Ella, an infant less than a year old, would not sit still to be read a story. Even when Ella was allowed to turn the pages herself she reportedly squirmed and indicated her disinterest. When I heard this story, two different ideas occurred to me. The first was that Ella was an active infant, who seemed to be working assiduously on her gross motor skills. She was a baby on the move who might not want to sit still for long, even when presented with a warm lap and bright pictures on cardboard. This behavior is well within the range of normal and, in a sense, much easier to understand than a ten-month-old sitting still to look at pictures when the tactile world is at her feet. The second thought was that Ella might be absorbing some of her mother's …show more content…
When our child begins to vocalize we can encourage him by working to understand what he is saying. If we cannot figure it out, we can honestly admit, "I'm trying to understand, but I don't know what you're saying." The child appreciates our attempt to understand and the words and tone encourage him to keep trying to express himself. When we do understand a word, we can respond by modeling the use of the word in a complete sentence. For example, if our baby says "ball," then we might respond, "Ball? You see the ball in that basket?" Let a baby stand uncorrected. It is important to refrain from correcting toddlers when they begin talking. If a toddler calls a stuffed bear a "dog," we can encourage the child to continue speaking by responding, "That looks like a dog to you," rather than saying, "No, that's not a dog, it's a bear." A child will learn to differentiate between dogs and bears soon enough. In the book, Learning All the Time, author and educator John Holt explains why children's early language mistakes should be left alone. Asks Holt, "If you were just learning, in a foreign country, to speak a foreign language, how would you feel if everyone around you corrected every error you made?" Holt observes that the vast majority of people would be intimidated by such hyper criticism. The ordinary person "would wind up saying little or nothing-like a man I know who after six or seven winters in Mexico, cannot speak twenty words of Spanish because he can't bring himself to say anything unless he is sure he is