At this second stage, the two to four month old is becoming pleasurably engaged with the human world, showing a preference for Mommy or Daddy or other caregivers over the inanimate world or to all other sensations. A big, beautiful smile tells parents that the baby is fully engaged with them. Caregivers encourage the child to attend to sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and movement patterns by helping her become calm and comforted by rocking patterns, by types of touch - gentle, firm, tickly, or more of a squeeze - and by the quality and tone of their voices.
Sooner or later, they find the right formula for comforting and soothing their little guy or gal. If the baby is very fussy, maybe due to gas or other distress, it can be a little more challenging, and parents may seek help to find the right approach. Perhaps it involves walking with the baby or holding her with firm, gentle pressure. Various strategies can be worked out, but the baby comes to recognize the caregivers as the source of comfort and anticipates being soothed more and more, often searching them out in a room or getting "bright-eyed and bushy-tailed," so to speak, as the caregiver enters the room. Here is not only a source of nutrition and fun and play but a source of comfort as well.
Purposeful Emotional Interactions
Around eight months, there is a real back-and-forth communication, with the baby reaching, vocalizing, and smiling, and the parents responding back - we call this opening and closing circles of communication. Now, through his facial expressions, arm movements, leg movements, body posture, and different sounds that convey emotion, the baby is letting you know what he likes and doesn't like. He is learning to regulate his own environment - basically telling you to "shush" or to liven up a little bit. By attending to the parent's responses, the baby is beginning to get a sense that "I can make an impact on the world." A baby can now create a more pleasurable environment for himself through his influence on others. Teachers With ADD
Emotional Signaling and Shared Social Problem Solving
Between ten to twelve months and eighteen months, a toddler can engage in a continuous exchange of emotional signals with different expressions and more complex gestures and what we call shared social problem solving. She can direct a parent's attention to what she wants, whether it is to be picked up, hugged, or helped to retrieve a toy. To do this she uses a tone of voice and gestures arid expressions, and the parent responds with her voice, gestures, and expressions.
These developing skills increase a toddler's ability to create a more comfortable environment for herself. If she is feeling overloaded, she can now let a parent know this. She might hold her hands over her ears, or put them on Mommy's ears, or, even better, hold her hand over Mommy's mouth as though to say "Quiet." Not all toddlers can do this. Some will just get overloaded and cry, but even a simple anguished look is a signal to Morn or Dad or other caregivers to tone it down. The child who craves a lot of sensation may grab Dad by the hand for roughhousing or racing around the room together or take out a ball and start rolling it to Dad. She can clearly signal that she wants action, Without these skills, a child might just start running around the room knocking into things and be given an early label of hyperactivity.
Enhancing Engagement, Communication, and Attention
The Active Child
Many of the games we spoke about previously, such as "Modulation Games," give children a chance to give voice to their need for activity and action, while also learning to regulate, that is, to modulate down. Rather than random activity, active children can learn to engage with others and give structure to all their energy. Children who are sensory craving can enjoy a lot of activities, but these games help them channel their cravings into an interactive framework - in other words, playing with another child or parent.
The Underreactive Child
When a child seems self-absorbed the parent can take that as a signal to energize up. Sometimes such a child might offer a clue to initiate play. For instance, a child who is quietly pressing the buttons on the pop-up toy might look at a parent very gently and sheepishly as though to say, "Do you want to do it too?" A parent can pick up on the signal and get into a little game. Teachers With ADD
Not only are parents responding to the child's emotional signaling, helping to counterbalance the child's tendencies, but they are also strengthening the emotional bond that helps the child coordinate all his senses into focused activity. Warm emotions fuel the motor system to work harmoniously with the senses and create connections between all of the different areas of the mind and, we speculate, the different areas of the brain as well.
Emotions and Processing Difficulties
For the child who is very vocal and may be repeating some words already, it is easy to ignore any lack of visual-spatial skills they may have. For such children, you might take some toy or treat or something the toddler really loves and put it in a special place in the room with a little barrier in front of it. Then you can say, "Where is the truck?" and make a game out of it with an animated expression. Offer a hand to help the child so that he can proudly march over to the barrier and knock it down to get the toy. Then you can make the game a little more complex, putting three barriers around the room so that the child has to search behind all three to find out where their special toy or treat is hidden.
In all of this, the child's desire for that special toy or treat strengthens his visual-spatial processing skills. The child who before would look in only one spot can now look in three or four spots around the room and develop a sense of the whole room. He's beginning to become a "big-picture" thinker with a visual map of his world. Many verbal children with excellent memories tend to have a limited focus and need help in visualizing a whole scene. Games that create strong motivation, with favorite objects or competition, can broaden their range of attention at this early stage. To learn more, you can check out Teachers With ADD.
