Communicating

It’s Toddlers on the Loose! The Challenging Transition from Baby to Toddler

April 15, 2010

by Morra Aarons Mele

The leap to toddlerhood is both thrilling and upsetting for a parent. Your baby clearly has a mind of his own: you can see the wheels turning in his head 24-7. Little babies are cute but their repertoire is limited. But for a toddler, each day brings something new to learn. 

As a young parent working with Ellen Galinsky on Mind in the Making, I sometimes take the life skills to heart a little too much. 

For instance, I breathlessly reported to Ellen that my 14 month old was clearly making connections: when he heard a phone ring, or even the sound of my text message chiming, he put his hand to his ear to mimic the phone. I was so proud of my clearly brilliant son and his ability to make rather abstract connections for one his age: connecting the bell of an incoming text message with talking on the phone. Literally the same day I bragged to Ellen, my husband called to tell me our son had an ear infection and that’s why he was touching his ear!! The mommy guilt I felt was astounding. 

But mostly, using the skills in Mind in the Making gives me more joy and patience as a mom. It’s almost as if I have a new language with which to interpret my son’s needs. 

Crawling Over a Cliff?

March 16, 2010

 By Amy McCampbell

Last year, the Sears Tower (or, as it’s known by its new name, the Willis Tower) unveiled a glass balcony on its 103rd floor. Visitors get to creep about four feet out from the building…and 1,353 feet high above the city of Chicago.

Some of us on the Mind in the Making team were talking about and just how much it reminded us of an experiment we filmed, UC Berkeley Professor Joe Campos’ Visual Cliff. In it, a baby is placed on a large box that’s covered by a piece of clear plexi-glass. Halfway across, there’s what looks like a drop, though it’s clearly safe to cross thanks to the sturdy platform. On the opposite side of the platform is the baby’s mom, either making a smiling face (signaling to the baby that it’s okay to cross), or a fearful face (which tells the baby to stay put).

You can watch the experiment here.

The experiment is so powerful… you can really see the babies reading their parents to try to figure out what to do.

What we’ve learned about learning

July 21, 2009

Turn on your television on any given weekend and you’ll probably come across an infomercial that promises to help your infant child learn how to read. In the commercial, the babies ‘read’ flashcards and watch DVDs. I have to admit, I find the ad amazingly compelling – watching these little babies doing what looks like reading. (And it must be pretty popular too because it’s in heavy rotation!) And for a brief moment I start to think “if only I had that product for my now four-year old daughter… she’d be reading by now!”

Before I reach for the phone and my wallet (I’ve got lots of friends with little babies!), I stop the insanity and remember everything that I’ve learned by working on Mind in the Making for the past eight years. I’ve had the amazing opportunity to meet and listen to the leading experts in child development. And they all seem to say the same thing about how babies learn – not with flashcards, but through interactions with other people.