We know that good nutrition and medical care are not enough for an infant. Studies by psychologists have shown that children deprived of communication develop worse not only mentally, but also physically – they lose weight, grow poorly, and show no interest in the world around them. So they are affected by the lack of communication with loved ones, the lack of necessary care and attention. How can we help our children?
One of the most important conditions is tactile contact. Renowned family therapist Virginia Satir argued that a child needs to be hugged four times a day for his survival, and for good health – at least eight times. And indeed it is. Due to the close skin-to-skin contact, the processes of formation of nervous activity proceed without deviation, and the more intense touches that we use during massage have a positive effect on the development of the circulatory and muscular systems. But not only physical interaction with the child is important.
There is a widespread belief that talking to children is absolutely useless. It seems that the child does not understand at all what is being said to him, which means that all this communication is useless. However, this is not quite true. In Thirty Million Words. We develop the baby’s brain just by talking to him ”Dana Suskind describes studies showing that even lisping helps the baby to distinguish sounds and join the language that he will use in the future. The following was also proven: two-year-old children with whom they lisped at the age of 11 to 14 months knew twice as many words as those with whom they spoke “in an adult way”.
But what if gadgets are used for the development of a child? What if this will allow him to develop faster and memorize more words? In an experiment by Patricia Cool, nine-month-old American babies listened to Chinese speech. Half of the children were told these words by their mother, and the other half heard the same Chinese words, with the same motherly intonation, but they were recorded on audio or video tape. After 12 sessions, the babies in the first group could recognize the sounds of the Chinese language, but those who listened to the recording could not. That is, it is important not the number of words that the baby hears, but the fact that they are pronounced by adults significant to him.
In infancy, communication, affection and care of parents for a child are vital. Later, it is they who will become that strong foundation that will help him feel confident in this difficult world in which we live.
About the Developer
Tatyana Popova is a psychologist, Ph.D. in Psychology, Associate Professor of the Department of Psychotherapy and Psychological Counseling of the Moscow Institute of Psychoanalysis, Senior Researcher at the Laboratory of Counseling Psychology and Psychotherapy, Professor of the Federal State Budgetary Scientific Institution “PI RAO”.