Doman’s Wisdom
If to speak about development toddler it’s necessary to mention about Dr. Glenn Doman. Some years ago I was very impressed when I’d read about his work and The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential. They are famous for their work with brain-injured children and their work in early development for well children since 1940. He wrote lots of book about early development:
“How To Teach Your Baby To Read”, “How To Teach Your Baby Math”, “How To Teach Your Baby To Be Physically Superb”, “How To Give Your Baby Encyclopedic Knowledge”. I thought that if even simple communication and showing pictures to brain-injured children have such great effect on their developing and make them smarter than healthy children, with normal children it can have even greater result. The problem is that many parents think that their children are too small for learning and communication and don’t pay much attention to the early development.
Having some experience of developing my daughter I can say that it really works. Everything written by Glenn Doman is true. But at the same time I’m against blind following. It’s good to choose way of learning which the most appropriate to your child. Tastes differ. The same is with children. I like to combain different methods at the same time adding something my own.
The most important thing in developing is positive emotion. Any activities which make a child feel happy are good for brain. I can’t stop wonder possibility of small children learn so many things so easy when they are playing. It’s never late to start but… When the child is 5, 6 or more their brain has less chances to learn loads of information during such short period of time. Still they have better chances for foreign languages and other things than adults have. From the first days I spoke with my daughter like with adult (in good sense) shocking with this my mother-in-law. I always feel that Sophie understands every my explanation and I see great results of my efforts.
At the age of 6 month I started to show my daughter pictures. We watched lots of pictures and first it was hard for her to concentrate on watching the photos for long but very soon she became very interested in different pictures. Children are very close to nature so first of all they are interested in animals, flowers and natural scenery. They also like to see babies:) You can buy some sets of pictures or you can do it yourself. I took the most interesting for me pictures in the Internet. It can be something very attractive. Very soon I saw my Sophie has her favorite pictures. First she was attracted by photos of panda. When she was one year old she knew almost all animals. It confused some adults who were speaking with her because they knew nothing about koala and otter. Now she like little walking encyclopaedia:) When we have guests she likes to tell them that all caterpillars become butterflies.
We still love watching different pictures of Nature together. Sometimes she asks me to find something interesting for her.