Is It Okay To Let My Baby Watch TV? July 13, 2008
Posted by away2read in Uncategorized.add a comment
http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Madeleine_Fitzpatrick
I saw this article and found it very interesting, among the other many articles written in the above link. I especially took the limited time a child should spend watching TV. When my older boys were under the age of 2, I did allow them to watch shows that interacted with them, such as Sesame Street and Blues Clues during the week they would watch one show just about everyday – because that was the only time I could take a shower!
Now that they are older, I have noticed with my own boys that they LOVE to watch TV, maybe because it is limited to them. During the summer, I cut down the time to one show every other day and a movie on Friday nights. The youngest, isn’t interested in watching and so I play with him while his older brother’s watch, but we are in the same room with them and when his brothers laugh, then he will look and see what they are laughing at. Winter time is different, when we are hitting cabin fever due to really bad weather outdoors, I allow them to watch a couple of movies on those days.
It is my observation, that the older boys have more attention span to sit still and watch a show, while the youngest who is going to be 2 this December does not. Could it be related to how much time I allow them to watch or is it part of their innate personalities? Not sure.
Baby’s sign to communicate May 6, 2008
Posted by away2read in Uncategorized.Tags: baby sign, baby sign language, sign with your baby
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In recent years, it has been shown that exposure to sign language has a positive impact on the socialization of hearing children. When infants are taught to sign, parents are able to converse with them at a developmental stage when they are not yet capable of producing oral speech. The ability of a child to actively communicate earlier than would otherwise be possible appears to accelerate language development and to decrease the frustrations of communication.
Many parents use a collection of simplified or ad hoc signs called “baby sign”, as infants do not have the dexterity required for true ASL. However, parents can learn to recognize their baby’s approximations of adult ASL signs, just as they will later learn to recognize their approximations of oral language, so teaching an infant ASL is also possible. Typically young children will make an ASL sign in the correct location and use the correct hand motion, but may be able only to approximate the hand shape, for example, using one finger instead of three fingers in signing water.
