Shelf Under: Raising Resilient Children

My 3 year old nephew witnessed a car accident outside the front of our house.  It sounded awful. It looked awful. There was a baby in one of the cars. So initially there was a lot of panic and high energy.  But after everyone was moved out of the cars and off the street it was clear that everyone was safe and uninjured. He talked about it endlessly in the weeks that followed. A few weeks later, a delivery truck side-swiped my mom’s car which was parked right outside the front of the house.  Once again, my nephew watched the scene unfold from the window. While he was watching my mom handle the accident, he started to talk about a “white truck”. He was remembering the previous accident. So I began to engage him in story-telling the two accidents to me. Story-telling is an incredible tool for helping toddlers process difficult experiences.  In their developing minds, emotions take precedence to logic. While they are in the early stages of learning rational thinking, emotional influence is VERY much in control. If they are unable to process and integrate the rational with the emotional, they become stuck in the emotional which can morph daily experiences into terrifying memories that may stall them from moving passed it.  Story-telling gives children the tools to integrate overwhelming emotion with logic and therefore process out the scary, difficult, or unhappy experiences they encounter.  

Here’s how it works: 

#1. Allow them to tell the story of the experience (as many times as it takes to process).  This may mean hearing the story for days, weeks, or even months. With each retelling remember to emphasize the logical progression of events, use each retelling to begin to include rational thinking into the emotion of the experience.

#2. Prompt them (only when they need your guidance) to retell the story by adding linear facts.  Guide them with …”and then everyone got out of their cars” Refrain from controlling the narrative, you are simply guiding them through the memory.   

#3. Allow them to pause, skip, and fast forward - DO NOT push them through the parts that are most difficult for them; they will tell those parts as logic begins to integrate with emotion and they feel comfort in the ending.

#4. ALWAYS end with and EMPHASIZE the resolution.

  Here’s Why it works:

Memory and interpretation will focus on the emotional drive of the experience, what we FEEL.  If they felt fear, they will remember the scenario with fear and they may make fear based associations because of the drive of the feeling.  By repeatedly telling the story, adding the facts, and EMPHASIZING the resolution; you will help them integrate logic into the memory, engaging rational thinking with their emotional memory.  They may still feel fear but they will also begin to accept that they weren’t alone, that someone helped, that the car got fixed, etc. And that will begin to work on the memory and adjust the new remembered experienced.  

My nephew still occasionally tells this story every now and then but from the retelling he has learned and added details about mechanics (car doctors), explains that people showed up to help, and that (in these two accident scenarios) no one was hurt.  His rational retelling has peaked his curiosity about “car doctors” that fixed the broken cars. Mechanics are now important characters in his playing. I’m sure there is still fear wrapped up in the memory but he’s learning that something can be scary and still turn out okay.

Shelf Under: Is your toddler "ignoring" you?

Ok so to be honest, this one took me a little while to grasp:  Toddlers aren’t always intentionally ignoring you, they just don’t know what the heck you’re talking about.  A few years ago my brother in law’s family was visiting and their little 2 year old loved playing with our lab.  But she had a tendency to pull his tail. Over and over someone would say, “Don’t pull his tail.” And she’d smile and walk right over and pull his tail.  Finally (much longer than it should have taken one of the six adults in the room), her father thought to attach meaning to the word tail by pointing and explaining what the heck the dog’s “tail” was.  “This is his tail.” And she never grabbed it again. Adults, in all of our years of developing language and experiences attached to language, often take for granted that we KNOW what a word means. But so much of learning what the word means depends on your engagement and experience with the word.  We know hot because we’ve experiences MANY HOT days, we have taken many HOT showers, we have probably burned ourselves on multiple HOT pans… those experiences have also given depth to our understanding of the word HOT and the different ways it could be applied. Your two year old in their VERY limited experience, who has just began exploring with more freedom, has an incredibly small word bank and an even smaller understanding of the different dimensions of the words in their bank. 
I always begin my story times with a story sequence.  In the early stages of my story times I spoke this story sequence.  Sometimes the children would follow my moves but most of the time I couldn’t really begin to engage them until after the sequence was done and I had brought the picture book out.  I began to realize that they needed context to some of the elements of the story sequence. These children didn’t know what the word “mountain” was but when shown a picture, they could begin to attach the word to the image; they could begin to have an experience with the word.  Once they were able to comprehend what I was saying (prompted by pictures), they were able to engage.
Comprehension promotes engagement.  Try adding context to what you’re asking your toddler to do and see if it helps them to understand, to comprehend, and to further engage with you and their developing word bank. 

Shelf Under: Eliminate the Word Gap

EDUCATIONAL SUCCESS  is directly linked to the number of words heard and learned before a child even enters school!  The word gap between children of different economic classes is super troubling in its implications of a child’s future education.  By 3 years of age, there is a 30 million word gap between children from the wealthiest and those of the poorest. This word gap continues to influence a child as they enter early education, following them through elementary school and beyond.  A child’s vocabulary is based on the unique words they hear and interact with. But here’s the thing we are ALL able to kickstart a child’s vocabulary bank in any interactions you may have (as care-givers, day-care providers, family members, etc.) by intentionally promoting these three easy strategies:  

#1. READ- if you are a parent, a care-giver, a teacher, a librarian... whoever: READ them books… each picture book provides multiple opportunities for learning unique words  

#2. SPEAK- use proper words and begin conversing with the child in infancy; full conversation NOT baby speech.  Encourage comments, questions, thoughts and feelings sharing, etc. And SING!! Melodies such as nursery rhymes and other songs are incredibly useful in developing vocabulary and promoting memorization and learning.  

#3. INTERACT with language- point out objects and their names; whenever possible, provide an example of a new word.  Explain what more complicated words mean. Use facial expressions to help engage and identify.  

Language development is dependent on children experiencing language; share language learning opportunities and maybe, as a community, we can increase every child’s word experience not just those in our own homes….