Utah Valley Pediatrics strives to keep parents up to date on the latest health topics and advisories. Our newsletter covers medicine changes and news, pediatric news, seasonal and age specific topics and what’s new at Utah Valley Pediatrics.
Archives
Spring 2009
Vol. 3 Issue 1
Medicine Changes and News
Does Your Child Really Need Vitamins?
Federal Court Finds That Vaccines Did Not Cause Autism
Pediatric News
Couch Potatoes Have Trouble Eating Healthy Later
Seasonal and Age Specific
Playing it Safe: How to Avoid Injuries
What's New at UVP
The Payson Office Has Moved to a New Building
Contacts
Kevin Moffitt
Administrator
801-373-8930
Shalise Law
Manager
801-373-8930
Quick Links
Toddler Gestures
Educators have known for a while that children who enter kindergarten with a bigger vocabulary tend to do better throughout their entire school career. Parents who want to increase their child's vocabulary have been encouraged to read and talk to their child frequently. However, recently researchers have discovered one more thing that parents might be able to do to help increase vocabulary. It seems that gestures play an important role in language learning.
Long before toddlers learn to talk, they become experts at conveying their meaning through gestures like pointing, waving, and clapping. Researchers have found that these gestures are an important precursor to talking. Toddlers who were more skilled at communicating with gestures at 14 months old had a larger vocabulary as they entered kindergarten.
Researchers counted the number of gestures parents used with their 14-month-old children. When the children reached age four and a half, the researchers tested the children's vocabulary and found that children of parents who gestured more had better vocabularies than children of parents who did not gesture.
Previous studies have confirmed that children from lower-income households tend to have smaller vocabularies. This study showed that parents of lower-income households tend to gesture less to their children than parents of upper-income households do.
Parents in the study were not teaching their children sign language; they were just using varied gestures to convey many meanings. The study suggests that helpful gestures include pointing up when talking about something that is up or above, pointing down when talking about something below, or flapping arms to imitate a bird. Parents also help children learn when they verbally confirm a child's gesture. If a child points to a chair, the parent can tell the child, "Yes, that’s a chair."
More research is needed to determine exactly what role gesturing plays in language learning. However, it seems clear that gesturing does help build vocabulary. So if you want to help your toddler learn, gesture!
For more information:
When toddlers point a lot, more words will follow
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