Patricia Kuhl shares astonishing findings about how babies learn one language over another – by listening to the humans around them and “taking statistics” on the sounds they need to know. Clever lab experiments (and brain scans) show how 6-month-old babies use sophisticated reasoning to understand their world.

Patricia Kuhl is co-director of the Institute for Brain and Learning Sciences at the University of Washington. She’s internationally recognized for her research on early language and brain development, and studies that show how young children learn. Kuhl’s work has played a major role in demonstrating how early exposure to language alters the brain. It has implications for critical periods in development, for bilingual education and reading readiness, for developmental disabilities involving language, and for research on computer understanding of speech

Reading

It is a universal axiom that everyone knows and understands - reading is the greatest habit. Reading to younger children is still more effective. A child who inculcates the habit of reading at an early age will be the wisest and intelligent person in the later stages of his or her life. Reading habit should start at your home and by your children's bed side. Bring home great books and read their content to your children, especially when they go to sleep. As you read stories to your children just before they go to bed, the moral of the story will sink in their mind very quickly.

Some examples are:

Reading story books that contain morals and principles.

Reading books that ask children many questions and pose queries.

Reading books that enhance imagination and visualization.

Reading books that promote thinking and deductive skills

Tips: Books are our best friends. Books enhance our image and self esteem. Take your children to a local public library and show them the books, magazines and journals stacked on the racks. Get them a library card if they are above 18 years. Show them how the books are neatly arranged and indexed. Ask them to chose their own books and get it loaned against their name. Allow them to read their own books, recite the stories and morals behind them.

Helpping your child in school

Nagging and Lecturing

Parents usually don't start nagging children about homework and study habits until there is a problem (e.g., being sloppy with homework, or not wanting to do homework at all). Nagging only makes the problem worse because your child will either get angry at you or tune you out. Instead, try to problem-solve together with your child. Ask them to come up with several ideas on their own for how to improve this situation. Brainstorm about how to make homework more fun. Try out at least one of their ideas and discuss how it worked.

Taking Over

You don't trust your child to get things done right, so you tell them what to do, when and how. This may work in the short run but doesn't teach children to become independent learners who take responsibility for their work. Instead of taking over, help your child figure out what they need to do by asking questions: "What will you do? When will you do it? How will I know? How do you want me to hold you accountable for this?"

Focusing on the Future Benefits of School

As parents, we know how important a good education will be later in life. Just don't expect your children to be motivated by this idea; they are more focused on the here and now and give little thought to the future. To motivate them, focus on the immediate benefits of learning (having fun, developing new skills, and ability to play team sports in school if grades are good.)

Leaving Homework for the End of the Day

If homework is scheduled too late in the evening, with only bedtime to follow and no time to play, children won’t be motivated to be efficient, and also won’t want to go to bed since they haven’t had any fun yet. Increase your children’s motivation to complete homework by giving them something to look forward to afterwards. Favorite TV shows, videogames, talking on the phone, or having a special snack are all great rewards after homework is completed, and may provide the extra incentive your child needs to get through a boring and tedious task.

Insisting on Long Study Sessions

"You will sit here until all your homework is done" - this can feel overwhelming to children and create resistance, resulting in conflict. Instead, schedule 10-15 minutes of study time, followed by a 5-min. break, then another 15 minutes of study. Repeat as often as necessary to complete homework. Children actually get more done that way.

Grounding Children for Missed Assignments and Poor GradesThis is not effective for helping them do better in the future. Instead, use problem solving ("What would help you do better next time?"), offer support, and give them incentives for good performance (extra privileges, special rewards).

Not Communicating With Teachers

This means two-way communication: Let the teacher know early on how they can best support your child's learning (how does your child learn best?) -then ask the teacher periodically, "What's the best thing I can do to help my child with this subject at home?" Don’t wait until parent-teacher conferences to find out how your child is doing, or what kinds of problems need to be corrected.

Over Focusing on Grades and Test Scores

When children get the message that grades are all that counts, they quickly lose interest in the process of discovery and learning, and instead focus only on the outcome. If they can't achieve the expected grade or score, they end up feeling bad which usually does not increase their motivation to do better. Children also need to hear from us that success comes in many forms. Some students will excel in sports, drama, music, or art; some develop excellent leadership skills, good citizenship, become peer mediators, or relate well to animals. Whatever your child's strengths are, be sure you focus on those talents more than you focus on their grades.

Sticking Only to the Curriculum

As long as children learn what's expected of them in school, that's good enough, right? Chances are that this year's school curriculum doesn't exactly match his or her own interests and curiosity (maybe they are into whales and sharks, space travel, jungle life, airplanes, etc). Encourage children's natural love for learning by asking, "If you could learn about anything you wanted to, what would you like to learn?" - then provide them with books, videos, trips to museums, and (most importantly) adult conversations about those topics.

Not Modeling Life-Long Learning

Do your children see you interested and enthusiastic about learning, studying, and achieving? Do you read books at home? Go to museums? Look things up? Talk about new ideas? Remember that our children are always watching what we are doing.

The Importance of Reading to a Child

The Importance of Reading to a Child -- powered by http://www.livestrong.com

Language education is critical for developing brains.

Peter Mehegan, a longtime public school French teacher, wrote the following letter to the House Education Committee, which is considering legislation that would remove foreign language from the definition of an adequate education.

We are language-learning machines. Brain study has shown that the greatest amount of the brain activity happens in the earliest years of the child. His primary activity, in which he is practically guaranteed success by design, is language acquisition. The child, without teacher, text or test, succeeds at learning a difficult language in self-initiated, self-directed study. Without help, this is a feat that will never repeat itself. Where success was once guaranteed with absolute assurance when he was little, the child soon learns that learning language is not only difficult but, worse, not essential.

What is the point of learning another language?

As with muscle, that part of the brain most used for language learning will atrophy over time for lack of use. What was used with great success when we were 2 and 3, and what was most productive in us, falls into a state of neglect that gets accepted as normal by a society in which knowing one language is perceived as "knowing enough to get by." But is it?

It is not without reason that, before the 20th century, a child's first experience was not English, math and science but music, art and language, specifically Greek and Latin, because everything important ever expressed was expressed in these disciplines. Grammar, logic and rhetoric were primary goals. These three disciplines, called trivium, were recognized as fundamental to future learning. The questions of generations past generated the curiosity required for inspired study of math and science, which thus flowed naturally from the study of language and art.

Today, enlightenment has too often made light of the contribution language learning played in the early development of the child. You, who have been granted charge of creating choices, choose to demote second-language learning to quaint curiosity, an elective if the funds exist, dedicating at most a few weeks in the first eight years to the study, not of language per se, but of language in context of culture. In other words, the goal is not to teach a new language to use, thus deepening the knowledge of our own, but to inspire respect and tolerance to cultures other than our own, a thing that cannot properly be appreciated without acquisition of the language of that culture.

A language teacher's daunting task is clearly defined. We might well be their last chance to learn that language learning is still essential for brain-development.

Students should know that their study of every discipline is enhanced by the study of another language, and true educators should know why. Through language, a student learns to make connections within the framework of his own language, to its history, his history and the history of language. Students learn new ways to express complex thought, and they learn at last that others, around the world, have felt what they feel, known what they know, and have explored realms and possibilities that their own minds have not yet accessed.

With all of this so evident, it's striking but sadly not surprising that a handful of legislators want to remove the study of language and art from what they call "an adequate education."

If the proof is in the fruit, perhaps it's time these legislators joined us back in the classroom.

(Peter L. Mehegan lives in Pembroke

Handling upsets in life

" Young children are easily upset. Parents should be aware of this and try to make the environment as child-friendly as possible. Remove obstacles so that he can do many things himself. This will teach him independence and prepare him for growing up. A tired and hungry child may be more prone to upsets so make sure your child is well rested and fed."

• Teach your child to accept setbacks by allowing him to experience the setbacks.


• Don't allow the child to run away and avoid difficult tasks.


• Don't overprotect the child.


• Make him understand and accept the disappointments in life.


• Be positive and help the child to develop the courage to face setbacks.


• Teach him from each setbacks and not to repeat mistakes.


• Parents should be objective and not grumbleand nag.


• Don't put the child down and condemn him just for one mistake.