assignment

5.1 Audio and Linguistic Literacies: Setting the Stage

The word “infant” comes from the Latin adjective infans, which literally means “not able to speak.” As we noted in Chapter 1, children’s social, emotional, and cognitive development begins through attunement with a caregiver. This attunement starts with equal parts body-to-body contact and what researchers call communicative musicality (Malloch & Trevarthen, 2009). Psychoanalytic theory proposes that infants enter life in a dual relation—that is, they see the mother as an extension of the self—and their primary trauma is the sense that they are separate from the world around them in a fundamental way (Lacan, 2006; Winnicott, 1965). In fact, developmental psychologists and neuroscientists often refer to the first three months of life as the “fourth trimester,” a concept formalized by Dr. Harvey Karp (2003) in his book, The Happiest Baby on the Block.

According to Karp, human infants are born with only three basic survival skills—sucking, swallowing, and breathing; and even breathing can sometimes be irregular. The most significant task of a caregiver in those first three months, then, is to “hold” the child, that is, to ensure that the world of the child is safe, structured, and sufficiently full of white noise so that the infant feels enveloped in an environment that closely approximates the womb. Karp emphasizes what he calls the five S’s—swaddling, side/stomach position, shushing, swinging, and sucking—as ways to replicate the womb experience in the fourth trimester. I would add to Karp’s list singing and talking to the baby, since we know that human voices are also part of that womb environment. Singing and talking, especially rhythmic vocalizations, like the physical analogue of swinging, have an influence on regulating sucking, swallowing, and breathing. Indeed, researchers have discovered that rhythmic oral language regulates heart rate and coordinates breathing and heart rate (Bettermann, von Bonin, Fruhwirth, Cysarz, & Moser, 2002; Cysarz et al., 2004).

In addition to helping the baby adjust to life outside the womb, these early experiences are the seedbeds of language and literacy learning. As they grow, babies need to become less dependent on their one-on-one bodily connection to a single caregiver and orient themselves to the world outside the dual relation. In order to participate in human society, they need to develop their communicative abilities, especially their ability to use language, as compensation for the loss of feeling part of someone who meets all of their needs. They need to learn to use words in situations where touch isn’t possible or appropriate to communicate what they need or desire.

The feel of skin on skin breaks down into a twofold concept: When you touch someone’s hand, you feel both the limits of your own body and the contact of another. Hence you know that you are a separate person but that you are connected with someone else. Language works in a similar way. When babies’ cries elicit a response, they know that they are both alone and not alone. Babies must make a conceptual transformation from having their needs for social connection met solely through touch to communicating through oral expression; they must develop what infant researcher Daniel N. Stern calls “a verbal self” (1985, p. 11). Ultimately, babies have to learn to use sound consciously and effectively to elicit the responses they want, as well as to express what they feel and need.

Three-month-old babies are just beginning to make this transformation, and a multiliteracies approach can help them do that. Just as adults learn to “read” the baby’s signals, babies are learning to read gesture, facial expression, space and place, and visual and aural information. But, as neuroscience professor Lise Eliot notes,

Speech is without doubt the most important form of stimulation a baby receives. When parents talk to their babies, they are activating hearing, social, emotional, and linguistic centers of the brain all at once, but their influence on language development is especially profound. (Eliot, 1999, p. 367)

Audio literacy is thus one of the most important skills for babies to acquire.

The Benefits of Prenatal Reading

While it is quickly usurped by vision after birth, hearing is the first sense we make use of because it develops in the womb. Ideally, then, the best time to start reading to babies is before they are born. Babies develop the apparatus needed for hearing, including the bones of the inner ear and the nerve endings that send the signals to the brain, by about 18 weeks of gestation, at which time they can sense the sounds of the mother’s body such as her heartbeat and those weird digestive noises that we all emit. By 24 weeks, the ears are fully formed, and the baby has become habituated to internal noises, and can now hear environmental sounds such as a dog barking or a vacuum cleaner, but also and more importantly, the parents’ and siblings’ voices. This is when reading to babies can become an effective habit for multiple reasons.

Before we think through those reasons, however, I want to encourage a healthy skepticism for some of the claims that various products will boost an unborn or new baby’s intelligence. For instance, much has been made of the “Mozart effect,” which claims that listening to Mozart in the womb and during the first three years of life makes babies smarter and calmer. The evidence for these claims is anecdotal, and no one has been able to reliably prove benefits through credible, repeatable experiments. While there is certainly nothing wrong with listening to Mozart, there is simply no evidence that it makes a measurable, long-term difference in intelligence. The most that can be said about such practices is that they can’t hurt, and classical music can, for some children, prove soothing but so can any type of music with a smooth melodic or rhythmical tune.

Such claims perpetuate the myth that there is a small window for enrichment of children’s brains, and if that window is missed, there is no possibility for remediation. To the contrary, human brains are remarkably plastic, and as a result, humans have the capacity to be lifelong learners (Bruer, 1999). That said, research does support the idea that there are certain “critical periods” in the growth of the brain when its ability to make neural connections that lead to integrated learning is more active (Eliot, 1999). The first several years of life are one such period, and in the following pages and Chapter 6 we will be exploring the best possible activities and supports for emergent literacy in that period. However, bear in mind that if children do not emerge from a supportive environment, they are not doomed to a life of subpar intelligence; they simply need more experience with the principles discussed here, modified in age-appropriate ways.

So what then are the advantages of prenatal reading? First and foremost, reading to an unborn child helps a parent and older siblings imagine that child in their mind. Caregivers need to hold their children not only physically but also emotionally (Winnicott, 1965). A new life needs a new space to inhabit, and just as parents plan for that space within their homes, they also need to prepare for that space within their minds and hearts. By reading to their unborn child, parents begin to open up that space, to see their child as a person with whom they can communicate. This is especially true for the nonpregnant partner and the older siblings, who haven’t had to make a space for the baby in their bodies.

For new parents, talking to an unborn child may feel weird or unnatural, but reading provides a safe, nonthreatening way to introduce the idea of a baby as someone who will require time and a special sort of attention and communication. It also helps parents feel they are competent to teach the baby. New parents in particular often worry that they may not have the abilities to be a good parent, but the act of reading helps them feel that here is at least one thing they can do that is important to development.

An additional benefit for parents is that reading to an unborn child stops the busyness of preparing for the baby for a moment. Setting aside time to read a children’s book out loud to an unborn member of the family brings the emotional, rather than the practical, needs of that baby to the forefront of parental attention. Another advantage to prenatal reading is that it reintroduces parents to children’s books. Many new parents haven’t visited the children’s section of a bookstore or library for a long time. If they do not have other children, they have also likely forgotten the rich lore of memorized nursery rhymes and songs from their own childhoods. Oftentimes, a simple reminder of the first line of a rhyme or song is enough to spark the auditory memory, but sometimes the memory loss is deeper, such as what is the third line to “Frère Jacques,” anyway? Fortunately, there are many splendid collections of nursery rhymes and children’s songs available at libraries and bookstores. A commitment to reading to a baby before it is born encourages parents to consider the need for a home collection of books as well.

Spending time in the children’s section of a library or bookstore gives new parents a preview of the cultural world in which they will be at least partially immersed for the next several years, inviting them to be selective and critical as well as introducing them to what is new and exciting. Most public libraries have infant and toddler programs and storytimes specially designed for various ages through preschool. These outings can also help make expectant siblings feel involved in the welcoming of the new baby. Parents can ask their children which books they think the baby would like, and allow them to pick books that they can “read” to the baby during a family reading time. As an early childhood educator or daycare provider, when you learn of a new sibling on the way, you can share books and songs with the older child so that the child feels like an expert recommending favorite texts to share. This will not only reinforce the importance of reading and older children’s budding multiliteracy skills but it will help them adjust to their new roles as big brothers and sisters and help them create a positive emotional space for the baby in their hearts and minds as well.

If there are older siblings in the house, this is a marvelous time to share books about what to expect from a new baby so that they are prepared for the baby’s arrival (see the list of “Recommended Books: For Siblings of New Babies”). This way, what they might otherwise experience as a disruption to beloved family rituals can be viewed instead as an expansion of them. When a new baby is on the way, older siblings sometimes regress to an earlier developmental stage in terms of emotional development, where they need reassurance of their parents’ continuing care for them. Reading and singing together provides that reassurance while helping the older child move into a new role in the family.

Recommended Books: For Siblings of New Babies

Alborough, Jez. Ssssh! Duck, Don’t Wake the Baby. 2008. Clumsy Duck tries not to wake Baby Goat—with a pop-up surprise.

Aliki. Welcome, Little Baby. 1987. A mother welcomes her newborn infant and tells what life will be like as the child grows older.

Anholt, Laurence. Sophie and the New Baby. Illus. by Catherine Anholt. 2000. Sophie waits through the seasons for the birth of her sibling and then has mixed feelings.

Ballard, Robin. I Used to Be the Baby. 2002. A 3-year-old helps his mother take care of his baby brother.

Clifton, Lucille. Everett Anderson’s Nine Month Long. 1989. A young African American boy has to learn to accept a new stepfather and a new baby.

Cole, Joanna. I’m a Big Brother. 1997. From a child’s point of view, a young boy welcomes home his new baby brother.

Cole, Joanna. I’m a Big Sister. 1997. A young girl welcomes home her new baby sister and lists the advantages of being “big.”

Cole, Joanna. The New Baby at Your House. 1985. Illustrated with photographs, a description of the changes involved in having a new baby in the home and the feelings older siblings experience.

Fujikawa, Gyo. Babies. 1963. A board book with a multiethnic mix of babies playing together.

Gay, Marie-Louise. Good Morning Sam. 2003. Stella tries to help her little brother Sam get dressed, but Sam has ideas of his own.

George, Kristine O’Connell. Emma Dilemma: Big Sister Poems. 2011. Jessica celebrates all the fun she has with her little sister, Emma, but also describes the ways in which Emma’s behavior can be frustrating.

Graham, Bob. Oscar’s Half Birthday. 2005. An interracial family celebrates Oscar’s 6-month birthday at a city park.

Henkes, Kevin. Julius, the Baby of the World. 1990. Lilly is convinced that the arrival of her new baby brother is the worst thing that has happened in their house, but she has a change of heart when Cousin Garland dares to criticize Julius.

Joosse, Barbara M. I Love You the Purplest. 1996. Two boys discover that their mother loves them equally but in different ways

Kubler, Annie. My New Baby. 2000. Color illustrations, with no text, of a family welcoming and caring for a new baby.

Lawrence, Michael. Baby Loves Hugs and Kisses. 2000. After receiving wonderful hugs and kisses from his parents and grandparents, Baby tries to hug and kiss the family pets.

Lobel, Gillian. Too Small for Honey Cake. 2006. In this reassuring introduction to change, when Baby Fox is born and all of Daddy’s attention is focused on the new addition to the family, Little Fox is not happy.

Mayer, Mercer. The New Baby. 2001. His new baby sister doesn’t pay attention when Little Critter reads to her, and she can’t understand his jokes. But Little Critter finally figures out what you can do with a new baby—and becomes a very good brother.

Murphy, Mary. I Kissed the Baby! 2003. Various animals tell how they saw, fed, sang to, tickled, and kissed the new duckling.

Nichols, Grace and Taylor, Eleanor. Whoa, Baby, Whoa! 2012. A multiethnic family worries that the baby will get himself into situations he can’t handle.

Ormerod, Jan. 101 Things to Do with a Baby. 1984. A six-year-old girl tells 101 things she can do with her baby brother.

Rockwell, Lizzy. Hello Baby! 1999. A young boy describes how a new baby is growing inside his mommy and tells what it is like when his new sister comes home from the hospital.

Rosenberry, Vera. Vera’s Baby Sister. 2005. The arrival of Vera’s new baby sister makes her feel displaced, so her grandfather helps create a special spot, just for her.

Scott, Ann Herbert. On Mother’s Lap. Illus. by Glo Coalson. 1992. A small Eskimo boy discovers that Mother’s lap is a very special place with room for everyone.

Weeks, Sarah. Sophie Peterman Tells the Truth. Illus. by Robert Neubecker. 2009. As seen, smelled, and experienced by older sister Sophie Peterman, the cold truth about babies and their not-so-adorable characteristics is presented in amusing detail.

Ziefert, Harriet. Talk, Baby! 1999. Max is glad when his mother brings home a baby sister, but he begins to get impatient as he spends a whole year trying to teach her to talk.

So what sorts of books should we read to babies in the womb? Because one of the purposes of prenatal reading is simply to acclimate the baby to his or her particular audio environment, including the sounds of family voices, the choice of reading material doesn’t really matter at this point. If you want to encourage, say, a 3-year-old to “read” to his or her baby sibling, you can choose any book that the older child is familiar with so that he or she can share in the experience. Singing favorite songs together is also appropriate.

However, to support the development of audio literacy, it would be better to take some care with selecting the books that you read. Children’s poetry and adult poetry with strong rhythms is a good choice. Nursery rhymes are often short and can be sung as well as spoken. It is important to incorporate singing into these sessions, because studies have shown that infants respond to the musicality of language (Mazokopaki & Kugiumutzakis, 2009; PapouŠek, 1996). A reviewer of this book reported that his wife sang often to her unborn children. Upon their births three years apart, one in a hospital and one at home, they each cried as newborns do, but when the mother starting singing to them the same song she had been singing to them before they were born, they immediately calmed. The doctors and midwives were amazed, but this anecdote clearly bears out what infant researchers have discovered: Babies can and do hear and take comfort in parental voices engaged in rhythmic, musical utterances even before they are born. Since the parent is reading or singing to a child who still has a vernix covering over the ears, exaggeration in intonation and strong rhythm are more important than exact pronunciation or narrative flow.

Dr. Seuss can be the parents’ best friend here. His rhythmic, rhyming texts create a sing-song pattern that helps parents develop their read-aloud prowess and fluency and hone their own audio literacy. Psychologists (DeCasper & Fifer, 1980; Kolata, 1984) performed experiments where mothers read The Cat in the Hat to their unborn children twice a day for six and a half weeks prior to birth. Then, when the babies were born, they tested their sucking responses as they heard The Cat in the Hat read by their mothers and then another poem with a very different rhythm. The babies’ increased sucking response with the Dr. Seuss text and not the unfamiliar poem convinced the researchers that they recognized the book that they had heard prior to birth.

Of course, there are multiple variables at play in this experiment. One would be the rhythm of the Dr. Seuss—ba-da-bum, ba-da-bum, ba-da-bum, which tends to read very quickly. This in itself may cause the baby to suck more quickly, as babies adjust their body rhythms to auditory stimuli. Another, related variable would be the mother’s familiarity with the stories, which would influence her level of comfort in reading them, especially in a laboratory setting. If we know a story well, we tend to be more confident in our reading and will introduce performance elements, such as varied intonation, dramatic pauses, and pitch and volume modulations. Infants tend to be so attuned to a mother’s body that they feel even the most subtle nuances of tension and excitation; all of these things would be then communicated in changes of the rate of sucking. Consideration of these other variables does not negate the validity of the research findings, but it helps us understand the role that rhythmic oral language plays in children’s literacy development.

Rhythmic Oral Language: The Body-to-Literacy Bridge

Rhythmic oral language such as poetry and music function as a body-to-literacy bridge for young children. Long before children know what words mean, they are attentive to how they sound. Oral language has expressive components such as tone, rhythm, and stress—what linguists call prosody—that help convey meaning. Children think, feel, and communicate with their whole bodies, but as they grow older and enter more complex social relationships, they must learn to live in a world of language and image rather than simply relying on physical experiences and expressions to communicate their needs. That is, they must learn to translate what their bodies feel and want into words that communicate those feelings and desires to other people.

Children’s poetry encodes the rhythms of the human body into its speech patterns. Donald Hall (1978) identifies three elements of poetry that correspond to different kinds of sensual pleasures that infants and toddlers experience. He names these elements Twinbird, Goatfoot, and Milktongue. Twinbird refers to a baby’s enjoyment of balance and opposition; as babies discover that their bodies are symmetrical, with two hands and two feet that are alike and not alike at the same time, their brains are also developing bilaterally. The rhymes of a poem are likewise balanced—similar in sound but not exactly alike, producing a balanced form. Goatfoot corresponds to the rhythms and motion in poetic language that replicate the constant movement of babies’ legs, which push against the air in a bicycling motion. Milktongue refers to the pleasurable sounds of poetic language that resemble the babies’ own babbles and other playful sounds they find they can make with their mouths.

These elements of children’s poetry help children negotiate the transition from exploring the world with their bodies to representing that world in language; thus poetry acts as an important body-to-literacy bridge. By combining movement with rhythmic language, by talking to children about their emotional and physical states in ways that emphasize prosody, by getting into the habit of linking up words with feelings, adult caregivers are teaching them the audio structure that undergirds the connection between experiences and language, a connection that we continue to use for our entire lives. But prosody also has an effect on the development of an important literacy skill: phonological awareness.

Phonological awareness is the ability to distinguish the sound structures of spoken language. While it doesn’t typically develop until age three, early experience with children’s poetry and songs strengthens the ability to play with and manipulate the individual pieces of words—initial consonant sounds, for instance, or vowels sounds that rhyme. When you are talking to children face-to-face, they are also watching how your mouth moves when you make sounds, and their inborn talent for imitation enables them to attempt to mimic your muscle movements as they attempt to make sounds. All of this activity is feeding directly into their neural wiring, expanding their multiliteracy skill bank so that they are better able to approach the task of linking sound with print text. But knowledge of the alphabet is not necessary for the development of phonological awareness; phonological awareness is related to sound alone, so this is where your energies as an educator of prereaders should focus.

Helping Babies and Young Children Use Language

By 2 months of age, babies start intentionally making and delighting in their own sounds. At this point, babies are able to distinguish the phonemes of every language in the world, even phonemic distinctions that their parents cannot. By the time they are 6 months old, however, they have begun a process of what linguist Roman Jakobson calls linguistic “deflation” (1968, p. 25), where they can make only the sounds that they hear spoken around them. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because eliminating all of the possible phonemes of all the languages in the world enables them to focus on the relative few that are used in their native language. But it does argue for exposing a child to a rich and varied language environment that includes lots of infant-directed speech (IDS), read alouds, music, and recitations of nursery rhymes.

Infant-Directed Speech

Also known as baby talk or parentese, IDS refers to the specific kind of talk adults use when they engage with infants or small children. Gwen Dewar, who holds a PhD in biological anthropology, reviews the scientific studies of the effects of IDS on children’s speech acquisition here. The research findings clearly support the importance of this seemingly natural form of speech in helping babies develop phonological awareness of the sounds of their native language, learn to isolate the spaces between spoken words, and learn to distinguish phrases and clauses in sentence streams. She also cites studies where the heightened emotional content of IDS causes babies and toddlers to pay attention more, which leads to better learning (see here). On the other hand, regularly speaking to children in a monotone voice may delay their speech acquisition (Kaplan, Bachorowski, Smoski, & Hudenko, 2002).

The features of IDS can be easily and naturally employed in reading aloud to infants, toddlers, and older preschoolers. The qualities identified by Dissanayake (2009) and discussed in Chapter 1—simplification, repetition, exaggeration, and elaboration—are the defining characteristics of IDS. Fortunately, these qualities are regularly found in the words of picturebooks for young children. Your job as a parent, a daycare provider, or a preschool teacher is to bring energy, enthusiasm, and expressiveness to your reading.

Imitation and Conversation

Besides the effective use of IDS in conversations and reading aloud, adults and siblings can encourage language development simply by responding to babies’ attempts to use language. The more adults and older siblings respond to a baby’s babbling with imitation and delight, the more the baby will babble, which gives practice in forming the muscle movements of speech but also introduces the structure of back-and-forth conversations and the upward intonation of questions.

By as early as 12 weeks old, babies are adjusting their vocalizations in response to the sounds they hear around them—they are matching pitch, intonation, and some phonemes that they hear regularly in their environment. Thus, language development starts with the imitation of models. Most studies focus on the interaction of children and adults, but children are often in the presence of other children, which also has an effect on their speech development. In my own experience, we were surprised to hear our neurotypical daughter, Blair, imitating the speech patterns of her elder sister, Emily, who has severe articulation difficulties resulting from Down syndrome. It wasn’t until Blair entered preschool at age three that her speech became intelligible to people outside the family, as she learned to model other neurotypical children.

By the end of their first year, babies may be able to say only a handful of words, but they can hear and understand upwards of 70. Most undergo an explosion of vocabulary during their second year and have acquired an astonishing vocabulary of around 13,000 words by the time they are six. They are also absorbing knowledge of the syntax and grammar of their native language. But it is important to note that the richness of their vocabulary, syntax, and grammar is largely dependent on their early experiences. That is, children who have adults in their lives who pay attention to them, respond to their attempts to speak, regularly practice IDS, read aloud, and sing to them enter preschool and kindergarten ready and able to take the next step toward print literacy.

Parents and daycare providers can facilitate language acquisition in other ways. Object-labeling is one such way, according to Drs. Michael Goldstein and Jennifer Schwade, experts on language development in the early years of life. The trick here is to allow children to take the lead by choosing the object they want labeled. By paying attention to what the child is holding, pointing to, or looking at, and then giving the appropriate word for it, adults encourage vocabulary development. On the other hand, when adults make an erroneous assumption based on what they think a child is trying to say rather than what she is pointing to or looking at, they confuse the child’s ability to produce the correct label. Schwade labels such mistakes crisscrossing, and the results are shocking: In the study, at 15 months old, the child whose mother was most adept at following her cues for object-labeling understood 246 words and could articulate 64, while the child whose mother most often crisscrossed her attempts could understand only 61 words and pronounce only 5 (Goldstein & Schwade, under submission; Bronson & Merryman, 2009).

Another method that Schwade and fellow researchers have found effective in helping children under the age of 15 months acquire new words is through the use of motionese, which involves shaking or moving the object in rhythm with the patterns of IDS as you label it (Schwade, Goldstein, Stone, & Wachterhauser, 2004). By using motion to attract attention and stretching out the sounds (m-m-m—m-m-m-uf-f-f-f-in-n-n-n) to help the child see how the word is formed, adults create a multimodal scenario for the learning of a new word.

One more tactic that has proven essential for language learning is for children to hear the same words in the voices of different speakers. Researchers speculate that the value of hearing the same word from different sources comes from children being able to isolate what is the same (the phonemes) even when the word sounds different in terms of pitch, speed, tone, or volume (Rost & McMurray, 2008). This argues for not only talking and reading aloud to your child but encouraging other family members and friends to do the same, as well as listening to stories on tape read by other speakers.

Unfortunately, researchers have found that there has been a significant drop in the amount of parent-child verbal interaction in the past 10 years (Heath, 2012). The ubiquity of personal mobile technologies is certainly one reason for this decline. A trip to the grocery store will easily confirm these findings. Parents are often talking on their cell phones instead of using that time for the mundane chatter and shared attention crucial to their babies’ or toddlers’ language and social development. Likewise, babies have DVD players in the cars on the way to and from the store, and parents listen to iPods as they walk their babies in strollers instead of singing and pointing out environmental noises and features along the way.

At home, there are TVs or computers in most rooms, which distract attention away from social interaction. Dr. Patricia Kuhl, a leading expert on language acquisition, found conclusive evidence that children do not learn verbal language from screens (Kuhl, 2004). Her study involved 9-month-old American babies learning Mandarin Chinese from a live native speaker. After 12 sessions, the babies were able to discern Mandarin language sounds. Another group of babies was exposed to the same speaker for the same amount of time via televised sessions. This group showed no difference in the ability to discern Mandarin language sounds than children who had no exposure. Kuhl concluded from her study that babies need a responsive social tutor in order to learn language.

While television watching on its own does not cause language delays, a lack of interactive communication between a live adult and a baby does. Even reading aloud to child is not as effective as one-on-one conversational interaction in improving a child’s language skills (Christakis et al., 2009). So as a result of the increase in screen time and a decrease in live social interaction between parents and their children, teachers and daycare providers may notice that children are experiencing language delays and deficits that must be addressed when they enter preschool environments as they will inhibit audio and linguistic literacy development.

Fortunately, the fix is relatively simple, if somewhat time consuming: Children need adults to talk and read with them, to look them in the eye and draw them into conversation with questions, expansion, modeling, and feedback. This is a great way to involve community members as volunteers in your classroom, especially older members of the community; beyond an explanation of the goals of the interaction, volunteers will need little training in the art of simply conversing with a young child.

Caregivers and other adults do more than simply model correct speech patterns for their children, however. Linguistic anthropologists have noted that Western caregivers treat their babies as conversational partners even before the babies can speak, asking questions, waiting for answers, and looking the babies in the eye as they “converse” with them (Ochs, 1988). They provide a kind of natural instruction for their babies that includes

expansion and fine-tuning of their utterances,

direct instruction, and

positive and negative feedback.

For instance, a baby’s single word “bankie” might garner the response, “Oh, do you want your blanket?” which is an example of expansion and fine-tuning (just make sure, as noted earlier, that you aren’t crisscrossing by focusing only on what the baby is trying to say rather than what he or she is focusing on). Direct instruction is very common, as parents will explicitly tell their children to “Say bye-bye to Grandma.” Siblings are especially liable to provide fine-tuning and direct instruction, as it gives them an opportunity to show off their advanced skills—“It’s not da, it’s doggie. Say doggie.” Rosemary Wells’ delightful book, Max’s First Word (1979), highlights a big sister’s attempts to help her baby brother learn words other than his favorite and only word, “BANG!” A more recent book, Baby Says Moo! (2011), by JoAnn Early Macken, adopts a similar theme. Positive and negative feedback occurs as babies make attempts at speaking that are met with either delight and understanding or confusion and frustration; simply not being understood is experienced as negative feedback and will encourage children to keep trying, at least until they reach an unacceptable level of frustration.

As children develop their vocabulary and conversation skills, they are highly dependent on the responses of those around them. Language use is mostly functional in the early stages; that is, children are learning to use language to get what they want, so feedback is essential. They test out new words and consider whether the responses they get, both verbal and nonverbal, accord with their hypothesis of what the word means or what it was meant to do. Computers and even “interactive” TV shows simply cannot provide the finely tuned feedback they need.

Specific feedback is especially important as children begin developing metalinguistic awareness, which is the conscious understanding of how language works. For instance, verbal toddlers will typically use the word “went” for the past tense of “go,” until they start to notice that past tense verbs are usually formed by adding –ed. As a result, they may replace “went” with “goed” in their speech. This isn’t a cognitive regression; instead, they have developed a metalinguistic awareness of the rule for forming past tense verbs, which they apply to every situation in a process linguists call overgeneralization.

Because toddlers simply absorb the words they hear used in their contexts, they usually are able to generate utterances that make grammatical and meaningful sense. But beginning around age 3 or 4, children also start to question whether they really know what a word means. For instance, once, when my daughter, Blair, was 4 years old, she strenuously objected to a rather rude noise her father made. “Daddy!” she said. “That’s not dignified!” This was, of course, a completely appropriate response, but then she stopped and asked, “What does dignified mean?” She was beginning to develop the metalinguistic awareness that individual words have meanings as well as social uses.

This natural absorption of language is another argument for reading to children early and often. As Jim Trelease, a strong advocate for reading aloud, notes, “If the child has never heard the word, the child will never say the word; and if you have neither heard it nor said it, it’s pretty tough to read it and to write it” (Prelutsky, 1986, p. 1).

5.2 Developmental Stages and Emergent Literacy

The first connections between the sound of a word and its meaning take place late in the first year, at around 9 or 10 months of age. This is when children begin to make the connection between a word they have heard repeatedly and the thing or person to which it refers. They also learn a few interjections like “Hi!” and “Bye-bye.”

Let’s consider this development in terms of the body-to-literacy bridge and the developmental stage from birth to 2 years that Erik Erikson identified as the “trust vs. distrust” stage. At around 8 or 9 months old, children begin to show signs of separation anxiety. Up until that time, they may fuss a bit when their primary caregiver leaves them, but they can be comforted by just about any friendly, calm person; their bodies don’t really care who’s holding them as long as it’s being done competently.

At around 8 months of age, the brain begins to develop the connections needed to form short-term memories and conscious emotional responses to stimuli. This growth in the ability to remember things for a short time leads to what Piaget called “object permanence”—the ability to understand that things continue to exist even when you can’t see them. Eight months is also the age when most children begin to crawl, making them somewhat independently mobile. Until this point, they have been comfortably dependent on their caregivers to satisfy their needs. Now that they have a taste of their own autonomy, they experience a renewed need to know that their caregivers are always going to be there. Their sense of trust in the universe depends on it.

Temperament

But they are also starting to move forward on the developmental path toward autonomy and independence. This development happens at a different pace for children with different temperaments. Some children are naturally bold and inquisitive, while others prefer to stay close to their caregivers and play quietly. Understanding temperaments is important for parents, caregivers, and educators because temperaments make a difference in how children approach learning tasks, no matter what sort of intelligences they display (see Chapter 1). Whereas easy-going children will likely still enjoy the relatively mild stimulation of being read to, more active toddlers and preschoolers will resist the confinement of being held when they can move freely on their own. But that doesn’t mean that stories and books aren’t for them. Adapt your reading style to incorporate more drastic changes in volume, pitch, and rate, and encourage active children to do what comes naturally—act out the story. Literacy-building strategies for active children also include the introduction of

action rhymes and dancing to songs,

visually stimulating toys such as alphabet blocks and patterned rugs, and

the placement of pictures on the wall at eye level for a sitting or crawling baby.

As toddlers develop their motor skills, you also want to give them opportunities to write and draw. All of these strategies—that is, action rhymes, dancing, writing, drawing, etc.—should also be made available for easy-going children, but don’t expect the same level of visible energy or overt enthusiasm. Instead, allow the easy-going children the opportunity to enjoy the activity their own way. Likewise, wait until the active child shows some signs of tiredness to draw him into a read-and-cuddle.

The exploration of temperament is where literature for children can act as a mirror for caregivers and a lamp for children, especially if the temperament of the child is very different than the temperament of the adults. Books like Ian Falconer’s Olivia (2000), David Shannon’s No, David! (1998), Kristine O’Connell George’s Emma Dilemma (2011), Kay Thompson’s classic Eloise (1955), Janell Cannon’s Verdi (1997), Spike Lee’s Please, Baby, Please (2002), and Michael Buckley’s Kel Gilligan’s Daredevil Stunt Show (2012) all show “spirited” children who exhaust their parents, siblings, and caregivers. Parents, caregivers, and even more even-tempered siblings reading these books recognize the children and perhaps gain a new understanding for or at least resign themselves to their boisterous behavior. In other words, these books, by mirroring the behavior of high-spirited children, normalize that behavior and offer an opportunity for adults to see things from the child’s point of view. The parents and caregivers in the books, however, respond calmly to their children, and each book ends with an affirmation that the children are loved and accepted for themselves. This is very reassuring for high-spirited children, who perhaps need a lamp to show that even though their parents and teachers may often seem frustrated or angry with them, their way of being in the world is okay after all.

Books that feature characters with easy-going temperaments include Munro Leaf’s The Story of Ferdinand (1936), A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), and Lucille Clifton’s Everett Anderson books, and Lauren Child’s Charlie and Lola books, where older brother Charlie is the easy-going foil to his more excitable sister Lola. Nature-themed books often have more patient, even-tempered characters, such as the unnamed characters in Ruth Krauss’s The Carrot Seed (1945), and Julie Fogliano’s And Then It’s Spring (2012). Because naughty behavior and bad decisions usually make the most exciting stories, however, it is more difficult to find examples of easy-going, quiet, patient children than their more obstreperous counterparts, so it is important to update your list of books of children like this as you find them.

Autonomy and Independence

Regardless of temperament, however, most children cycle through various bursts of dependency with a need for reassurance and independence with a need for freedom from the time they are 8 or 9 months old up through their late adolescence. We will explore how the themes of autonomy and independence play out in books for preschool children in Chapter 6. Here, let’s take a closer look at books aimed at children just emerging from the trust/distrust stage.

Parents and children sometimes have mixed reactions toward books that take an attachment relationship as their theme. The Giving Tree (1964), by Shel Silverstein, for instance, features a boy who spends his childhood years in a loving relationship with a tree. As he grows older, he leaves the tree behind. Each time he comes back, he takes a piece of her to get something that he needs, until there is nothing left of her but a stump. People have objected to this book because of its gender portrayal and because of its environmental message, among other things, but it’s a picture of a vitally important developmental structure—the firm belief that someone, somewhere loves you unconditionally and would sacrifice everything for you. Of course, if you acted on that belief, you would be a horribly selfish person, but the belief that it exists is what is sustaining in hard times; it represents a fundamental trust that the universe will sustain you and that you will have everything you need.

A similar theme is found in Robert Munsch’s Love You Forever (1986). In this book, a mother rocks her newborn with a cradle song that expresses her undying love. She continues this tradition long after the baby is grown, sneaking into his bedroom at night when he’s a teenager, and even getting into her car, driving across town, and climbing a ladder to the window of her grown son’s bedroom to hold him and sing the song. Again, if we look at this book literally, such acts are strange and unbalanced, but for a very young child, the idea of having someone who will always love you no matter what is an absolutely necessary psychic structure. The list of “Recommended Books: For the Trust/Distrust Development Stage” suggests some less ambiguous attachment-themed books.

Recommended Books: For the Trust/Distrust Developmental Stage

Appelt, Kathi. Oh My Baby, Little One. Illus. by Jane Dyer. 2000. As Baby Bird goes off to school, Mama Bird explains all the ways her love remains even while they’re apart.

Brown, Margaret Wise. The Runaway Bunny. Illus. by Clement Hurd. 1942. A little rabbit who wants to run away tells his mother how he will escape, but she is always right behind him.

Karst, Patrice. The Invisible String. Illus. by Geoff Stevenson. 2000. Liza and Jeremy’s mother comforts them during a scary storm by telling them about the Invisible String, which connects people who love each other no matter where they are and means that they are never alone.

Marina, Gianna. Meet Me at the Moon. 2012. During a dry spell, Mama Elephant must leave Little One to ask the skies for rain. She reassures him that he will hear her song in the wind and feel her love in the air.

McBratney, Sam. Guess How Much I Love You. Illus. by Anita Jeram. 1995. During a bedtime game, every time Little Nutbrown Hare demonstrates how much he loves his father, Big Nutbrown Hare gently shows him that the love is returned even more.

Munsch, Robert N. Love You Forever. Illus. by Sheila McGraw. 1986. As her son grows from little boy to adult man, a mother secretly rocks him each night as he sleeps.

Penn, Audrey. The Kissing Hand. Illus. by Ruth E. Harper and Nancy M. Leak. 1993. When Chester the raccoon is reluctant to go to kindergarten for the first time, his mother teaches him a secret way to carry her love with him.

Rusackas, Francesca. I Love You All Day Long. Illus. by Priscilla Burris. 2003. When Owen, a little pig, worries about being apart from his mother when he goes off to school, she reassures him that no matter where he is and what he is doing, she will love him all day long.

The ability to remember someone and yet move independently away from that person leads to a need to feel attached and thus results in separation anxiety. Language is a way to “stay in touch,” metaphorically speaking, with someone who isn’t present. Having names for people and things, as well as words for the actions of leaving and coming back and images of closeness, helps make those people or things present in a representational way when they aren’t there physically. Meaningful language, which consists of sounds connected to mental representations, can bridge the gap between the times apart and time spent together.

In practical terms, language helps children negotiate between what is happening and what they want to happen, and thus gives them some measure of power over their environment. Even when children’s calls for Mommy and Daddy don’t bring them back, they can hold them in their imagination and memories using words. In fact, many nursery rhymes are designed to do just this kind of work. Consider the familiar nursery rhyme, “Bye, Baby Bunting”:

Bye, baby bunting,

Daddy’s gone a-hunting,

Gone to get a rabbit-skin

To wrap his baby bunting in.

In this nursery rhyme, the father is absent from the child, but the rhyme assures the child that he is off for only a short while and will return to snuggle his baby. In addition to the meaning of the words, though, the repetition of few familiar phonemes, along with a tight rhythm and rhyme scheme, complete the holding environment of this rhyme. The anxiety of absence is contained and controlled through the words of the poem—what they say and how they say it. Thus having a word for a thing seems to be necessary for achieving object permanence. As we noted earlier, its rhythms and sounds also act as a bridge to literacy because it helps children begin to understand that people, things, and even unconscious longings can be represented by words.

Books such as those shown in the preceding Trust/Distrust Development Stage list are useful for children who have difficulty separating from their parents when they enter day care or preschool. Often, caregivers and parents try to distract the child while the parent sneaks away, but psychoanalyst Gertraud Diem-Wille (2011) discourages this sort of tactic, because it confirms what the child already believes—that parents will disappear unless they are closely monitored. It is better, she argues, to give the child symbolic support for the rhythms of leaving and returning. A book that a child can carry back and forth can be reinforcing because the parent can read it at home and the teacher can read it at school, thus providing a physical and verbal connection between the two environments. In fact, a book or a song is the perfect support for helping children cope with separation anxiety for the reasons we have noted: Patterned language regulates heart breathing rates, which has a physically calming effect, and books offer ideas for evoking absent loved ones through imaginative mental models.

5.3 Music and the Prereader

Music plays an important role in the prereader’s audio environment. Children are born with an innate love of music. This is partially because their sense of hearing is so advanced at birth, and partly because listening to music is a right-brain-hemisphere activity, and the right hemisphere is more developed at birth than the left. Babies are born with the ability to recognize a melody and simple rhythmic patterns. Fortunately for most of us, though, they are not at all sensitive to whether the song is off-key, so we can sing away without worrying about offending their musical sensibilities.

Babies’ first utterances have a musical quality to them, and young children will often make up songs as they go about their play. Gradually, over the first eight to nine years of life, they do develop the ability to recognize tonality, which is the arrangement of seven tones around a central tone or key. A children’s xylophone, for instance, is usually organized around the key of C major, which means that the lowest tone is a C, and then the rest of the seven notes get progressively higher in an even sequence until you reach the high C, which sounds like the low C. Between the ages of 5 and 9, children learn to recognize a melody when it changes key or when other changes are made, such as difference in rhythm or harmonic accompaniments. But even before then, they know when a melody sounds “finished” and when it stops abruptly without closing on a specific tone.

As we have discussed, music’s most important function in early childhood is its role in bonding, but it also has strong correlations to language learning (Schon et al., 2008). In songs, syllables are linked to different tones, allowing children to discriminate between sounds better, which makes words easier to learn. Additionally, the lyrics to songs often rhyme, which allows children to anticipate a sound before it is vocalized. Sing this song to yourself, stopping right before the last word:

My bonnie lies over the ocean.

My bonnie lies over the sea.

My bonnie lies over the ocean.

Oh, bring back my bonnie to ______.

It’s nearly impossible not to finish this song once you’ve started. The tonal quality requires you to finish the phrase in the last line; otherwise the song doesn’t sound “finished.” Likewise, the lyrics need closure as well, and it’s clear, even if you’ve never heard the song before, that the word must rhyme with sea, and therefore is most likely to be me.

This process of elimination is one of the ways that children learn to read print (Goodman, 1967; Goodman & Goodman, 1979; Smith, 1994). They are trying to make meaning, but they are also linking up verbal signs with familiar oral language constructions. Music organizes oral language into specific phrases and rhythmic and rhyming patterns, so having a rich background in children’s songs increases children’s ability to anticipate what word should fit in a particular phrase or pattern.

There is so much good evidence that children benefit from playing an instrument (see here, for instance) that it is difficult to understand why formal music instruction isn’t mandated in early childhood, but unfortunately most preschools are not sufficiently resourced for such programming. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t provide a musically rich environment for your infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.

While there is a strong push to introduce children to classical music as early as possible, very young children prefer music that corresponds to Dissanayake’s principles: simplicity, repetition, exaggeration, and elaboration. Finding music that children like is as simple as going to the library or surfing online children’s music sites (see Websites to Save and Explore at the end of the chapter). CDs are organized as collections of children’s standards or as single artist productions. As with books, you will want to balance familiarity with novelty, and introduce new songs regularly. But you also want to attend to children’s preferences; if they like a song or a CD, keep playing it until they let you know they are ready for a change.

Favorite Children’s Recording Artists

Alana Banana Band: Benefits HARK (Healing Arts Reaching Kids) (http://thealanabananaband.com/home.cfm)

Banana Slug String Band: Science, song, and celebration (http://www.bananaslugstringband.com/)

Elizabeth Mitchell: Folk music for children (http://youaremyflower.org/)

Ella Jenkins: “First Lady of Children’s Music” (http://www.ellajenkins.com/index.html)

Finkytown Funtime Band: Various genres (http://finkytownfuntimeband.com/Home_Page.html)

Greg & Steve: Interactive music for kids 3 to 9 (http://www.gregandsteve.com/)

Laurie Berkner: “Kindie rock” (http://www.laurieberkner.com/index.php)

Pete Seeger: Folk icon’s children’s albums include American Folk, Game, and Activity Songs for Children and Abiyoyo and Other Story Songs for Children

Putumayo Playground: Series of world music albums for children (http://www.putumayo.com/putumayo_cds/kidscds)

Raffi: Popular children’s singer since 1975 (http://www.raffinews.com/)

Randy Kaplan: “Not-JUST-for-kids” music (http://www.randykaplan.com/)

Sharon, Lois & Bram: Canadian trio with a variety of genres (http://www.casablancakids.com/slb.html)

Susie Tallman: Lullabies, nursery rhymes, updated classics (http://www.susietallman.com/)

They Might Be Giants: Rock group’s albums for children include Here Come the ABCs and Here Comes Science

Twinkle Twinkle Little Rock Star: Series of lullaby versions of rock and pop songs (http://www.ttlrs.com/)

5.4 Creating an Audio and Linguistic Literacy-Rich Environment for Prereaders

The audio environment includes much more than human speech, of course. Babies, toddlers, and preschool children delight in strange and novel noises. They quickly become habituated to the common noises in their environments and prefer these for comfort, while their hungry little brains crave new input for learning. Books with rich and playful vocabulary will fascinate them, as will well-told stories with sound effects and music incorporated into the telling.

The goals of audio and linguistic literacy for the emergent literacy stage are not to rush children into recognizing print text as a representation of sound. Rather, this enriched experience with spoken language facilitates the development of print literacy by cultivating the inner ear. Eventually, children will learn to read print texts silently. The larger their oral vocabulary, the more easily children will be able to connect written representations of words with words they already know by sound. Furthermore, understanding and fully appreciating written texts depends on a solid foundation of audio and linguistic literacies, as the marks on the page refer to sounds, accents, and the various meanings associated with those sounds can really come alive in children’s imaginations.

Teaching Ideas: Audio and Linguistic Literacies for Prereaders

General Interaction

Respond to children’s attempts at conversation, even at the babbling stage. Eventually, you will want them to pay attention to you, so set the habit of paying attention to each other and taking turns in conversation early.

Make your interactions with children varied. Use different tones of voice, exaggeration, and rhythm when you speak, and make playful language part of your conversational repertoire. Surprise your children with your voice and funny sound effects.

Put away your cell phone during the time you spend with the children. As you take your children into the community for grocery shopping, walks, and other activities, focus on what they find interesting. Face-to-face interaction encourages children to experiment with language, to test out new utterances in order to gauge your response.

Music and Singing

Play music of various kinds, including classical, reggae and world music, folk, gospel, and energetic pop as well as music composed and performed especially for young children. Consider having special music for special times—a wake-up song, a bath song, a naptime song, and so forth. In a daycare or preschool setting, use music for transitions—let children know that when they hear a particular song, they are to finish their activity, put materials away, and move to a certain place, such as the storytelling rug. This regularity will help a child develop a sense of time, expectation, and ritual.

Sing often. Make up silly songs, and sing folk songs and nursery songs.

Provide access to musical instruments, both real and toys. Encourage experimentation.

Invite community musicians into your class for miniconcerts.

Learning About Sounds

Direct children’s attention to environmental sounds during walks or car rides: nature sounds, such as birdsong and squirrel chatter, and mechanical noises, such as sirens and car sounds. Exploit the sonic richness of ordinary items like bubblewrap, crinkly paper, creaky floorboards. Early attention to these sorts of sounds will help children make meaning of their reading later on, as they encounter descriptions of such sounds in books they read. Their personal experience will make their understanding richer.

Play the quiet game with a difference. Instead of being quiet for the sake of being quiet, direct children to listen to what they hear during a specified time. The child who can name the most sounds is the winner.

Make a sound mystery station. Using everyday materials, record the sounds they make. Have students guess which materials make which sounds.

Storytelling

Attend story hours at local libraries.

Invite a storyteller into your class or day care center. Look online or inquire at your library about local storytelling guilds (google storytelling and your city or state for suggestions). Professional storytellers most often charge for their work, but members of a guild are often working up to professional grade and will come for free to get the practice with an audience.

Invite grandparents and other community members in to read to children so that they hear a variety of voices.

Become a storyteller (more on this in Chapter 7).

Have children listen to stories from professional storytellers. Many are available on YouTube. (See additional resources that follow in Websites to Save and Explore.)

Set aside time every day for storytelling by the children (age 4 and older). Provide a general prompt and then have children volunteer to tell a story based on the prompt. Here is another method for encouraging storytelling.

Encourage respect and good listening skills, and allow children to ask questions after the story is over.

Encourage interaction during storytelling or reading sessions by asking kids to add the sound effects. Very young children can add animal sounds, foot stomps, and hand claps to the story at the appropriate times. Older preschool children can take some tips from Foley artists—the folks who add the everyday sounds to a film. They use three main categories of sound—feet, cloth, and props. Have children experiment with various materials to create different sounds—jello or hand soap in a Ziploc bag; cornstarch in a leather pouch; big clunky shoes; small items in an empty prescription bottle with a childproof cap; cellophane; different types of cloth (taffeta, vinyl, corduroy).

Reading Aloud

Read with panache (more on this in Chapter 7).

Choose books with rich and varied vocabulary, including onomatopoeia.

Have children listen to books and poetry read by the author or by professional actors. (See Websites to Save and Explore.)

Poetry and Nursery Rhymes

Recite poetry, especially nursery rhymes, on a regular basis. Encourage children to memorize poems. (This is easier than you might think—children’s brains are remarkably receptive to linguistic innovation from ages 2–6, much more so than adult brains. They really need to hear a short poem only three or four times to memorize it.)

Recommended Books: To Focus on Sound Vocabulary

Andreae, Giles. Cock-a-Doodle-Doo! Barnyard Hullaballoo. Illus. by David Wojtowycz. 2000. A collection of verses that introduce farm animals.

Andreae, Giles. Rumble in the Jungle. Illus. By David Wojtowycz. 2001. A collection of verses that introduce jungle animals.

Aylesworth, Jim. Cock-a-doodle-do, Creak, Pop-pop, Moo. Illus. by Brad Sneed. 2012. Rhymes about sounds heard on a farm, from a rooster’s crow to an owl’s goodnight call.

Crow, Kristyn. Cool Daddy Rat. Illus. by Mike Lester. 2008. A young rat tags along with his jazz-musician father around the big city. Crow’s blog explains jazz scatting, with video examples: http://kristyncrow.blogspot.com/2009/09/cool-daddy-rat-fun-with-scat.html

Dillon, Leo, and Dillon, Diane. Rap a Tap Tap: Here’s Bojangles—Think of That! 2002. The dancing of famous tap dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson described in illustrations and rhyme.

Joosse, Barbara. Roawr! Illus. by Jan Jutte. 2009. When Liam hears a loud roar in the night, he must jump into action to protect his sleeping mother from a hungry bear that looks a lot like his teddy bear. Barbara Joosse reads Roawr! at http://us.penguingroup.com/static/html/podcast/clips/9780399247774read.mp3

Lach, William. Can You Hear It? 2006. CD and book introduce classical music and musical instruments by pairing them with works from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Martin, Jr., Bill, and Archambault, John. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. Illus. by Lois Ehlert. 1989. A rhythmic alphabet chant about what happens when all the letters of the alphabet try to race up a coconut tree.

Martin, Jr., Bill. Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? Illus. by Eric Carle. 1991. Zoo animals from polar bear to walrus make their sounds for each other, and children imitate the sounds for the zookeeper.

Nascimbeni, Barbara. Animals and Their Families. 2012. Introduces three dozen animals from around the world, including the sounds they make, where they live, and what they eat.

Odanaka, Barbara. Smash! Mash! Crash! There Goes the Trash! 2006. A rhyming imitation of the sights and sounds of the neighborhood on trash day.

Shea, Bob. Dinosaur vs. Bedtime. 2008. With a roar, a little red dinosaur takes on a pile of leaves, a bowl of spaghetti, and bath time, but bedtime is too big a challenge.

Van Laan, Nancy. Possum Come A-Knockin’. Illus. by George Booth. 1992. A cumulative tale in verse about a mysterious stranger that interrupts a country family’s daily routines.

5.5 Two Principles for Multiliteracy Instruction in the Prereading Stage

The most important part of multiliteracy instruction from infancy forward is to treat it as play for the child. Play is one of the most important activities in children’s lives. In play, they imitate adult behaviors, explore their environment, test their motor abilities, and learn to manage their emotions. As Margaret Meek reminds us, “If reading looks like play to a child, it will be taken seriously” (1982, p. 35).

When our elder daughter, Emily, who has Down syndrome, was almost 3 years old, her therapists told us that while they were very proud of her knowledge of how to handle books—she oriented them correctly and had developed the fine motor skills to carefully turn the pages—we needed to get her to play with something other than books. My husband and I were puzzled—after all, our favorite toys were books, so why shouldn’t hers be as well? But we dutifully got her a kitchen set and dug out some of the dolls she didn’t like to play with. She approached the kitchen and explored all of its features. Then she noticed that it had a high chair incorporated into it, so she picked up a doll, put her in the high chair, and got a book to read to her!

Her therapists were frustrated, but we saw this as a display of temperament as well as a preference for visual rather than tactile stimuli, which continued to be the case throughout all of her schooling. To give another example of this preference, after her first year of preschool, I placed a chart of the signed alphabet on the wall at her eye level when she was sitting, and over the course of a summer, she sat in front of it and taught herself the letter signs from the chart—a pretty remarkable feat for a 3-year-old!

While her teachers tried various methodological interventions, Emily continues to learn best from independent interaction with books and other visual input, rather than direct instruction or motor learning. Even at the age of 21, she continues to learn visually by using the close captioning feature on her DVDs to develop her reading vocabulary. The important thing to notice here is that she has consistently approached each of these activities as play.

Our second daughter, Blair, did not display the same interest in books. She is very active and excels in gross motor activities and interpersonal communication. As a young child, she would sit still for a book or a DVD just long enough to get a sense of the characters and the setting, and then she would be off to enact her own version of a story. Her toybox was thus full of dolls, puppets, flannel boards, dress-up clothes, and props rather than books.

The takeaway lesson of this tale of two sisters: Pay attention to how a child plays and what she likes to play with, and incorporate books, stories, and activities that respond to her interests.

The second most important part of literacy instruction from the very beginning is real-world motivation. In order for a child to want to learn to read, literacy must have a meaningful context. You don’t make grocery lists so that you become a better writer or reader; you make grocery lists so that you have the ingredients you need to make a week’s worth of meals. Children don’t write an e-mail to Grandma so that they can become a better writer or reader; they write so that they can share their day with her or tell her what they want for their birthday. Children don’t read Where the Wild Things Are to become better readers; they read it because it’s an entertaining story that helps them understand and manage difficult emotions. And according to Bruno Bettelheim, they ask for a book again and again because something about it is helping them learn and work through unconscious conflicts, as we noted in Chapter 4 (Bettelheim, 1976). You get the idea: You read and write for reasons that extend far beyond exercising the ability to read and write. Children need this sort of motivation—that reading and writing are useful tools to get them something they want—in order to become interested in learning to read and write.

To sum up, then, a few principles should guide all of your interventions in establishing a meaningful multiliteracy environment for prereaders:

Activities and materials should be varied so that different temperaments are honored and engaged.

Literacy instruction should be presented as play.

Explicit literacy activities should be embedded in their natural contexts.

References

Coats, K. (2013). Children's literature & the developing reader. Electronic Version. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/