On Sunday we were entertaining Leilani by reading a book. Since, we don\u2019t believe in cramming babies\u2019 heads with numbers and colors, we just show her the pictures and read the words to say something before flipping the page\u2014no repetition. The images and moving the pages captivate her more than the spoken words. We were reading the book that shows grandmothers doing things with their grandkids, for example walking, brushing, hugging, etc.<\/p>\n
Imagine our surprise when we read the word \u201cclapping\u201d and she immediately started clapping her hands. She was looking at the picture in the book, but it actually looks more like praying, so I don\u2019t think she was cued visually. We were both focused on the book, not her, so we weren\u2019t encouraging her, and we definitely didn\u2019t clap with our hands. We knew she could clap and she actually does it often, and we say \u201cclap\u201d in both English and German, so she knows the word. What\u2019s surprising is that this time she clapped in response to the word that was not directed at her.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, Leilani has another trick with clapping. For over a month I tried to show her how to clap. She didn\u2019t like me moving her hands for her, so we started out with her clapping my hand, and later she could do it by herself. Maybe I\u2019m just inventing motivations for her, but it does seem like she now claps specfically to get our attention. She knows it is an action we value, and we encourage the behavior by turning our attention to her when she does it. Actually, we prefer that type of call for attention much more than screaming or shrieking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Sunday we were entertaining Leilani by reading a book. Since, we don\u2019t believe in cramming babies\u2019 heads with numbers and colors, we just show her the pictures and read the words to say something before flipping the page\u2014no repetition….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/simplify-your-life.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}