Newborns have innate communication abilities even before they can speak. They use eye contact, crying, vocalizations and body movements to communicate their needs and feelings to caregivers. Interacting with newborns through eye contact, rhythmic speech, and acknowledging and responding to their signals helps establish attachment and lays the foundation for future language development. Adapting communication to a newborn's abilities by keeping utterances short and simple, using facial expressions and interpreting their signals helps enrich the relationship between caregiver and newborn.
Newborns have innate communication abilities even before they can speak. They use eye contact, crying, vocalizations and body movements to communicate their needs and feelings to caregivers. Interacting with newborns through eye contact, rhythmic speech, and acknowledging and responding to their signals helps establish attachment and lays the foundation for future language development. Adapting communication to a newborn's abilities by keeping utterances short and simple, using facial expressions and interpreting their signals helps enrich the relationship between caregiver and newborn.
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Newborns have innate communication abilities even before they can speak. They use eye contact, crying, vocalizations and body movements to communicate their needs and feelings to caregivers. Interacting with newborns through eye contact, rhythmic speech, and acknowledging and responding to their signals helps establish attachment and lays the foundation for future language development. Adapting communication to a newborn's abilities by keeping utterances short and simple, using facial expressions and interpreting their signals helps enrich the relationship between caregiver and newborn.
Copyright:
Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
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Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
Nov 30, 2009 Lisl Fair Interacting With Nature - Robert Fair Interacting With Nature - Robert Fair Babies communicate long before talking. Months before using words babies express needs and feelings. Here is how to observe interactive signals and respond appr opriately. Newborns use their own set of verbal and nonverbal communication devices to comm unicate with the important people in their world. These are called precursors to language development and include eye contact, turn taking, crying, vocalization s (vowel-type sounds like "aaaeee") and body movements. Precursors are very impo rtant in language development as they lay the foundation for good communication skills in later life. According to Prof. L.M. Rossetti in Communication Interven tion: Birth to Three (Singular Publishing, 2001), early language skills are cons idered to be the best predictor of the future intellectual abilities of a young child. Pepper and Weitzman, authors of It Takes Two to Talk: A Parents Guide to Helping Children Communicate (Hanen Centre Publication, 2004) believes that as far as l anguage development is concerned, parents are the best toy in town and the best game around. Studies concerned with the effect of early separation on a child s de velopment indicated that face to face interactions between babies and their care givers provide the foundation for the development of communication skills. Abilities of Newborns During the first year of life, babies are like sponges soaking up all the langua ge and social interactions in their environment. Newborns have the following abi lities to help them communicate: Ads by Google Swedish Private Lessons Tailored Flexible Instruction Improve Your Swedish Today ! www.berlitz.se Maple Leaf Academy Study English in Calgary,Canada! English for all purposes www .mapleleafacademy.com Newborns Can Hear and Understand Hearing is the first sense to be fully developed in babies. The inner ear reache s adult size by the middle of pregnancy and within minutes of a baby s birth she s tartles at loud noises. Babies seem to be pre-wired to like to listen to voices, especially high pitched ones. Many adults and even young children involuntarily speak in a higher tone of voice when they play with a baby. It is estimated tha t babies can discriminate their mothers voices from other voices within three day s after birth. The process of understanding language also starts while a baby is still in the w omb. Although babies are not able to understand words when they are born, they a re able to discern emotions. Babies are attuned to the emotions of their caregiv ers as one of their skills to survive. They understand the feelings of caregiver s by listening to tone of voice, looking at facial expressions and feeling the p ace of their caregivers breathing. It is not so much what is said, but how it is said that is being absorbed not literally, but emotionally. Newborns Use Verbal and Nonverbal Communication Signs The most common and effective way for a newborn to communicate is through crying as new parents soon find out. If new parents can get through those exciting yet bewildering first days they will soon be able to discriminate different cries. Crying is not the only way of communicating newborns also use their bodies to sh ow that they are aware of their environment. Most of these bodily reactions are reflexive and therefore involuntary. Babies startle reaction to a loud sound or s uckle reaction to stimulation close to the mouth are ways in which they are indi cating that they are making sense of their world. Read on * Playing With a Newborn Baby * Language Milestones for Toddlers * How to Interact With Toddlers Newborns Make Eye Contact Prof. Rossetti states that one of the first reactions mothers universally have a fter the birth of their babies is a desire to look into the baby s eyes. In a stud y on early attachment, mothers reported that they felt much closer emotionally t o their babies after they had made eye contact with them. A newborn s visual abili ties are fine-tuned for eye contact. Researchers found that newborns prefer to l ook at faces or drawings of faces above other objects. A newborn can see best wh en an object is approximately 20 to 30 centimeters away, which is just about the distance a mother s face will be if she is cuddling the baby or feeding. How to Interact With a Newborn Adult communication needs some adaptations for newborns. Newborns love rhythmic, predictable language such as lullabies or reading from a novel. Even though the y don t understand the language, they love the rhythm of a human voice. The follow ing are guidelines to follow for interaction: * Establish eye contact as much as possible when talking to a newborn. * Stick to a short utterance length (4 to 7 words) and simple grammar. * Use even cadence while talking, aiming for rhythmical speech. * Try to copy what the newborn is doing occasionally for example yawning or stretching and wait for her reaction. * Use heightened facial expressions and gestures such as hands out for all g one when the feed is finished. * Use frequent questions such as "Where s my sweetheart?" as well as greetings . * Interpret her communication signals as meaningful turn taking and put it i nto words for example: when she starts to whimper during a massage respond by sa ying "I see you don t like this now. I will stop." * Have frequent verbal rituals during daily events such as feeding, changing and bathing, saying the same things over and over. This will help her to begin to predict events. Newborns come into this world pre-wired to communicate. They have innate abiliti es to understand verbal and nonverbal language. Acknowledging their role as an e qual partner in interaction and adapting adult communication to their abilities, will enrich the attachment between them and their primary caregivers during thi s important period in life. --------------------------------[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[ In a call centre environment, the minute we pick up the call, body language in t he traditional sense disappears. Remember, however, that a customer will hear body language in the tone of voice. Tone accounts for 86% of the total communication , words accounting for the remaining 14%. In an industry where standard scripts ar e the norm, it is challenging to remain constantly aware of how we sound to the customer, both through the words we use and how we use them. FENMAN UKwebsite