Executive Function

Let’s talk about executive function. 🧠🧠🧠
Our brains have a lot going on simultaneously. Executive function helps us to plan, organize and complete tasks. Babies and toddlers are still developing their executive control, which means they will have difficulty shifting attention, maintaining focus for long periods of time, and following directions with more than one step.
This is important for us as parents to know, especially when we are helping our kids learn new things, like language.
Topics of talking and conversation should follow the CHILD’S attentional focus. Babies and young children’s limited executive functioning means that they will have a tough time shifting attention easily.
AND
Studies show that when a child is made to participate in something they’re not interested in, they are less likely to retain or learn those new words. .
So let’s say your kiddo is playing with a crinkly piece of wrapping paper. It is better to integrate yourself into that activity than to try to get their attention to build a tower of blocks together. This could mean describing how it sounds, taking turns crinkling it, using it to play peek-a-boo, making it into a ball and tossing it back and forth, talking about the pictures and colors on the paper, etc.
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Take home message:
Allow your topic and focus to be child-directed! Join them in what they are doing and talk about that. See if you can work those basic linguistic concepts into whatever activity has your child’s interest at that moment