PARENT-INFANT ATTACHMENT:

The Cradle of Literacy

by Claudia Quigg
Executive Director, Baby TALK
 

When we speak of literacy, we think of the ability to use written language. However, written language is really the most refined form of communication, and is only attained after lower forms of communication have become facile. The evolution of communication begins with nonverbal or "body language," then proceeds to oral language before the mastery of written language is possible.

And because communication happens between human beings, it must grow out of relationships. The earliest relationship, then, the attachment between parent and child, is in reality the "cradle" from which the child's eventual communication skills and style will develop.

Body Language in Parent-Child Attachment

An infant comes into the world with certain abilities which will encourage his attachment to his parents. An infant's softness and appearance is appealing to parents. In "The Nature of the Child's Tie to His Mother," John Bowlby writes, "It is fortunate for their survival that babies are so designed by nature that they beguile and enslave mothers. " From the first touch, parents and children begin to create a bond.

Dr. Jeree Pawl, Director of the Parent-Infant Program at San Francisco General Hospital, views infants not as helpless "blank slates" on which parents will create a personality, but rather powerful, idiosyncratic individuals capable of largely controlling their own environments. She cites several studies which support the view of the infant not as a passive creature but as an active seeker of stimulation. In establishing and maintaining eye contact, for example, the baby is the "speaker" and the parent the "listener," as the parent is always waiting for the baby's gaze, and it is the baby who looks away when he decides he has had enough. In this way, the baby brings to bear his own control in establishing communication with his parents. Parents and babies begin communication not only in eye contact, but in physical contact as well. In their book The Earliest Relationship, Drs. T. Berry Brazelton and Bertrand G. Cramer explore fully the role of body language in attaching parents and infants:

"When a mother holds her newborn in a comfortable, cuddled position, the infant molds into her body. On her shoulder, the infant lifts his or her head to scan the room, then settles a soft, fuzzy scalp into the crook of her neck. As she automatically pulls the infant to her, a newborn will burrow harder into her neck, molding his or her body against hers, legs adjusting to fit her body. All of these responses say to her, 'You are doing the right thing.' If she leans down to speak in one ear, the baby turns to her voice and looks for her face. Finding it the newborn's face brightens as if to say, 'There you are!' A newborn will choose a female voice over a male, as if to say, 'I know you already and you are important to me."'

Through the first year, these physical responses intensify in nature, climaxing around nine months, when a baby begins to "cling. " This clinging behavior is usually accompanied by stranger anxiety, and is often a frustration or embarrassment to parents. In reality, it is the sign of a baby who is securely attached to a parent and is proclaiming to the world his preference for that beloved person. "I know who I belong to!" is clearly demonstrated by this sheer determination to hold tight to mom or dad.

When the issues of attachment are settled, the child begins to show independence in body language by pushing or crawling or running away from parents. Again, this is often experienced painfully by parents who interpret it as rejection. Actually it is another cause for celebration. It is the child's sign that he has learned the lessons of relationship so well with his parent(s) that he is now able to turn those skills into exploration of other people, objects and experiences. Clinging behavior will return in transitory episodes throughout childhood as children need intermittent reassurance, but it is usually short-lived.

It is fascinating to watch a toddler's body language as he begins to approach other people. Alternatingly shy and then too forward, he experiments with the same gestures he has learned with his parents. There are few sights more warming than watching a chubby toddler hand lovingly pat a playmate in distress! And in addition to those loving gestures, toddlers demonstrate other behaviors, including often bold-faced aggression. All of this is the laboratory for discovering what works and what doesn't in human relationships. And young children, like their parents, learn most from their mistakes!

Oral Language Development

The development of spoken language in humans begins in the third trimester of pregnancy. Hearing is fully evident at birth, and evidence suggests a third trimester fetus hears roughly 60% of sounds around his mother. In his book The Amazing Newborn, Marshall Klaus relates his findings that newborns show a kind of "memory" for sounds they heard prenatally. These studies have shown newborn responses to human voices and to music. Newborns show a decided preference for human sounds, again enabling them to establish attachment.

Although it is a bane to parents, crying is the first "spoken language" by infants. Through crying they attempt to express hunger, frustration, pain, fatigue and sensory overload. Attentive parents learn to "read" their baby's cries to interpret the message baby is sending. This role of "listener" is another example of parents playing the passive role to receive messages sent by their infants.

Soon, the baby begins to experiment with human speech. It is fascinating to observe how closely the process of learning speech is later mirrored when a child begins to write. He begins with babbling and cooing, which is very similar to scribbling and really represents the exploration of the medium. It is interesting to note that at this stage babies from all over the world sound alike. They are making sounds that will eventually become difficult for them to make because they are not used in the native language they will learn to speak.

In this experience, a child is playing with the voice for the pleasure of the experience--not because he is really communicating anything.

The next stage is language intonation, at which time he begins to use different pitches and sounds more like the language he hears around him. This stage is similar to the linear repetitive drawing that preschoolers demonstrate as they begin to "write. " At this point, the child may have some idea of what he is trying to say, but he is primarily working on refining the form. There is considerable evidence that when a parent responds to these language intonations on the part of the child, the number of occasions of these intonations increase, implying that the parent-child relationship impacts on language development.

Eventually, the child is able to produce native language sounds. This stage closely approximates the point in writing in which a child is able to produce letter like forms. He begins to use these sounds and symbols in a way that indicates meaning. At this point, these sounds have cultural relevance. Spoken (and later written) language have evolved to the point that they are useful in communicating concepts. A child whose language has evolved to this point is released from the frustration of being unable to express himself. Displays of temper and crying decrease as we see a child equipped with tools to communicate.

THE ROLE OF CONVERSATION IN LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

One of the most valuable resources for literacy emergence in young children is conversation with their parents. This easy give and take of informal language provides a child with the building blocks for his own oral language development s well as his eventual literacy skills.

Parents are often concerned that they should be "working with" their children on academic prewriting and prereading skills in order for them to be preparing for literacy. These pencil and paper activities have their eventual place for children, but parents make the greatest impact on this learning process in far more informal ways!

In their book The Ordinary is Extraordinary, Amy Laura and Leah Wallach make the point well:

"Ordinary activities aren't very interesting to us precisely because we do them every day, over and over. We walk to the bus stop, do the laundry, make coffee, for the most part without paying attention, our minds elsewhere.
But to a small child, our chores are intriguing performances: fresh, complex, and absorbing. For children, the mundane is new, unclassified territory, and it's magical. They set about exploring every day by collecting, organizing, and reorganizing information about their bodies and environment, about people and how people behave and communicate with one another.

To learn , they need practice. Routines give them the opportunity to observe the same sights, sounds, smells, and behaviors until they make sense of them; to make the same movements until they can coordinate confidently; to hear and use the same words until they can take possession of them."

As parents and children experience "ordinary life" together, parents have the opportunity to "teach" their children much simply by including the child in these experiences with language. Talking through tasks, the simple practice of using words to describe our actions, provides children with the language base they need to put words into context: a prerequisite for any meaningful literacy ability.

It is interesting to note that much evidence indicates that parents talk to baby boys less than they talk to baby girls, and that boys are statistically slower in developing literacy skills. Surely the nurture of a language-rich environment does much to encourage emergent literacy!

THE ROLE OF CHILDREN'S LITERATURE IN LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

Although written language and literature have been promoted inappropriately for very young children, there is no question but that literature can play a developmentally appropriate role in the lives of infants and toddlers. Attempts to teach toddlers to read flash cards may produce impressive results; indeed, toddlers have an amazing ability to do many things to please their parents. Most professionals discourage this practice because it flies in the face of sound child development and tends to cost children something emotionally at a later date. However, this unfortunate practice should not preclude the enjoyment of literature for this age group all together. There are several appropriate, enjoyable and developmentally sound ways to use literature with infants and toddlers. These practices have been shown to promote parent-child relationships and child language development simultaneously with providing pleasurable play.

For example, there is little doubt that infants love the sound of Mother Goose poetry. For many generations every culture has enjoyed its own nursery rhymes set to the same predictable beat. Nursery rhymes in any language have a similar sound. It would seem that our ancestral human parents and grandparents had an innate understanding of newborns' love for rhythmic language. Many speculate that this reflects infants' love for the rhythmic heartbeat sound they enjoyed during the weeks prior to birth, a time when all of their needs were met and the world was safe, dark and warm.

Perhaps infants love this language because it is so like their own babbling and cooing demonstrated at this time. Nursery rhymes are surely as nonsensical as babbling. The point of these rhymes is not so much meaning as it is playing with sound. Parents who worry that nursery rhymes have their roots in the violent Middle Ages worry needlessly: infants enjoy the sound of these rhymes without concern for their darker meanings!

Another appropriate way for infants to play with literature is by giving them access to cardboard books. The stiff pages of these books make them easy for children to manipulate by palming the pages without the need for higher-level fine motor skills. Babies use these books as hinge toys, enjoying the back and forth movement. They also enjoy playing predicting games with these books. They can predict what image they will see when they turn a page. The appearance of the image they expected reinforces their own ability to them. Books are great toys for older babies because books are always the same and therefore lend themselves well to the prediction experimentation that fascinates six-twelve month old infants.

For older babies who are experimenting with language intonation, reading aloud provides many delicious examples of different vocal intonations. When we read books, we use different pitches, voices and language than we use in regular conversation. This exposure to much additional language provides a smorgasbord of sounds for babies to imitate And the accompanying cognitive development babies experience at this time enables them to be able to follow the simplest stories. They are gaining experience with order and sequence and with beginning, middle and end. Simple stories give them a practical application for these new understandings.

Concept books, books that name an object or a concept on each page, are fascinating to toddlers learning to use native language sounds. Toddlers reach a stage at which they point and ask "Dat?" about every object in their environment. Learning the names of things as though they are learning a foreign language (which in a way they are) is what toddlers are intent to do. Concept books provide lots of practice and good information for this endeavor.

READING AS A BONDING ACTIVITY

Reading to a small child requires a parent's undivided attention. It is difficult to read aloud when driving the car or washing the dishes. Perhaps it is this undivided attention that young children like best about reading.

The close physical proximity that parents and children assume when they read together promotes the emotional closeness they both need. And when parent and child have been on a collision course," reading together requires that they leave behind the experiences of recent moments and enter together into a new place mentally. Reading together is a powerful transition activity.

And when children grow older, reading together provides a socially acceptable "reason" to snuggle close, reclaiming and maintaining that closeness first established in earlier years.

ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS WHICH CONTRIBUTE TO LITERACY

For some children, acquiring literacy skills is a torturous process, thrusting upon them tasks which exceed their developmental ability. For others, learning to read and write happens so easily and so naturally that it seems effortless. Many of these children seem to "teach themselves to read" with little assistance from adults.

Jim Trelease, in his The New Read-Aloud Handbook, details four factors which seem to be present in the homes of virtually every one of these early fluent readers:
The child has been read to daily.

The home has contained a plentiful supply of printed material: books, magazines, newspapers, etc.
The home has contained a plentiful supply of paper, pencils, and crayons for the child to use.
There is an adult in the home who has interacted frequently with the child.

Others have noted the importance of providing a "print rich" environment for children, with a willingness on the part of a parent to "read " or decode the print in the environment for the child.

Gail E. Haley won the Caldecott Medal for children's literature in 1971. In her acceptance speech she declared: "Children who are not spoken to by live and responsive adults will not learn to speak properly. Children who are not answered will stop asking questions. They will become incurious. And children who are not told stories and who are not read to will have few reasons for wanting to learn to read."