Stanford University psychology professor Anne Fernald explains it. "It's making nets of meaning that then will help the child learn new words."

And forget dumbed-down baby talk: Longer, more complex sentences are better.

....  But it's not just quantity of speech that matters — it's quality, Hoff cautioned. She studied bilingual families and found that whatever the language, children fare better when they learn it from a native speaker. In other words, if Mom and Dad speak Spanish but aren't fluent in English, it's better for the child to have a solid grounding in Spanish at home and then learn English later in school."   Read article.

Related - Youth Muse. "Think like a genius - a superpower to teach your kids", 5/29/13.  .... "There is, after all, a uniqueness of thought that resides in every child. And that is what we want to encourage and bring out. Rather than just giving your child an answer, let him discover the answer. When he gives you a “wrong” answer to a problem ask him how he came to that conclusion. Really listen to what he says — sometimes you will be amazed at the uniqueness of his reasoning. When you have the data your child is operating from, you will often find his reasoning is quite logical.  A child’s ability to think, to figure things out by observation or inspection, is far superior to reciting back a pat answer someone or some book has given him. This is true even when the child’s answer is not quite spot on." Note:  Photograph from this article. 

Posted by Kathy Meeh