Education Opportunities
Why Toddlers' Vocabulary Grows Quickly
Repetition, Challenging Words May Lead to Boom in Toddlers' Vocabulary
By Miranda Hitti
WebMD Medical News
Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD
Aug. 3, 2007 -- Children's vocabulary often booms in the second year of life, and new research may show how that happens.
Bob McMurray, PhD, of the University of Iowa's psychology department tackled the topic of toddlers' talk. He didn't chat with kids or their parents. Instead, McMurray created a mathematical model to identify the factors that prompt kids' word spurts.
McMurray considered the 2,000 most frequently spoken words of the English language. The list includes easy words and more challenging ones.
McMurray theorizes that there's a tipping point at which children's vocabulary typically takes off.
According to McMurray, kids don't necessarily reach that tipping point by learning one word, then the next, and then another. Rather, it's a matter of learning a mix of words at once -- including simple and not-so-simple words -- and repeating them.
"Children are going to get that word spurt guaranteed, mathematically, as long as a couple of conditions hold," Murray says in a University of Iowa news release.
"They have to be learning more than one word at a time, and they must be learning a greater number of difficult or moderate words than easy ones," McMurray explains. "Using computer simulations and a mathematical analysis, I found that if those two conditions are true, you always get a vocabulary explosion."
McMurray's findings appear in an article in the journal Science.
Eating Healthy Food Aids Learning
From Shereen Jegtvig, Your Guide to Nutrition. FREE Newsletter. Sign Up Now!
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Help Your Children Eat Better
Is good nutrition important for good learning? In a word, yes. Research has shown that children who regularly ate breakfast had better standardized test scores, better behavior, and were less hyperactive than children who skipped breakfast. When comparing low glycemic index (GI) breakfasts to high GI breakfasts eaten by 9- to 12-year-old children, research also shows that children who eat high GI breakfasts (sugary breakfasts) tend to eat more at lunch.
Breakfast Is Important
What makes a good breakfast for children? One good example would be an egg, a slice of whole grain toast with nut butter, a piece of fruit and a glass of low-fat milk. Tofu, lean meat and whole grain cereals are also good choices at breakfast. The protein and fiber from the whole grains will keep your child satisfied until lunch time.
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Try to avoid giving your child sugary breakfast cereals, white-flour pancakes and syrup -- all of which will leave your child hungry and tired half way through the morning. If your child tends to get hungry in the middle of the morning no matter what, send an apple, whole grain crackers, nuts and cheese snacks rather than sugary cookies or white-flour crackers.
School Lunches
Most schools try to provide nutritious lunches for children, but a tour through your local school's cafeteria might show a lot of junk. Many schools offer fast food, greasy pizzas, French fries and other poor-quality foods alongside the usual lunch selections.
One high school in Appleton, Wisconsin replaced their regular poor-quality school lunches with healthy fresh foods at lunch with water as the main beverage. The changes resulted in improved behavior from the students and zero truancies.
Eating healthy at lunch will help keep your child's mind sharp and ready to learn all afternoon. Convincing schools to change their lunches might take a lot of effort, but there are other things you can do, such as teach your kids the importance of eating nutritious foods. Hopefully with your help they will choose healthier salads and vegetables instead of French fries, and water instead of soda. Another option is to send lunch with your kids. Hearty soups, salads, fruits, and sandwiches with whole grains can all be packed in insulated containers to stay hot or cold.
After School Snacks
Even with a great breakfast and healthy lunch, a light after-school snack is nice to refuel a kid's body before play or study time. A handful of nuts and an apple is perfect, or maybe a snack tray of vegetables and dips. Even a healthy version of a PB & J will satisfy picky kids. Keep chips, sugary sodas, pastries and candy out of the house. As the Oxford study shows, sugary and high glycemic index foods just make kids hungrier.
Life-Long Health Means Good Nutrition
Children who eat healthy foods will be more likely to make better food and nutrition choices as adults. Unfortunately, studies show that the opposite is also true -- overweight children tend to become overweight adults.
Teach your children about healthy foods. Here are some tips to help:
· Read over the different food pyramids and ask your kids to pick out some favorite foods from each food group.
· Have them help you plan a meal that includes a healthy serving of protein, a vegetable or two, and a healthy fruit for dessert.
· For young kids, make a chart to keep track of all the fruits and vegetables they eat (we need at least five servings of fruits and veggies every day).
· Snack time can be more fun if you try different recipes and snack ideas together with your kids.
Teaching your children to how to have a healthy diet will have a bigger impact if you set the example. Eat right, get some exercise, and make a healthy lifestyle a family affair.
Sources: Murphy JM, Wehler CA, Pagano ME, Little M, Kleinman RE, Jellinek MS. "Relationship Between Hunger and Psychosocial Functioning in Low-Income American Children." Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, February, 1998.
Warren JM, Henry CJ, Simonite V. "Low Glycemic Index Breakfasts and Reduced Food Intake in Preadolescent Children." Pediatrics, November 2003.
Steinberger J, Moran A, Hong CP, Jacobs DR, Sinaiko AR. "Adiposity in childhood predicts obesity and insulin resistance in young adulthood." Journal of Pediatrics, April 2001.
Understanding Autism - the Basics
What Is Autism?
Autism isn't a disease, it's a symptom. It ranges in severity from a handicap that limits an otherwise normal life to a devastating disability requiring institutional care.
Autism is one of the most common developmental disabilities. Including the milder form of autism known as pervasive developmental disorder or PDD, autism affects more than six out of every 1,000 children.
Children with autism have trouble communicating. They have trouble understanding what other people think and feel. This makes it very hard for them to express themselves either with words or through gestures, facial expressions and touch.
An autistic child who is very sensitive may be greatly troubled -- sometimes even pained -- by sounds, touches, smells or sights that seem normal to others.
Autistic children may have repeated body movements such as rocking or hand flapping. They may have unusual responses to people, attachments to objects, resistance to change in their routines and/or aggressive or self-injurious behavior. At times they may seem not to notice people, objects or activities in their surroundings. Some children with autism also develop seizures, in some cases not until adolescence.
Many autistic people are mentally retarded, although most people with PDD have normal or even above-average intelligence. In contrast to mental retardation alone, which is characterized by relatively even skill development, people with autism show uneven skill development. They may have problems in certain areas, especially the ability to communicate and relate to others. But they may have unusually developed skills in other areas, such as drawing, creating music, solving math problems or memorizing facts. For this reason, they may test higher -- perhaps even in the average or above-average range -- on nonverbal intelligence tests.
Autism typically appears during the first three years of life. Some children show signs from birth. Others seem to develop normally at first, only to slip suddenly into symptoms when they are 18 to 36 months old. Autism is four times more common in boys than in girls. It knows no racial, ethnic, or social boundaries. Family income, lifestyle or educational levels do not affect a child's chance of having autism.
Some of the different types of autism include:
· Autistic disorder. This is what most people think of when they hear the word "autism." It refers to problems with social interactions, communication and imaginative play in children younger than 3 years.
· Asperger's syndrome. These children don't have a problem with language -- in fact, they tend to score in the average or above-average range on intelligence tests. But they have the same social problems and limited scope of interests as children with autistic disorder.
· Pervasive developmental disorder or PDD -- also known as atypical autism. This is a kind of catchall category for children who have some autistic problems but who don't fit into other categories.
· Rett's disorder. Known to occur only in girls, Rett's children begin to develop normally. Then they begin to lose their communication and social skills. Beginning at the age of 1 to 4 years, repetitive hand movements replace purposeful use of the hands.
· Childhood disintegrative disorder. These children develop normally for at least two years, and then lose some or most of their communication and social skills.
What Causes It?
Autism has more than one cause. Because autism runs in families, most researchers think that certain combinations of genes may predispose a person to autism. It's currently thought that there may be several different causes of autism. This suggests that there may be several different subtypes of autism.
When a pregnant woman is exposed to certain drugs or chemicals during pregnancy, her child is more likely to be autistic. These risk factors include the use of alcohol and the use of antiseizure drugs during pregnancy. In some cases, autism has been linked to untreated phenylketonuria (called PKU, an inborn metabolic disorder caused by the absence of an enzyme), rubella (German measles) and celiac disease (an inability to tolerate gluten in grains).
Exactly why autism happens isn't clear. Research suggests that it may arise from physical problems in parts of the brain that interpret sensory input and process language. Imbalances in brain chemicals also appear to play a role.
Researchers have no evidence that a child's psychological environment -- such as how caregivers treat the child -- causes autism.
SOURCES: Parker S, Zuckerman, B and Augustyn M. (editors). Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics: A Handbook for Primary Care, Lippincott, 2005.
