Encourage in kids a lifetime of learning
Studies indicate that it can take up to 18 presentations of a particular food for children to add it permanently to their list of acceptable eats. The same can be said for the more important goal of developing children’s intellectual tastes.
If you want a child to crave a wide range of learning and discovery experiences, it is important to start exposing them to varied and enriched opportunities early in life. Repeated presentations of similar learning opportunities will increase the likelihood of them falling in love with that particular kind of learning.
Research from developmental neuropsychologists indicates each discovery made and piece of information processed about the world builds brain architecture in infants and young children. Repeated opportunities to learn similar information adds to these structures and improves their functioning. Each learning experience, whether novel or repeated, is responsible for building the brain for a lifetime of learning.
So how soon is ‘early,’ and what does ‘varied’ and ‘enriched’ learning look like for children?
Early means as soon as a baby is awake and alert enough to process what is going on in the world. Even before a baby can sit up without assistance, you can sing and dance together and talk to the baby while presenting objects or pictures.
More importantly, you can engage actively in the back-and-forth dance psychologists call serve and volley interactions. That means responding to a babies’ verbal sounds, facial expressions, and physical movement with words, sounds, expressions and movements of your own. This back-and-forth dance is heralded as one of the most important contributors to fostering early development.
As soon as a baby can sit propped in your lap, it’s time to add reading picture books to your repertoire. Read, read, read and point out the pictures. Ask questions about the stories so that the child can develop a taste for books.
Varied and enriched means that a variety of experiences, books, and toys will be beneficial in tempting children’s curiosity. Visiting the zoo or the local children’s museum; viewing, experiencing, or creating art projects; exposure to music; play utilizing numbers and quantities and experiences with letters and sounds are all great ways to help boost early learning in children.
The good news is instilling a love of learning in children doesn’t have to cost a lot or take enormous amounts of time. A rich language environment filled with frequent, kind tones and descriptive words is enough by itself to propel infants and toddlers toward higher IQS. Simply adding a regular diet of colors, sensory stimuli, stories and chances for discovery will do the rest.
Stewart L. Burgess, PH.D. is a developmental psychologist and executive director of the Children’s Museum of Memphis.