Teaching Your Baby to Be Smart
Here are some guidelines on teaching your baby to be smart – if that is an interest of yours:
You’ve read a great deal about how to help keep your baby safe before birth. Just keep it up!
Learn and do what you can about baby-safe childbirth procedures and things like baby-proofing your home, well baby check-ups and vaccinations, and baby safety; and, keep you and your home safe.
Treat your baby gently and lovingly; and hold him or her often. Think warmly and and lovingly about your baby.
Try to protect your baby from yelling and bad moods – including yours! Everyone has bad moods. Just minimize their impact and intensity. A good way sometimes, is to have someone else take a turn with the baby.
Talk to your baby often; play gentle, melodic music for your baby; if you are musical, sing to your baby; while your baby is awake, play responsive, interactive games with your baby; and read poetry, fun children’s stories, books you like, and rhyming children’s stories like Dr. Seuss and Bill Peet books to your baby. If you can, have your baby’s father do these things also.
It may astound you to learn that you can begin all this effectively – in the last trimester – before your baby is born!
After your baby is born, you can combine these things with holding your baby in your lap – combining love and light together.
You can begin to watch your baby and his or her responses when you play; and show your baby the children’s books as you read.
One of the best early views babies get of the rest of their world is by being carried in such a way that they can see over your shoulder.
And, just like a language instructor, you can begin to show your baby the things in her or his world and let your baby know what these things are called.
If your baby is born “healthily organized” – which is what most of this article covers; and you continue reading to and talking to your baby from birth to the age of two or three years, your baby is very likely to be mentally very competent and to learn well and easily – the rest of his or her life!
Fortunately, you do not have to do it all! Fathers, grandparents, good children and baby sitters, and even good day care providers can do it too.
And, thirty to minutes to an hour a day on most days is enough to make a big difference!
When you can do it yourself, you can hold your baby in your lap, cuddle your baby, play with your baby, and get to know your baby. And, your baby gets to know you, your values, and much of how you think! It can also be fun to read books to your baby that you liked as a young child – as it can with newer children’s books you like.
Once your baby is two to three years old and already enjoys books and being read to, the best way to teach him or her to read is to get a tutor who has been a Montessori teacher to teach your child phonics using their method. It may take longer if you start closer to two years old; but whether it takes three months or fourteen months, it generally works well.
It probably also helps, between when your baby is between nine months and twelve months old, to make large, printed word cards for your baby to see with his or her name, favorite things like “Teddy Bear” and “jam”, and the twenty most common words: “the, of, it, is, they, was, you, are,” etc. All you need to do is show your baby the word and say what it is. It definitely helps your baby to learn to read more easily later.
Absolutely do not ask your child to tell you what a card says or which card is a particular word! Never! The method works superbly without it. At best it’s a waste of time. At worst, it can take the fun out of it for both of you. Why jeopardize something that works by just continuing to do it?
However, it is valuable and a cause for celebration if your child asks you to identify a word or make a new word. If you are both in a good mood, you can even ask if there is a word they would like to have you identify or have you make. And, it is fun if your child volunteers to identify a card and is right. But, your child will learn more easily later even if he or she doesn’t.
Also, continue to spend at least ninety percent of your time reading books to your child. Although the word cards are valuable, listening to you read a favorite story is much more fun – and much more valuable.
Once your child can read, and before, children’s sections in bookstores and public libraries are great sources of books.
And, once your child can read stories at third to fourth grade level – just at or above the level it takes to read the Bill Peet books, for example, they can begin to read about the world online on the World Wide Web – if you show them how to find the things that interest them.
