Your baby will absorb the many sounds of the English language as you talk about a baby shark, mama shark, and grandpa shark, and sing the melodic “Doo doo doo!” verses in between.ģ. Remember: The areas of the brain responsible for understanding speech and producing language need your rich input.īook Pick: Baby Shark Board Book This silly sing-along story based on a well-loved song can easily be read in parentese. Turn up the baby talk. Respond to infant coos with delighted vocalizations, and slowly draw out your syllables in a high-pitched voice as you exclaim phrases like "pretty baby.” This way of speaking is called parentese, and the exaggerated facial expressions and drawn-out vowels help your child absorb all the sounds of our language. Give your baby a good start before birth. Stay healthy while you are pregnant, and be aware that certain drugs can be destructive to your baby's brain in utero.Ģ. These easy tips, stimulating books and supervised, interactive activities will help make sure your young child’s brain is primed for years of learning ahead.įor more book and reading ideas, sign up for our Scholastic Parents newsletter!ġ. In turn, your baby will acquire rich language, reasoning, and planning skills. When you provide loving, language-enriched experiences for your baby, you are giving their brain's neural connections and pathways more opportunities to become wired together. And, amazingly, a toddler's brain has twice as many neural connections as an adult’s. Although an infant's brain does have some neurological hard-wiring, such as the ability to learn any language, it is more pliable and more vulnerable than a grown-up’s brain. Synapses that are not "wired together" through stimulation are pruned and lost during a child's school years. Pretty impressive, right?īut here’s the thing: The rule for brain wiring is to use it or lose it. During your baby's first years, they will grow trillions of brain-cell connections, called neural synapses. At birth, your baby's brain contains 100 billion neurons (as many as there are stars in the Milky Way!).
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