If you’re looking for information about baby development, or looking for ideas about how to play with your baby to support development, Learn With Less (formerly Strength In Words) is where we discuss all things early parenthood and early childhood. We help families (expecting parents, new parents, and seasoned parents) navigate those early years in an inclusive, educational, and supportive space. Join Ayelet Marinovich, M.A., CCC-SLP, author, singer, imperfect mother of two and pediatric speech-language pathologist, for a podcast for parents, caregivers, and educators of infants and toddlers of all developmental levels. Learn With Less is the place for families to access high quality, evidence-based resources about how their infants and toddlers learn and develop; for regular sessions of music, play and developmental information for both you and your baby, subscribe on Apple Podcasts and visit https://learnwithless.com!
Using Visual Supports For Early Learning
Mar 18, 2016
Show notes
What are “visual supports” and how are they useful for young children?
This episode of Learn With Less focuses on the use of visual supports (pictures, photographs, text – in the environment) to assist in early development.
Below is a transcript of this episode’s “Developmental Thought,” an excerpt from the full episode.
For an interactive musical family experience, please listen to the entire episode.
I mentioned last week in our episode, and in weeks past, that language learning happens through exposure, and through interaction.
Infants and toddlers who are learning to understand and express themselves through gestures and words are learning, essentially, about a system of symbols: that each object, person, action, idea, etc, has a specific set of sounds associated with it.
But spoken language is fleeting – it’s only an auditory experience.
You say a word or a phrase, and as soon as it’s uttered – poof, it disappears! That’s why adding a visual – whether it’s an object you can touch, a photograph or a drawing – helps your young language learners. It adds a more concrete symbol of that “word” or of the experience of a word.
As humans, we are multi-sensory learners. Some of us learn best when we are aided by lots of visuals, more tactile experiences, etc. But giving your child the benefit of multiple ways to learn and understand can be very helpful.
Enter, Visual Supports
Using visuals also supports language learning because it allows you, the caregiver, to highlight the concept that each word is representative of a thing, a person, a concept, a social norm or an idea.
Language is a set of symbols, and we find symbols everywhere in our lives – out in our communities when we see the “green man” who tells us to walk across the street, the “woman” who informs us which of us should enter the door to that toilet, or the “stop sign,” which tells us what to do in our cars.
Highlighting these symbols when we’re out and about is not only great for language learning, but also for the development of early literacy! On that note, highlighting letters by going on a letter hunt, reading alphabet books, or stacking (or destroying) alphabet block towers are great ways to engage with your young child when highlighting print.
Using Visuals Throughout the Lifespan, With All Populations
You can see why visual supports can be helpful for young babies, as well as for older toddlers (or for that matter, adults!). They are helpful for pre-verbal or non-verbal children, as well as those who are starting to really acquire language.
All of us can benefit from visuals to help guide us through our daily life, both within routines at home or daycare or pre-school or work, and out in our communities. Sometimes visual aids can be helpful for rehearsing what will happen next, especially if they are new or less familiar experiences, or for helping to represent a transition that will soon be coming.
This practice has been used in the autism and other special needs communities for many years, and is a wonderful tool to help feisty toddlers of any developmental level with “self-regulation,” or that ability to manage impulses or emotions – which we all know is a struggle for any small child who is starting to learn that he can enact change on his world, and that he has his own opinions.
So let’s give our little ones lots of opportunities to succeed, by presenting information to them in lots of ways.
An Introduction to Early Development and Developmental Activities
Mar 18, 2016
Show notes
Welcome to Learn With Less, a family enrichment program for parents, caregivers, infants and toddlers.
What is Learn With Less?
This is the introduction episode, so here, I’d like to tell you a bit about the origins of Learn With Less, and talk a bit about my mission.
In all future episodes, we get together to sing a few songs, discuss some ideas for play, and outline some insight about early development.
Whether you’re a parent or caregiver, you spend most time at work or at home, whether your baby is following a typical progression of development or not, this series is time for you to be together and to feel like you’re doing something good for and with your baby.
Each week you are encouraged and reminded to please follow your baby’s lead. The whole idea is to promote shared interactive experiences – so if you can’t get through the entirety of an episode while sitting in one place, that’s perfectly fine! You can always come back another time or another week!
I am a speech-language pathologist and I specialize in work with very young children, but this is not to be confused with “speech therapy.” This is, what I call, “family enrichment!” All suggested activities are meant to be enjoyed by your baby under close adult supervision.
Let me get into the back story, by sharing an anecdotal story.
There are some experiences in life that sort of “defy” language, that we think of as “larger” or “fuller” than what words can express. In Norwegian, there is a word, “koselig,” that is more like a concept. There is no direct translation – it’s been described to me as… a feeling. I asked a Norwegian friend of mine what her koselig is. She described it in the following way:
“Eating tacos on a Friday night in sweat pants with a glass of wine… Making cinnamon rolls… decorating for Christmas… Picking up coffee and taking a walk with a friend I haven’t seen for a long time.”
I asked her how family related to her concept of koselig, and she said,
“My son is not koselig. But it could be koselig to read a book to him. Or give him a bath, or have some quiet time with him in the morning.”
The Societal Pressure
I think these days there is some kind of bizarre societal pressure to find this experience of parenthood to be a world of koselig, all the time… and there are moments when we succeed in creating this, but we know that the reality – for all of us, even those who heavily curate their social media profiles – is much different!
In this age of “over-information” and over-filled schedules, we have such limited time to devote to our families. Our time to learn how to even begin to become parents is almost as short as the time between our baby’s birth and the day we realize that little infant gets a lot more than we were giving him or her credit for.
There are only 18 summers between the beginning and end of childhood. There are a ton of books, a ton of websites, and most of us feel this enormous pressure to “get it right” and that we’re “doing it wrong.”
Here’s the thing: NOBODY out there knows the best way for you to parent your kid.
Not your mom, not your partner, not your neighbor, not the book that purports to. That is something that you and your child are going to have to figure out, again and again… pretty much every day – if you’re lucky, for the rest of your life!
That is the enormous responsibility that we have as parents and caregivers. And those early experiences that we give our infants and toddlers are the ones that shape their experience of life, and of how they define closeness, comfort, and koselig.
My Mission
So my aim here, really, is to try to distill some of the information that’s out there, to take some of the pressure off of parenting and caregiving for you, even for only as long as it takes to sit through listening to my voice. To make this experience a bit less overwhelming. I have no intention of being prescriptive.
This is not about those divisive topics that we all feel strongly about and tend to stand vehemently behind one side or the other. This is about how our infants and toddlers develop. Those universal nuggets about when and how our kids might be working on certain aspects of development. The science bit – the developmental research.
And really this is about the art of it – how do we support that? How do we learn to get down to their level, to see like they do, to access the world like our brains are learning as much as theirs are? I do NOT claim to have all the answers, or even to have a complete picture.
But the aim of my time with you is two-fold: to support your family’s understanding of early child development; and, to support your family’s interaction – the quality of the precious time you have together. Let’s try to get to the heart of things, to give ourselves and our children that warm feeling inside, and to do it artfully – you know, having a little fun.
What I Can Bring
Oh yeah, and who am I? My name is Ayelet Marinovich, and I’m what you might call an “early communication” expert. I’m a pediatric speech-language pathologist, a singer, a parent educator, a theater person, a storyteller, and also, just a mom. When my husband and I moved to a new country, I was 10 weeks pregnant and very focused on creating connections.
When my baby was born, I decided to combine my skills and my desire to create a safe, social, learning space for myself and my baby, and other caregiver-baby pairs. I started to devise a curriculum that was based on my own developmental knowledge, that of my friends and colleagues in early learning, a ton of developmental research, as well as information and experiences I integrated as a mother along the way. The weekly time I spent with the families in my early days as a mother was incredibly special, and amounts to my own definition of koselig.
Let’s dive in together.
Let me try to take out the prescriptive nature of “parenting advice” and instead supplant it with knowledge and ideas – helping you create your own moments of koselig.
How Infants and Toddlers Learn
Mar 11, 2016
Show notes
Infants and toddlers learn holistically. We have to look at the whole child!
On this episode of the Learn With Less podcast, Ayelet discusses the fact that infants and toddlers are learning “all at once” – learning in one developmental domain cannot be separated from learning in another!
Below is a transcript of this week’s “Developmental Thought,” an excerpt from the full episode.
For additional information, music, play ideas and the complete interactive family experience, please listen to the entire episode.
I want to talk about the fact that development of vocal play and movement and conceptual learning and emotional bonding are all sort of happening simultaneously in activities like the one we just did.
We know that infants and toddlers engage in what’s called, “holistic learning.”
This means that although there are various areas of learning and development as we understand them (terms like cognitive development, communicative development, motor development, social/emotional development), these are all very much connected in the first three years of life.
Follow Your Baby
Throughout this period, your child may focus on a certain type of skill or interest in one domain, (as in, one of those areas I just mentioned), but she processes all kinds of information pretty simultaneously. Each influences the other.
If you, as the adult, structure an activity looking for a particular outcome, you may very well actually miss out on your child’s larger “learning experience” – and therefore lose out on opportunities to keep her engaged.
This is why I always say at the beginning of my show, “follow your baby’s lead.” Remaining flexible allows us as adults to naturally observe our child’s interests, and helps maintain attention and engagements on both sides.
How Humans Learn
Humans learn when provided with love and support, and through exposure to new experiences. The more we can support their experimentation, the more information we allow them to give themselves.
So any time they study something with their eyes or mouth, anytime they pause to look around at something, any time we ask them a question and they take a moment before responding – they are integrating information: THIS is learning!
As adults, we’re used to expecting “learning” to look a certain way; however, for young children, especially those under the age of three years, learning often takes the form of very small steps towards mastery.
We must appreciate that their brains and bodies are growing in a way that we cannot always anticipate – they are making connections and experimenting with the ways their bodies move, how sounds and words fit together, how objects feel and move in space, and how they relate to others socially.
When we think of early learning this way, it incites us to think of our role as caregivers more as guides and supporters of learning than as instructors.
Let Baby Alone
I want to encourage you, as much as you can, to resist the urge you may have to take your baby’s hand and bang it on the drum for her, or to hold her hands and clap for her. Instead, demonstrate to her visually, tap the beat on your body (or on her body), let her hear the words and rhythms, and engage in these kinds of activities many times in different ways (again, there’s that phrase I love so much: repetition with variation!)
Remember, we know that young children learn primarily through imitation and interaction. It will be very rewarding for you and for your little one to allow that moment when she does it herself to come naturally. Absent of any motoric challenges, your baby will learn to move the way she sees you do in her own time.
When you allow her that freedom to move on her own volition, you allow her to make those connections herself. This is very powerful for you( and sometimes takes great forethought and restraint), and also very empowering for your baby!
How Playing With Language Helps Your Baby Learn To Communicate
Mar 04, 2016
Show notes
When we play with language, our children pay attention!
Transcript of this week’s “Developmental Thought,” an excerpt from the full episode.
For additional information, music, play ideas and the complete interactive family experience, please listen to the entire episode.
When we play with language, we integrate play into everything we do! Around the 12-18 month age range is the age when you typically start to hear a child start to utter their first words.
Obviously, this doesn’t just magically happen overnight, right? There are a lot of factors that we know go into the healthy and robust development of a young child’s communication, even before they verbalize any actual words. I’ll speak more about these in future episodes, but for now, I’ll mention some of those we’ve already touched upon in previous episodes.
One of the big factors in the development of early speech and language development is that term we discussed in Episode 1, “Why Sing?” – I mentioned “joint attention” being an important part of communication development.
Again, it’s that shared attention between you and your child on some outside “thing,” where you’re both communicating somehow that you’re both interested in that same “thing.”
Another big part of what goes into a child’s developing expressive vocabulary (the words that they say) is, as you might imagine, their receptive vocabulary (the words that they understand).
So, the more words your baby has heard you use around him over time, and the more opportunities he has to start to learn their meaning, the more he is able to understand.
Vocal Play
Older babies are playing a lot with their voices, as well, and we can think of this vocal play as the precursor to speaking words. They are putting sounds together, playing with different consonant-vowel combinations, playing with intonation and phrasing (again, much like singing!) .
So the more we can make this vocal play into an interactive activity (whether it’s taking turns babbling, singing, or verbalizing), the more we are encouraging vocal turn-taking… which of course, is what conversation is! A silly tool like this microphone can be really useful to focus on joint attention and interaction.
Repetition With Variation!
One of the things you’ll notice I often encourage you to do here at Learn With Less is to play with language, and play around with the words or meaning of a familiar song. One of the reasons I do this is because, as I mentioned last week in my Routines & Rituals episode, repetition with variation is great for young children.
In the context of music, it allows your baby to really process the sounds and patterns of songs – and when we change the words or the rhythm or the motions, we do so within an already familiar context. This highlights different aspects or elements of an experience. In this way, your little one’s brain is working to integrate and distinguish the familiar from the unfamiliar.
One reason why I really encourage this type of vocal play – is… because the more you play with words and language and your voice, the more likely it is that your baby will, as well! We know that infants are imitative, even from the very, very beginning! They are looking at our faces, always integrating new information and filing and sorting and storing for later.
The playful, flexible nature of language within song or rhyme helps us as grown-ups really focus on the interaction, and helps us get back in touch with that playful part of us from which our young children benefit so much.
Be Flexible, Be Playful – Let Go!
Another big reason I encourage flexibility and playfulness with language within song is because we don’t always remember the words to those nursery rhymes once knew as children. I cannot tell you how often I started a rhyme or a tune, and then paused, realizing I had no idea how the rest of it went.
If we give ourselves a break and allow ourselves to play with language, we then break free from the confines of our rigid adult selves – and start to become more creative.
Whether that means taking words out all together and humming a tune, singing only on “la,” replacing all the words with your baby’s name, tapping to the rhythm without the tune, or making up an entirely new verse with your own rhyming words, give yourself permission to let yourself go!
How Routines and Rituals Support Infants and Toddlers
Feb 26, 2016
Show notes
It’s said children thrive on routine.
In this episode, Ayelet discusses the topics of routines and rituals.
We cover ways to maximize routines with infants and toddlers by embedding them with value – promoting the inherent ways they promote development, and helping us enjoy the interaction!
Below is a transcript of this week’s “Developmental Thought,” an excerpt from the full episode.
For additional information, music, play ideas and the complete interactive family experience, please listen to the entire episode.
Last week, we spoke briefly about routines and rituals, and now I’d like to delve into this a bit deeper.
First, I’d like to mention that what we can refer to as “caregiving routines” are often the most powerful opportunities for learning.
These are the experiences that babies have regularly and consistently throughout each and every day. Not only is your baby experiencing – and participating in – daily routines, she is also learning about interaction.
In addition, she will eventually learn to make predictions about what will come next and therefore anticipate transitions between activities more smoothly.
Traditionally, we think of these caregiving routines as events like:
waking up
going to sleep
bath time
eating / nursing / feeding
diaper changes
Daily Routine
Even daily routines can become special moments for you and your baby – we know that it’s that social/emotional bond with one or more caregivers that really contributes to a young baby’s development.
I think it can be helpful sometimes to think about the fact that even changing your baby’s diaper can become a really stimulating, nurturing, rich moment between the two of you! Making these times more distinctive for you and your baby, and adding other special moments throughout the day to add “ritual” to your life, can be incredibly simple things!
You might sing a special song or say a particular phrase during these moments – it could be something you have heard or liked, or something a family member said to you when you were young. For instance, when your baby wakes up to start the day, you could look out the window and sing a little ditty about the sun, or talk about the weather outside.
Even saying something in a silly voice to prepare her for the next activity, like, “stiiiiinky diaper! It’s tiiiiiime for a new one!” will provide a consistent cue for your baby to learn what comes next, at the same time creating a unique ritual shared by the two of you!
Create Ritual
You also might add your own rituals – these can be things you do on a daily basis or to mark special or rare occasions, highlighting different aspects of various events. Think about what you can do to transition from one part of the daily routine to the next.
I find that music can be a really powerful tool in this. When we introduce songs to mark different parts of our routines, we are using a really cool auditory experience to make associations. For example, we sing a hello song at the beginning of each of these episodes, and a good-bye song at the end. As you continue to listen, your baby will learn to associate these songs with the beginning and end of this experience… but you can take it further than that.
A good-bye song can really help with transitions, for instance. So a little one who doesn’t think she’s ready to get out of the bath might really benefit from additional types of cues than the standard “we’re going to get out in another minute.” Engaging your baby in the process of saying good-bye to all the bath things, making it into a game where you wait for her to point to the next one before you sing to it, or simply going around to each item and singing about every one “good-bye to the duck, good-bye to the water, good-bye to the spout, good-bye to the shampoo!” allows her to feel like the fun is still happening, lightening the mood even though it signals a transition out of her preferred activity.
Making a habit of these types of silly interventions in the early days before your baby has an opinion one way or the other about it can help keep everybody on track. It may not work every time, but it’s a tool.
Music and Communication Development
Feb 18, 2016
Show notes
Why do we sing to young children? What is it about music?
In this episode, Ayelet discusses some of the innate ways speech, language, and music are connected. Music is the framework used to connect with young children here at Learn With Less, and in this episode of the podcast, you’ll learn about some of the ways that’s done.
Below is the transcript of this week’s “Developmental Thought,” an excerpt from the full episode.
For additional information, music, play ideas and the complete interactive family experience, please listen to the entire episode.
As parents and caregivers, we hear people say things like, “oh, play music for your baby,” “sing to your baby!” We hear, “it’s important and useful to expose your baby to music and rhythms and songs…” but WHY?
There’s a term that is often used in early learning and child development, called “joint attention” – this is essentially the shared attention between you and your child upon another “thing” – an object or event.
It’s not merely that you are both looking at the same thing, but that you’re both using words, gestures, gaze, or other non-verbal communication to understand that you’re both interested in the same object or event.
This is a crucial piece of communication (and something that usually happens sometime in the later part of the first year of life), and also it’s crucial to the act of being musical in a group.
When we sing to our young children, we are modeling:
Vocabulary and phrasing patterns or grammatical structures (sentences, questions / commands / statements)
Expressions of feelings and thoughts (through our physical actions, words, tone of voice, and facial expressions)
Attention and listening skills – hey, you’re not just entertaining your child! You’re interacting uninterruptedly with a focus! Think about how rare this kind of interaction is becoming in the age of technology!
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