How does the ability to communicate (from the very beginning) develop and what do storytelling games do with it
One of the most common query topics that come to children's specialists is speech. The most obvious problem is when the child is not speaking. Here is a year for him, but he is silent. Heâs already three, but he is still silent. And now it's five ... It's clear that something went wrong. There are less obvious problems that are actually also about speech. For example, a child does not study well. Why is a poor student? It turns out that when a teacher asks him a question, he cannot connect two words in response. Or for some reason the child has no friends. And it turns out that he simply does not imagine how to talk with peers at all. Well, not talking. And so on.
The most needed person here, as you know, is a speech therapist (and it is very important to get to a speech therapist if there is a suspicion that the development of speech has somehow gone wrong). Game therapists also work with this, because the ability to talk and negotiate develops along with the development of the game. To understand how this happens, let's start from the very beginning.
The development of speech begins at the moment when the child is born (some believe that even earlier). The child cannot yet say anything himself, but he is already listening attentively: his brain isolates from the speech of adults surrounding the individual sounds of the language they speak. Different languages ââhave different sounds. Some have a stress system, some have tones. When a child is born, he is not tuned to any particular language, but is ready for anyone to perceive. But he needs a statistical array from which he will single out individual sounds. Therefore, the task of mom is to immediately start talking. She bathes the child and tells him a nursery rhyme, gives a massage and recites a rhyme, shows him some shiny thing and tells what it is. At this point, by and large, it does not matter what mother says, the main thing is that she speaks a lot.
The child at this time has only one expressive means - this is a cry. When he wants to eat, he screams. When he is cold, he screams. When he is scared, he screams. Gradually, between the mother and the child, an alarm system is developed. The child screams slightly differently depending on the occasion, and the mother recognizes the intonation of the scream and responds to the need that this intonation expresses. The child discovers the possibility of communication - still very simple and utilitarian.
If for some reason speech stops at this level, and a few years later the child still cannot speak even at the level of individual sounds, then he communicates in the same way as a newborn - that is, he mainly screams. If motor skills allow, then he can still throw objects and fight. This is a form of communication. The cry of such a child can mean: "I'm tired," "my stomach hurts," "I'm scared," "I'm bored." If you teach him alternative communication - for example, with pictures (PECS) or gestures (Russian sign language, makaton), the childâs behavior is rapidly improving, because he has at his disposal a much more effective way to communicate his condition and his needs.
When a young child is very tired and exhausted, and when he himself does not really understand what he is feeling, he can regress to this form of communication. For example, if a small child is hysterical in the evening, this may mean that he is terribly tired during the day, and in fact he just needs to go to bed a little earlier than the moment when he usually falls into a tantrum. A tired and exhausted child does not need to be educated, explaining to him that he is behaving badly (at this moment he is objectively unable to behave better). You need to understand what overloaded him, and try to remove the extra load.
In the first two months of life, the child still has to learn to recognize the human face in the environment. He sees at this time very poorly (his vision is only being calibrated), so his face is such a letter T from his eyes and nose. By the age of two months, the child learns to detect eyes and nose in the surrounding reality and is very happy when he sees them: o-pa, this face, cool! He has what is called a revitalization complex: when he sees his motherâs face, he smiles, rejoices and, on the whole, becomes more active. This is the state "I am ready to communicate." The child signals: I want to communicate, let's talk! He still can not say anything and does not understand the speech addressed, but already feels that it is great to communicate. If by two months the child for some reason did not start reacting to the face like this (for example, he spent these two months in the hospital and almost did not communicate with him there), this is an early signal that the child may have some kind of disturbance or features autistic spectrum (or vision problems). You need to pay attention to this. Sometimes itâs enough just to make your face more interesting and noticeable - make faces, make funny sounds, just come up more often to the child and let him examine himself.
About three months later, the child begins to reproduce individual speech sounds - a, y, m. Until now, he has mainly been engaged in statistical analysis of speech, isolating sounds, and now he can reproduce some of them. At this moment, it would be nice for an adult to connect and support these sounds with a game: âouuuuuuuu - the plane is buzzing, mmmmuuuuuu - the cow is mooing!â The child in such games is not started by the plane or the cow (he still does not know what it is), but the fact itself that an adult communicates with him and has fun with him.
Having carefully examined the face, the child discovers that it is not the same all the time. It turns out that a person can be joyful or gloomy! The child begins to read facial expressions and distinguish emotions at the level of "positive or negative." Here, of course, a lot depends on how rich an adult's facial expressions are. If the mother frowns exaggeratedly, the child is easier to understand that she is angry. If she smiles out loud - itâs clear that sheâs funny. And if mom has almost no facial expressions, emotion recognition is much harder to master. To maintain interest in a person, you can do something interesting with him - for example, show yourself to a child with a clown nose, or draw something aqua-face on his face, or, again, make faces.
In the cerebral cortex, the areas responsible for the motor skills of the hands are located next to those responsible for speech, so when a child does something with his hands, the development of speech is also indirectly stimulated. At three months, you can already begin to touch surfaces with different tactile properties (smooth, fluffy, rough) and sort out beans.
From six to nine months, the child begins to add individual sounds that he has already mastered into syllables - that, ba, ma. This is babbling. At first, the child simply plays with sounds, and then they gradually begin to mean something specific - the desire to communicate, a need or some kind of external object. This is not a word, but already a symbolic designation with the help of sounds.
The fact that the mother continuously said something to the child the previous six months, begins to sprout: the child recognizes some words and understands their meaning. Another way of communication becomes available to him - gestures. Now mom can use simple gestures to communicate with her baby: nod, point a finger.
At this age, the child becomes interested in games with a climax (such as âby bumps, by bumps, into the hole - bang!â) He recognizes the familiar text and enthusiastically awaits the moment when there will be a âbangâ. Two things happen here. First, the child holds attention to speech. Secondly, he builds up tension in himself from expectation, so that later with a climax he joyfully release this tension. The child exercises in what will then allow him to listen attentively (and listen to the end) what the other person is saying.
At this stage, simple alternating games appear. Here the child throws the toy out of the crib, and here the mother returns it to its place, but he again throws it out, and so on in a circle. What it is? This is the simplest interaction model, an elementary game dialogue. My move, your move, my move, your move. The ability to alternate their actions with the actions of another person then allows the child to be in a dialogue - and play all the games where you have to take turns. If the mother supports such games, she supports the childâs desire for dialogue and interaction.
From nine months to a year, a child discovers the opportunity to imitate - the foundation on which the ability to learn anything rests. He imitates facial expressions, actions, sounds, tries to repeat simple babbling words for adults. He accumulates a passive vocabulary - he understands up to thirty words. Now the child already understands simple commands and requests and can fulfill them. You can ask him: where is mom, where is the doll, where is the nose?
If until now the game came from a child, and an adult tuned to it, or an adult played a child, and a child more or less passively participated in the game, now an adult can ask a simple game (let's jump, throw me a ball), and the child will will support. At a fairly simple level, a child and an adult become partners in the game: now each of them can add something to the game, because imitation has become available to both.
An important theme of games for this age period is the body. The child sits down, then gets up, begins to walk, takes different poses. Since he actively uses the body, his idea of ââthe body begins to be detailed. An important part of his vocabulary is the names of body parts. The refinement of perceptions of the body allows the child to localize his sensations. If he is hurt, he can show where it hurts. At this time, the child is interested in games with attention to different parts of the body. For example, you can ask the child to show parts of the body - on himself, on the doll, on the dog. You can play the goose, which nips the child for different parts of the body, or the butterfly, which sits on the handle, then on the leg, then on the nose.
At this age, the formation of concepts begins at the most elementary level. If a child uses the word av-av (dog), then he can apply it to his dog, neighbor's dog, unfamiliar street dog - and even the dog in the photo. By the year the child is ready to perceive not only the objects themselves, but also their image in the picture, he can already relate one to the other. Now itâs already possible for the child to start showing Malyshevâs cardboard books - hereâs the ball on the page, hereâs the bear, whereâs the doll?
The child is interested in looking at himself in the mirror, and he responds to his name. His self-consciousness begins to take shape. He begins to divide adults into friends and strangers; at this moment the fear of an unfamiliar adult appears.
Together with elementary concepts, an elementary understanding of cause-effect relationships appears. The child discovers that when you press the button, something happens. He can turn the lights on and off, and turn the music on and off. At this moment, toys on which there are buttons are relevant for him, and we must be given the opportunity to play enough of such toys, because this is the development of thinking.
Subtle movements become available to the child, and he can be given pyramids, laces and boards with inserts. On boards with inserts, visual-effective thinking develops - the child learns to correlate the insert with a hole by directly turning it in his hands. Hand manipulations indirectly stimulate the speech areas of the cortex - and the more diverse they are, the better. The use of tools becomes available to the child - now, for example, he can play a game where you have to tap not with your hand, but with a hammer.
Throughout the first year of life, the child exists in close symbiosis with his mother. This is an important period in many aspects, but the main task that the child faces in the first year is to learn how to be in close relationships. The main, most important activity for a child of the first year of life is communication with mom. If the relationship with mom is warm and safe (mom is nearby, she doesnât disappear unexpectedly, where she is, she is emotionally warm, she shows her love to her child), then the child has a basic attitude that itâs great to communicate, and close relationships are something something good and pleasant. A child with whom he spoke very little in his first year of life (for example, because he was in a childâs home) may close and lose his desire to make contact. Other aspects of its development will also suffer, because in the first year of life, the development of a child is especially strongly linked to interaction with an adult. While the child does not walk and crawl, he cannot even examine the environment himself â he needs an adult who will bring him and show him various interesting things. Physical contact (when a mother strokes a baby, hugs, holds in her arms) has vital significance in the first year - a child who is only fed in the institution, but not stroked or hugged, can literally die from a lack of love.
Communication between mother and child is supported by the fact that the child responds positively to it. Mom approached the child - the child smiled, mother is pleased to come up to him again and that he smiled again. An autistic child does not give such feedback, and the motherâs desire to communicate with the child begins to fade. A vicious circle is created - the less feedback the child gives, the less stimulation he receives, and the more his speech and communication development is inhibited. The mother of an autistic child has a more difficult task than usual: she needs to persistently continue to communicate with the child, despite the fact that he hardly supports her in this.
When the child begins to walk confidently, the initial symbiosis with his mother breaks. He is torn physically - the child can now move independently, and after that he is torn psychologically - the child begins to assert his self, becoming stubborn and intractable. The ability to move independently allows the child to rush to interesting objects and examine them, without waiting for the help of an adult (and regardless of his approval or disapproval). For a while he is captured by objects, and attraction to them overpowers the requests and instructions of adults. Since the child has the opportunity to do something dangerous or destructive, prohibitions also appear. If there are too many prohibitions, there is a risk of suppressing the childâs craving for research, raising shyness and indecision. On the other hand, since the child is already capable of potentially dangerous actions, but still does not calculate their consequences, it is important that he firmly grasp the word "impossible." It is not good when there are a lot of prohibitions, but some things should definitely be unacceptable. For example, you must not touch the stove with your hands; you must not run out onto the road. The rules primarily exist in order to guarantee the safety of the child, and the mother, who firmly insists on them, creates the feeling for the child that he is under reliable protection. The environment at this time needs to be adapted to the fact that an enthusiastic researcher is running around it, and the dangerous thing that can be removed from the access zone is better to simply remove it from the access zone than to prohibit touching it.
Games of this period are distance-setting games. Here the little sparrows scattered, and here they hurry back to the nest. Here the car drove far, far, and here it returns to the garage. This is about distance in interaction. The child runs away from his mother to feel freedom, and returns when he is afraid of one. In the end, he needs to find a distance where he will not be too dependent, and sufficiently protected. The successful solution of this problem is the first stage in the development of the ability to agree: the child must accept the existence of the rules and learn to act in light of their existence.
From a year to two, a child learns with what he discovered during the crisis of one year. He explores what he can and cannot do, where it is dangerous to be, and where it is safe. At this moment, he may, for example, begin to be afraid of stairs, because he suddenly becomes aware: you can fall off the stairs!
Having realized himself as an individual, the child begins to strive to do everything on his own. At this time, the environment should be designed to support the desire to act on one's own. For example, itâs good if the child has a small jug in his access, from where he can pour himself water in a glass, and clothes and shoes that allow the child to dress independently (that is, socks are pulled effortlessly, the clasp on the dress in front and not on the back etc.). âSamâ is a very important word for a child at this time. If you support him in this, the foundation is laid for the development of an independent, confident and proactive person. And if an adult stubbornly does everything for the child (because itâs faster than waiting for the child to cope), the child after some time refuses the desire for independence and resigns himself to the fact that the adult will do everything himself anyway; what is called learned helplessness is being formed.
Starting from the year the child can already turn to the adult for help and support (bruised knee, scratched, saw a terrible dog - running to his mother); on the other hand, he also wants to share positive experiences - he shows his toys to adults, demonstrates that he can, and seeks approval and praise. Soon, the child assumes another role - now he himself consoles, helps, treats. This is the very beginning of positive social interaction. At this time, the childâs interest in contact with another person reaches a new level: now communication for him is not only an exchange of positive emotions, but also mutual assistance and mutual support. Later, on the basis of this experience, the child will master cooperation and cooperation.
At this time, the child begins to talk a lot and constantly demand the attention of his mother, because he has a lot of impressions (everything is new and interesting!) And a great desire to share them. The child is outraged if the mother does not suddenly communicate with him, but with someone else, and he does not allow her to talk on the phone for a long time. For adults, this is a difficult period, because the childâs need for communication often far exceeds the willingness of adults to be in dialogue. At this point, adults begin to form an idea of ââthe child as a bothersome creature that needs to be neutralized with toys so that it does not bother with its need to communicate. Actually, this attitude of adults is the main brake on the development of speech in a child.
The vocabulary of a child is enriched with nouns and adjectives. He discovers the properties of objects and begins to distinguish among them those that he likes or dislikes. He has distinct preferences in food, clothing. He can become moody or squeamish. The word âmineâ appears - the child begins to appropriate the objects that he sees around him: my hat, my house, my cat.
An important topic of games of this period is domestic story games where the child takes care of the toy: feeds it, takes it for a walk, puts it to bed. For the first time, a child tries on the role of one who takes care of another himself. The child may have a beloved plush animal, which he seeks to carry with him everywhere. This beast is a close friend of the child, and the child feels better when he is with him. Thus, the child overcomes the anxiety that he experiences by acting independently of his mother.
Starting from the year, the process of preparing the hand for writing begins - the child can already be little taught to use pencils, crayons, paints (still at the level of doodles), you can play simple finger games with him. The child begins to master the sets - he builds rows and pairs of small objects, puts them in piles, arranges them in boxes. This is a simple classification model. Based on this game, the child then proceeds to the organization of phenomena through concepts and generalizing words. An idea of ââthe stability and constancy of objects is formed, and the child likes this constancy. He insists on observance of everyday and playing rituals, he is annoyed by the violation of integrity (cutting of nails and hair, in particular), rearrangement of furniture can cause a violent protest.
At the same time, other children become interested in the child. There is still no true interaction at this time, but if the child comes to the site where the children rush and they have fun, then he becomes infected with emotions, rushes and has fun with others. The child has a general attitude that the company is good, great. Children of this age can play with one pile of dice, but each will build his own tower for now.
After two years, the child appears in the speech the pronoun "I". By the way, itâs interesting that first âmineâ, and then âmeâ. First, the child is aware of the objects and his attitude towards them, and then he discovers himself as a subject. The child begins to form an image of himself. He proudly demonstrates what he can do - "here, look, this I have done." The nature of the assignment is also changing. If until now âmineâ was what is in the childâs living space, now âmineâ is what belongs to him. A child who is still willingly sharing becomes greedy.
Awareness of roles appears. This is the very beginning of the role-playing game. The child portrays family members: he pretends to smoke like a dad, cooks like a mom, puts on glasses - like a grandmother. He depicts familiar animals (cat, dog) and representatives of familiar professions (primarily doctors, because this is the most exciting topic). The childâs impressions are reflected in his game, and for the first time he begins to use the game as a way to cope with fear. What the child has played becomes for him more intimate, familiar, manageable - and less intimidating.
The plot becomes available to the child. In scribbles, which until now were completely shapeless, an image can stand out. A child can create a fantasy world in which his toys operate. He is already ready to accept fairy tales: you can read simple tales with him, play them on toys, and invent your own. Writing stories becomes available to the child. He develops imagination, and now he can imagine that something terrible is in the dark. A fear of the dark appears.
The child begins to play with the rules. On the one hand, he watches over adults so that they do everything right, and on the other hand, he likes to joke, deliberately breaking the rules. A lot of fun, for example, when socks are on the hands, and mittens are on the feet. At the previous stage, he learned to follow the rules; he is now practicing not to follow them on purpose. In later life, he will need both one and the other: the first for successful socialization, and the second in order to be a happy person.
Two children of this age can already play common toys together and interact a bit in this game - for example, roll cars together on the same railway. At this time, for example, you can visit a group of a short stay in kindergarten: there a child can gain experience interacting with peers and gradually learns to be in a large company and without a mother. The year of visiting such a group makes it much easier for the child to enter the younger group of a full day, because the situation for the child is already familiar, and other children are also familiar.
About three years, another age crisis sets in. Having realized his subjectivity, the child begins to contrast his desires with the desires of adults. First, he determines his desire through denial, refusing to do what adults offer. âLet's go for a walk!â Says Mom. âI wonât go!â The child says. He plays with the ability to oppose his will to the will of another person. If in a crisis of one year the child resisted, because he was attracted to himself by environmental objects, now resistance comes from within the child. For a one-year-old child, âI wonât goâ is âI wonât go, because there is such a tree, a flower, pebbles,â and for a three-year-old child, âI wonât goâ is âI wonât go because I want to decide what I will do.â It is important for him to start with denial, because if he does what his mother said, he will not be able to understand whose desire follows - his or her. I went for a walk because I wanted to, or because they told me so?
This is a difficult period for both mom and baby. Itâs very difficult for mother to cope with a child who suddenly became uncontrollable again, and itâs difficult for a child because he is torn between two desires: on the one hand, he wants to make choices and manage his actions, and on the other hand, he really wants them to admired, approved, praised.
This is the second free will match in the development of the child, where it is important that none of the participants come out victorious. If an adult manages to prevail and force the child to abandon his desires and intentions, the child will again be controlled, but his will will be broken and he will lose contact with his desires for a long time, becoming an obedient performer. For those around him, after that he will be very comfortable, but he will feel very unhappy.
Not the best situation is when the child manages to prevail over his mother.This often happens in families where the mother is a soft, kind, compliant woman, and the child is very temperamental and characteristic. If the child affirms the priority of his desire, then he acts only as he wants: he does what he wants, behaves as he wants. Mom, in turn, adapts to the desires of the child and organizes to him what he himself has chosen. In family conditions, such an existence can be maintained for some time, but when a child enters an educational institution, it becomes a very difficult and traumatic experience for him. He is completely unprepared for an environment where you canât follow your desires all the time. Even games with rules can be very difficult for such a child, because he is ready to play only according to the rules that he himself has chosen.
A favorable solution to the crisis involves finding a compromise between oneâs own desires and those of others. The child accepts the reality that not all his desires can be realized (and not at any moment), and the mother accepts the reality that the child now has his own preferences and his own opinion, which must also be taken into account. Say, now, going with a child for a walk, she needs to ask exactly where he would like to take a walk: to the playground, or to the forest, or to look at the windows? The childâs opinion should not be decisive (mom always has a veto), but his desires should already have a certain meaning. This is another step in the development of the ability to negotiate: now the child is aware of his desires - and he knows that they can be opposed to the desires and requirements of other people.
Playing at this time is good at giving the child the opportunity to choose. For example, sets with flat clothes - choose a suit for a doll, for a bear. Playing the store is good too. Want to buy a carrot? I do not want! And what you want? I want an apple! Great, you have a coin.
The ability to talk about oneâs desires, which is very important for building relationships with other people in the future, begins to take shape at this time.
From the age of three, the child's activity becomes productive. He wants to create something. Now he doesnât just carry a brush along the sheet, but creates a picture (though he can start to draw one, but in the end he will get something completely different - he can change his mind several times in the process). Many children go to kindergarten at this time, and there their readiness for productive activity creates favorable conditions for mastering the very first stage of the educational program. With three-year-olds in the garden they draw, sculpt, make applications. They master elementary forms - lines, circles, squares. A child who at the previous stages of development did not accept the rules and did not learn to follow them will be very difficult at this time, because the teacher will insist that the child remain within the framework of the assignment.
Children still play quite independently of each other, but there are already situations when several children play the same story at the same time. For example, five people simultaneously represent themselves as doctors, they all gather in the same zone (the one where the doctorâs sets are) and treat each of their teddy bears. An adult at this time coordinates the children so that they successfully share the toys with each other and all is enough. He is engaged in the distribution of roles: come on, Vasya, you will treat the bruises, and you, Masha, will catch a cold. This is a preliminary step before a collective game, when several children are in contact with the same adult at the same time around the same plot. As time passes, children come to the conclusion that they can interact with each other too,but constructive interaction between children does not arise in itself - it needs to be taught.
If a child in some situation does not know what to say correctly, then by default he does not say anything. If Petya snatches a toy from Vasyaâs hands, this first of all means that he does not have a ready-made phrase for such a situation. (Secondly, this suggests that when he wrests something from his motherâs hands, his mother gives him a readiness, and heâs used to it.) So, the teacher and the child approach another child and say: â Petya, please give Masha a ball! âIf you are lucky, Petya gives a ball. If you are not lucky, and Petya is sorry, the teacher says: âYou see, Petya is playing with this ball himself. Letâs go and look for another one for you. â These are the very ready-made phrases that then become part of the child's communicative repertoire. The second level of difficulty is when the teacher approaches Masha with Petya and says: âTell me - please give the ball!â"And Masha repeats the familiar phrase:" Please give the ball! "Then everything follows the same algorithm. The third level of difficulty is when the teacher tells Petya: âPetya, look, Masha really wants this particular ball. Letâs play a little bit, and then a little bit? â- but at three years old children usually donât succeed because they live in the present.
Since the ability to use such ritual phrases per se does not arise, it can often be observed that the child, even at the age of five, does not yet know what to say instead of tearing the object out of his hands. Some children survive without this skill until adolescence. This is not because their development itself is distorted, but because the surrounding adults do not have time to teach them the rituals of social interaction.
Interaction is one of the topics that appear in the role-playing game of a three-year-old child. Now he is interested in not only individual roles, but also what is happening between two people with different roles. Itâs more interesting for a child to treat a mother or a teacher than a bear, because an adult can assume the complementary role of a patient. In the same period, interest in doll houses and sets of figures for the plot game flourishes, because they can play the interaction of people among themselves. If the child saw a pattern of social interaction, then he can then repeatedly play it in the game. It is not necessary that he himself do the same; but he learns that this happens, and that in certain situations, people behave in this way.
About four years old children ripen to collective play. They are already striving for game interaction, but since the children are still not very good at negotiating, there are many conflicts in the collective game. An adult who organizes the game assumes the role of a moderator - he resolves conflicts between children, simultaneously explaining to them exactly which phrases should be used in one or another case. A child goes through many conflicts with peers and gets the experience of being offended. At this moment, moral ideas begin to take shape - still very simple, at the âgood-evilâ level. Gradually, the child comes out of life at the present moment, and on the one hand, he is already a little oriented to the future (he knows, for example, when he will be taken from the garden, and can calmly wait for it),and on the other hand, it takes into account previous events. A child who used to quickly forget the bad can now become touchy and vindictive.
Interaction with a peer in terms of difficulty is higher than interaction with an adult. Firstly, an adult is more inclined to give in and play along with the child, if possible (he does not mind). Secondly, in an adult, the communicative skill is usually still significantly higher, and he seeks to resolve the conflict situation without offending the child. The other child does not have such constraining factors: he is more likely to hit, call, call, take away the toy. Therefore, in interaction with peers, the child begins to develop the ability to fend for himself. At this point, problems are manifested in children who have unsuccessfully gone through the crises of one year and three years: if they lose the free-fight, it is very difficult for them to defend their borders, and these children will often be offended. In practice, it looks like thisthat the child comes from the garden and says: âI donât want to go to the garden, Petya offends me there!â Sometimes the child is transferred to another group - but there is some new Petya there. Such children need to specifically learn to leave the role of the victim and take on some other, strong role: to play the tiger, lion, dragon, queen.
By the age of five, children who have trained to play together develop sufficient co-operation skills in order to collectively engage in productive activities. For example, they can already make a collage or layout together under the guidance of a teacher.
If until now the game was rather chaotic, and a lot of effort was spent on coordinating the children among themselves, now the coordination of children is relatively easy, and at this time the children begin to play board games with enthusiasm. On the one hand, they already have the skill of self-regulation in order to adopt the rules and wait for their turn, and on the other hand, they already have enough basic mathematical ideas to count cards, chips, actions, move points and the like.
Five-year-old children already have access to a serial role-playing game - they can play a piece of the plot, and then continue a week later from the place where they stopped (and they remember where they left off). Some children have their favorite franchises (Star Wars, superheroes), based on which they build the plots of their games. In a childâs game, you can see a lot of things that he did not experience from personal experience, but he saw in cartoons or movies. If a child reads books, then from there he also borrows a lot. Since the child learns a lot about the world around him, he may have catastrophic fears - fear of war, fear of volcanic eruption. The emotional life of the child becomes more controlled, and he does not directly manifest many of his feelings (because he already knows that you canât fight in hysterics and stomp his feet), but expresses through the game. For example,educated, correct girls with pleasure lose stories where aggression can be expressed.
At five years old, the child already understands very well the boundary between reality and fantasy. If you say to him: âWhy do you beat the doll, it hurts her!â - he will answer: âHow can it hurt? Sheâs rubber. â On the one hand, it becomes unpleasantly pragmatic, as if deprived of imagination. On the other hand, he plays the plot of violence, clearly realizing that he does not do any real harm with his imaginary bullets. He expresses irritation and pretentiousness not to do it for real.
A five-year-old child actively replenishes his communicative repertoire, selecting phrases and other means of expression from wherever possible. The nuance is that he does not know how to take into account the social context. For him, the replica has only one parameter - this is the situation in which it was heard. An adult, consciously or unconsciously, takes into account the social hierarchy. Often, he believes that he is above the child in the social ladder, so he has the internal right to speak rudely, dismissively, and downward with the child. And the child simply assimilates these phrases, without a social context. Then he begins to communicate with peers with the same phrases. For example, children sit, draw. One girl begins to sing loudly. Vasya says: âHow tired you are with your singing!â (This may be my motherâs phrase when my mother was very tired). Petya says: âYes, you are not in a singing lesson!"(This is the phrase of the teacher when he did not like the fact that the child sings in mathematics). Masha: âMy ears already hurt from you!â (Maybe they donât hurt, just grandma says so). The least controversial, albeit terrifying speech therapist option is: âCan you please not sing? I want to paint in silence. â But for a child to be able to say so, he needs to be surrounded by a person who is able to talk so calmly and politely in a situation when something annoys him.who is able to talk so calmly and politely in a situation when something annoys him.who is able to talk so calmly and politely in a situation when something annoys him.
A child selects some means of expression from cartoons. Again, he learns how to express feelings, not realizing that in real life people donât. Here the child pretends to faint: it was from the cartoons that he realized that this should be done if something shocked you greatly. But he imitates vomiting: it was from cartoons that he realized that disgust is expressed in this way.
About five years old, the child begins to adopt gender stereotypes. If so far he could afford to play with any toy that interested him, now he has an internal brake. The boy can say: I will not play this - it is pink, which means for girls. Children begin the process of segregation by gender: boys prefer to play with boys, and girls with girls, because now they have different playing interests.
In the group of six years, a social hierarchy is already being developed. Leaders stand out - those children who assume the role of educator and begin to lead the common game. At this time, the collective game of children no longer needs the participation of an adult - the children themselves will come up with a plot, they will share roles, they will make their own props and they will resolve the conflict situations that arise. Clicks are formed - small subgroups of children, usually homogeneous by gender, who always play together and do not allow others to get involved in their game. Couples are formed - more often these are two children of the same gender, between whom there are relations of unusually close friendship; less commonly, these are romantic couples from a boy and a girl. Children begin to feel almost grown up (of course, they are about to go to school), and with adults they already want to talk on equal terms.Sometimes at this moment adults begin to hear all those phrases with which they spoke with the child: âhow did you get meâ and so on. Children again become very high-handed and stubborn, because they feel that they have already grown out of the social situation in which they are and are ready for something more.
Important topics for this age and often played out are death, marriage and the birth of children. Children become interested in interpersonal relationships of adults. As part of a family game, girls of this age often play in pregnancy and caring for the baby.
By about seven years old, an important milestone in the development of the child â preschool childhood â is coming to an end. The plot game, leading the activities of this period, is for the child the main means of developing social interaction and communication skills. In the plot game, the child tries to act in different situations, learns to coordinate his actions with the actions of others, learns to be in conflict and get out of the conflict. Ideally, by the time they graduate from kindergarten, the child knows how to negotiate well, and can even organize others. He can talk about his desires and feelings, dream out loud, compose a story and describe his impressions of some bright event. The key word is ideally ...
All of the above, in general, related to how the social and communicative development of the child should occur in the most favorable conditions. In fact, everything happens much less smoothly, and further we will consider how and why this harmonious process breaks down. (For example, why the child is already six years old, and he still does not have a detailed phrase.)
One of the main brakes, paradoxically, is how well a mother learns to understand her child during the first year of his life. He only squealed at a different key, and my mother immediately realized what was wrong and what needed to be done. Over time, she begins to predict the wishes of the child. At that moment when he has the technical ability to speak in words, he does not feel the need for it, because Mom will do everything and so - enough of a look, a gesture to let her know what is needed. The child does not need the word "give" if he can pull the thing that his mother holds in her hands and her mother will give it right away. You donât need the word âopenâ if you can take momâs hand, bring her to the nightstand and put her hand on the door.
In most cases, a person is inclined to follow the path of least resistance and choose the mode of action that requires minimal effort. For the child, the path of least resistance is to continue to speak with babbling and gestures, if he is already well understood. And for mom, the path of least resistance is not to force the child to say something, but simply to do what he needs to do right away.
When a child starts talking, it causes him a lot of delight, and he wants to talk all the time. He wants to chat almost 24/7. Surrounding adults are often completely unprepared to communicate so much, so the main task that adults solve in interaction with a child is to switch his attention so that he lags behind and does something else. For the first time, this task arises when speech starts (that is, from an average of three to three years), and then it remains during the whole pre-school childhood, because the child has been looking for attention all this time. He just wants to talk, he wants to play together (and talk), he wants to go for a walk (and talk). Mom at this time wants to do all her work, and then she wants to relax.
Toys do not always work, because the child wants some kind of feedback and interactivity - it is preferable that the adult play with him. If other family members live with the child and his parents, then an irrepressible thirst for communication is distributed among several adults. For example, you can send your child to play with grandfather or grandmother. If there are two children, and they have a slight age difference, they can communicate with each other. And if the child lives with mom and dad, but dad is at work until evening, then most of the burden of continuous communication falls on mom.
For some time, the mother holds on, and then begins to lock the child on a tablet or phone.
A tablet (or phone) for a young child is very addictive. While the childâs sensory zones in the cortex mature â the visual cortex, the auditory cortex, and so on (that is, somewhere up to seven years old), the child is determined to actively seek sensory stimulation. He reaches for everything that is bright and booming. The tablet seems to be doing just that - it sparkles with all colors and makes sounds. There are two pitfalls here.
Firstly, the development of fine motor skills (which should indirectly stimulate the development of speech) is strongly inhibited in a child who adheres to the tablet. To interact with the tablet, in fact, you need only one action - move your finger across the screen. And the result of this action is completely insensitive to the force of pressing. As a result, a child spending a significant part of the time with the tablet is often very poor at dosing muscle effort. If he picks up a sheet of paper, he wrinkles it. Chalks break in his hands. He canât press the pencil harder or weaker (to get different shades). Finely coordinated actions, such as lowering the beads, may simply not be available to him.
Secondly, when a child watches cartoons for hours, he seems to be in a speech environment - there is always someone saying something. But the child cannot enter into a conversation with the cartoon character, he can only listen to him. Understanding speech is practiced to some extent, but your own speech is not.
An ambush of any addiction is that it is easy to form it, and it is almost impossible to completely remove it: you can bring a person into remission by isolating yourself from the object of dependence, or you can switch it to something else by changing the object of dependence, but the personâs state as a dependent person extremely stable. Having sat on the gadget, the child voluntarily does not get off of it. He continues to live, sticking to the tablet. To justify this, they usually talk about how much everything a child can do with the help of gadgets. But this is cunning: if a child has developed addiction, then, as a rule, he does not strive to use all this developing potential at all, but plays something very simple and monotonous - wasting time when you need to learn how to perform subtle hand manipulations and replenish vocabulary .
After seven years, the sensory cortex matures and the program of active search for sensory stimuli is turned off, but the addictive potential of tablets and phones does not disappear. A schoolchild can also form a game addiction (and this is a common problem), but its mechanics will be slightly different.
15. And so everything is clear
A significant part of situations when a child and mother are talking are everyday situations. Mom needs to know what the baby will be for lunch. She wants him to stop playing and start going for a walk. She recalls that itâs time to go to bed. And so on.
The ambush here is that for effective communication on everyday issues a detailed phrase is not needed. If the mother wants to know that the child will be at lunch, he answers in monosyllables: "Potato." And this is enough, the necessary information has been transmitted. Mom doesnât need the full phrase âI want potatoes for lunchâ to understand what needs to be cooked.
Moreover, even a high level of understanding of speech in everyday life is not needed, because the context is quite transparent. If you are given a hat, in general, itâs clear that you need to put it on your head. Therefore, sometimes a mother may not notice for a very long time that the childâs understanding of speech is impaired or hearing is impaired - this is not noticeable in everyday life.
Ideally, when a child comes to kindergarten, teachers should start pestering him with a requirement to give out a full phrase for any reason. In fact, if one teacher steers a group of thirty preschoolers, then most of his working time is devoted to ensuring order and ensuring that no one is crippled, does not cripple a friend and does not smash the room. There is very little time left to talk with each individual child (and get a detailed answer from him). If in the classroom children are still asked to answer in detail, then the rest of the time the teacher will often be satisfied with monosyllabic answers.
If we take the situation of lunch in the garden, then when the group is small, the teacher can afford to ask: âWhat will you be on the second?â âPotato!â - says the child. âSay it completely.â âPut me the potatoes!â âAnd the magic word?â âPlease put me the potatoes!â But, letâs say, the child wanted compote, and he says: âI need compote!â âWho are you talking to?â âLisa, I have compote ! ââ What do you want compote for? ââ Pour me some compote! ââ And the magic word? ââ Lisa, please pour me some compote! âIt is obvious that when you are thirty children, you wonât be able to talk like that - everything will cool down while the children are to build detailed phrases. Therefore, in large groups, the speech therapy component of lunch is excluded: the children are simply laid out in advance, and if they donât want something, they just donât eat it.
Even in a role-playing game, you can successfully dispense with an expanded speech, simply methodically choosing for yourself speechless roles: a cat, a dog, or the smallest baby who is only agooking.
Thus, a child can go through all preschool childhood without having developed the skill of expanded phrasal speech. It may turn out that he simply does not need this skill: at home they only talk with him on business, the teacher in the kindergarten also has no time to talk with him (she has thirty more), and in the game with other children it is possible to agree in monosyllables.
At school, the special task of teaching a child detailed phrasal speech is not worth it, because it is assumed that the child has taken this skill out of kindergarten. Since teacherâs questions can often be answered in a monosyllabic way, and tests do not require any speech skills at all, then the child can continue to move from class to class, continuing to have no expanded speech skills. As it is clear, there are a lot of conflicts between children who have failed in the skill of extensive communication: then the necessary information was not transmitted on time (âwhy didnât you tell me?â), Then they didnât understand each other, they canât come to a compromise because they donât know how to discuss options.
And here, in fact, the situation is saved by games with storytelling mechanics - that is, those where the child needs to make a short story. They specifically create a situation where the child needs to talk, and he cannot deliberately get off with a monosyllabic answer - he needs some kind of phrase.
The simplest storytelling for a child becomes available in two or three years. Having learned to understand a simple plot and after listening to a certain number of fairy tales, the child can already try to compose some kind of fairy tale himself. Everything is clear with the preliminary work: if a child reads fairy tales, he can compose them. If you donât read, then it cannot. Drawing up his own plot, the child takes as a basis those fairy-tale plots that he already knows, and his own, still very poor life experience. Here, while the child does not have any special game task: he simply composes as he wants.
By the age of five, when children, and in general, mature into board games (that is, they become more interesting for a child than dolls and cars), you can introduce storytelling with the rules. For example, a wonderful thing is Rory's story cubes and their counterparts. A roll of a dice gives a random icon. Three pictograms form the task: the first sets the theme for the beginning of the story, the second for the middle, and the third for completion.
Suppose a child needs to come up with a story where at the beginning there will be a soccer ball, then a lake, and at the end - a flying saucer. It would seem that everything is simple: for example, at the beginning of the story, the boy plays the ball, in the middle the ball accidentally flies into the lake, and at the end the aliens save the situation: they fly on a plate, catch the ball and return it to the owner.
How will a child compose history on the same task, with whom they speak only on domestic issues? âThe boy was playing the ball. And then he suddenly saw a lake. And then aliens appeared from somewhere. â
Why is this happening? Because the idea of ââsemantic and causal relationships, more complex than âclicked a button - the light turned on,â is formed in a child primarily in a conversation with an adult. When we simply read books to a child and consider pictures with him, then he himself often does not ask about semantic connections. For him, history is just a series of images and events. Something happened. Then for some reason something else happened. And then something else else. This, in fact, reflects the life situation in which the child is: a significant part of what is happening around him is incomprehensible to him. He simply takes it for granted. Adult people are doing something, rushing somewhere, talking about something. A child sits amidst all this and plays a typewriter. The machine is interesting to him, but he just does not think about everything else. He perceives books and cartoons by inertia in exactly the same way. Something happened. Well, let it be. But something else happened.
For the child to begin to see logic behind the plot, he needs to ask questions. Why did the wolf chase the hare? Did they play catch-up, or did he want to eat it? Why did the boyâs dog bite? Does she want to eat him, or is she angry with him? Why angry? And so on. At first, the child shows a fantastic depth of misunderstanding of stories that seem completely simple and self-evident. Then, if we systematically discuss books and cartoons with him, he will gain a certain supply of ideas about what kind of connections can be at all. He already takes into account the motivation of the characters, takes into account the physical properties of objects and so on. When, armed with this knowledge, he begins to make up a story with the given elements, then in this plot some logic is already observed, because the child already has some idea how one can be connected with the other.
As in the case of expanded phrasal speech in general, there are no automatically working age standards. Children naturally differ from each other in terms of quick wits, but the main role is played by talking to them about cause and effect relationships or not talking. Some children understand them well already at the age of four and can describe in detail what consequences this or that action will have. You ask, for example, the girl Masha: âWhat will happen if you jump out into the street without a jacket in winter?â âYou will freeze!â âAnd yet?â âMom will be scared where the child disappeared. Run out, will search. " âAnd yet?â âYou can still catch a cold and get sick.â Another child at the same age, in response to the same question, may say: âYou will turn into a snowman,â and this is not a metaphor for him, he imagines it to himself exactly that. Some children come to elementary school without understanding the logical connections: both at three years old they perceived the plot as a set of unrelated scenes, and at eight they continued to perceive it the same way. If the ability to detect logic at some point is not in demand, then it does not form further - a person lives in a world that he does not understand, and the consequences of his actions are completely unexpected for him every time.
A modern child lives in an environment oversaturated with incentives and information. So he was born, and they immediately begin to give him toys. After a while, there are a lot of toys: you walk around the apartment, and they are everywhere. The child does not have to make efforts to get the amount of impressions necessary for the development of the brain. Mom herself runs after him and then he will show him a book with pictures, then something else. She is trying very hard to develop a child.
While the child does not walk and does not even crawl, this is a natural situation: he cannot look for sensory stimuli himself - he can only wait until their mother presents them. Further, the development program is arranged in such a way that the child himself regulates the number of impressions. As soon as he becomes bored and wants to get some new experience, he goes to explore the environment. That is, for example, climbs into all cabinets. If there are too many incentives, and the child is overloaded with them, the opposite effect occurs: the childâs search behavior first fades, and then he begins to actively shield himself from the incoming information. Mom at this place is very surprised: âHow is it that I show him so much, but heâs not interested in anything!â This means that the child is oversaturated with impressions, and he has no strength to accept new ones. At this time, in fact, it would be necessary to keep up with the child and let him get bored so that his head would be unloaded. But if on the one hand there are a lot of colorful toys, on the other a tablet, on the third a TV, and on the fourth - a playground, a kindergarten, mugs and classes, then itâs just that the child cannot unload, so he always has to be in the state of information defense.
Part of a childâs search and research behavior is when he asks questions. First, utilitarian questions: âwho is this?â, âWhat is it?â, âWhere are we going?â, âWhen will mom return?â Later, all kinds of âhow?â, âWhy?â And âwhy?â Appear. There are two ways to suppress a childâs desire to ask questions. The first way is to give absolutely empty answers to the childâs questions such as âbecause I said soâ, âit doesnât concern youâ and âcurious Barbaraâs nose was torn offâ. In this case, the search behavior fades because it is inconclusive. The second way to suppress the childâs desire to ask questions is to provide the child with a lot of information, without waiting until he becomes interested. In this case, there is simply no need for questions - the child already receives information, and even more than he really needs.
Children, accustomed to defend themselves from an avalanche of impressions and information, give the impression of being extremely inquisitive. They donât feel like looking at the posters on the walls, they donât ask what is written on the toys. âDo you want me to read you a book?â The adult asks. âI don't want to,â the child says. At school, these same children drive teachers into longing for the fact that they seem to be not interested in anything. School performance, of course, suffers, because the child is screened from the material of the lesson.
A less obvious consequence is that the childâs relationship with peers is affected. If in the period of preschool childhood friendship revolves around the fact that children play together (and the simplest communication skills are often enough for this), then in school, children's relationships are more and more tied to the opportunity to talk and agree. If a child is used to not asking questions, he will not ask a classmate: âWhat kind of sweets do you like?â, âDo you want to go out for a walk?â, âWhat were we asked in mathematics?â, âWhy are you so sad?â. Children who do not ask each other questions enter into very superficial relations among themselves, and they know each other very poorly. If we add here that they may not have the skill of detailed speech and understanding of cause-effect relationships (because at the stage of preschool childhood they had a lot of toys, but they talked very little), then we get a situation of constant discommunication - regular conflicts disassembly and misunderstanding.
By the time the child goes to school, board games become available to him, which have a lot of text on the components. At six years old, you can start playing such games, but you need an adult who will act as a leader and read, for example, to all players the text on the cards with the tasks.(After the child learns to read, the adult function can be reduced to helping to understand the rules, and then the children play on their own.)
Accordingly, schoolchildren can already play communicative games, where the topic for the story is set not by pictures, but by text. This, for example, the game series "Conversion." One of the players pulls a card, reads a question on the card, and then everyone who has something to say on a given topic speaks out in free form. For example: âWhat is the best gift you received for your birthday?â, âWhat is your favorite season?â
Several things happen here.
Firstly, children find themselves in a situation where you cannot get away with monosyllabic remarks, because many questions require a fairly detailed answer (a whole short story about an episode from your life). In a situation where detailed speech is needed, expanded speech begins to develop (which is especially true for those children who have gone without this skill all their pre-school childhood).
Secondly, children learn to ask those questions that help to establish contact with other people. They get at their disposal a lot of template replicas, which later they can use in a natural conversation. As mentioned above, the child says when he has an idea of ââwhat to say. If the child does not know what to say in a given situation, then he does not say anything. Even the ritual phrase âI donât know what to sayâ, the child actually needs to learn specifically. If the child does not have ready-made remarks that will help to start a conversation with an unfamiliar peer, other than âmy name is Petya, what about you?â Then it will be difficult for him to make friends.
The third is, in fact, that when the children begin to answer questions, they learn more about each other, and they have a basis for experiencing emotional kinship. They find that they have some kind of similar memories, similar experiences, similar preferences, similar interests. The moment when another player shouts: âMe too! It was like that with me too! âIs the moment when two people get closer to each other. They now have something to talk about further, because they have discovered a common theme.
When a child enters adolescence, reflection begins to develop rapidly. On the one hand, a teenager is absorbed in thinking about himself: he is trying to understand himself, to understand his desires, his character. On the other hand, he is trying to understand the world around him and develop a certain philosophy of life. At this point, he matures to role systems like Dungeons & Dragons. The complex process of creating a character is the process of self-awareness through the metaphor of a fairy-tale hero. The teenager is trying to understand what mode of action, life path is more suitable for him. Does he like to act directly, strictly guided by principles, like a paladin does? Or does he want to act cunningly, stealthily, like a rogue? Who does he look more like, a sophisticated and contemptuous elf, or a stubborn dwarf? Creating one character after another,a teenager tries on different characters and different strategies of behavior and looks for what resonates with him the most. In inventing the background for his character, a teenager creates a metaphor for how he experiences his place in the world. At this point, storytelling begins to turn into a way of introspection.
A common adventure of several players is a joint story writing. Since the character created by the teenager is a reflection of his ideals, the interaction of game characters is a clash of different beliefs, essentially a model of philosophical discussion. If the thief wants to stab him in the back, and the paladin tries to convince him that this is dishonest, then their interaction at this moment is already communication at the level of values. The teenager learns first to realize, and then to defend his beliefs. On the other hand, he learns to understand the ideological position of the other and accept the fact of ideological disagreements.
At the same time, since each character has his own set of skills and capabilities, players have to coordinate their actions and separate functions in accordance with who gets what is better. At this point, the ability to cooperate goes to a new level: adolescents learn to consciously consider each other's individual characteristics. There comes an understanding that in many cases it is impossible to solve the problem alone (there will not be enough skills), and coordinated efforts of the team are needed to achieve success.
What is the result? From birth to adolescence, a person goes through a long process of developing the ability to negotiate, receiving at each stage some additional functions and opportunities. The important point here is that this is not a strictly linear process, where one necessarily relies on the other, and the child can skip certain stages. For example, we can see a very intelligent child with rich phrasal speech, but without the ability to cooperate and without the skill of finding a compromise. Or a child who can agree on some utilitarian issue, but cannot talk about his desires. In the end, each one gets his own profile of abilities and capabilities that add up to a communicative skill.
Some aspects of this skill help rock board games, but as you know, this is only part of the process. Even with a child it is very important to just talk. He also needs a company of peers with whom he can communicate on equal terms.
Much of what was missed can be made up later (although it will be longer and more difficult). Sometimes you need the help of specialists. And if the environment, it seems, is conducive to the child talking, but for some reason he is still silent, you should definitely consult a speech therapist.
The most needed person here, as you know, is a speech therapist (and it is very important to get to a speech therapist if there is a suspicion that the development of speech has somehow gone wrong). Game therapists also work with this, because the ability to talk and negotiate develops along with the development of the game. To understand how this happens, let's start from the very beginning.
1. From birth to three months. If I need to say something, I scream
The development of speech begins at the moment when the child is born (some believe that even earlier). The child cannot yet say anything himself, but he is already listening attentively: his brain isolates from the speech of adults surrounding the individual sounds of the language they speak. Different languages ââhave different sounds. Some have a stress system, some have tones. When a child is born, he is not tuned to any particular language, but is ready for anyone to perceive. But he needs a statistical array from which he will single out individual sounds. Therefore, the task of mom is to immediately start talking. She bathes the child and tells him a nursery rhyme, gives a massage and recites a rhyme, shows him some shiny thing and tells what it is. At this point, by and large, it does not matter what mother says, the main thing is that she speaks a lot.
The child at this time has only one expressive means - this is a cry. When he wants to eat, he screams. When he is cold, he screams. When he is scared, he screams. Gradually, between the mother and the child, an alarm system is developed. The child screams slightly differently depending on the occasion, and the mother recognizes the intonation of the scream and responds to the need that this intonation expresses. The child discovers the possibility of communication - still very simple and utilitarian.
If for some reason speech stops at this level, and a few years later the child still cannot speak even at the level of individual sounds, then he communicates in the same way as a newborn - that is, he mainly screams. If motor skills allow, then he can still throw objects and fight. This is a form of communication. The cry of such a child can mean: "I'm tired," "my stomach hurts," "I'm scared," "I'm bored." If you teach him alternative communication - for example, with pictures (PECS) or gestures (Russian sign language, makaton), the childâs behavior is rapidly improving, because he has at his disposal a much more effective way to communicate his condition and his needs.
When a young child is very tired and exhausted, and when he himself does not really understand what he is feeling, he can regress to this form of communication. For example, if a small child is hysterical in the evening, this may mean that he is terribly tired during the day, and in fact he just needs to go to bed a little earlier than the moment when he usually falls into a tantrum. A tired and exhausted child does not need to be educated, explaining to him that he is behaving badly (at this moment he is objectively unable to behave better). You need to understand what overloaded him, and try to remove the extra load.
In the first two months of life, the child still has to learn to recognize the human face in the environment. He sees at this time very poorly (his vision is only being calibrated), so his face is such a letter T from his eyes and nose. By the age of two months, the child learns to detect eyes and nose in the surrounding reality and is very happy when he sees them: o-pa, this face, cool! He has what is called a revitalization complex: when he sees his motherâs face, he smiles, rejoices and, on the whole, becomes more active. This is the state "I am ready to communicate." The child signals: I want to communicate, let's talk! He still can not say anything and does not understand the speech addressed, but already feels that it is great to communicate. If by two months the child for some reason did not start reacting to the face like this (for example, he spent these two months in the hospital and almost did not communicate with him there), this is an early signal that the child may have some kind of disturbance or features autistic spectrum (or vision problems). You need to pay attention to this. Sometimes itâs enough just to make your face more interesting and noticeable - make faces, make funny sounds, just come up more often to the child and let him examine himself.
2. Three to six months. I donât know how, but let's talk
About three months later, the child begins to reproduce individual speech sounds - a, y, m. Until now, he has mainly been engaged in statistical analysis of speech, isolating sounds, and now he can reproduce some of them. At this moment, it would be nice for an adult to connect and support these sounds with a game: âouuuuuuuu - the plane is buzzing, mmmmuuuuuu - the cow is mooing!â The child in such games is not started by the plane or the cow (he still does not know what it is), but the fact itself that an adult communicates with him and has fun with him.
Having carefully examined the face, the child discovers that it is not the same all the time. It turns out that a person can be joyful or gloomy! The child begins to read facial expressions and distinguish emotions at the level of "positive or negative." Here, of course, a lot depends on how rich an adult's facial expressions are. If the mother frowns exaggeratedly, the child is easier to understand that she is angry. If she smiles out loud - itâs clear that sheâs funny. And if mom has almost no facial expressions, emotion recognition is much harder to master. To maintain interest in a person, you can do something interesting with him - for example, show yourself to a child with a clown nose, or draw something aqua-face on his face, or, again, make faces.
In the cerebral cortex, the areas responsible for the motor skills of the hands are located next to those responsible for speech, so when a child does something with his hands, the development of speech is also indirectly stimulated. At three months, you can already begin to touch surfaces with different tactile properties (smooth, fluffy, rough) and sort out beans.
3. Six to nine months. Opening Priority
From six to nine months, the child begins to add individual sounds that he has already mastered into syllables - that, ba, ma. This is babbling. At first, the child simply plays with sounds, and then they gradually begin to mean something specific - the desire to communicate, a need or some kind of external object. This is not a word, but already a symbolic designation with the help of sounds.
The fact that the mother continuously said something to the child the previous six months, begins to sprout: the child recognizes some words and understands their meaning. Another way of communication becomes available to him - gestures. Now mom can use simple gestures to communicate with her baby: nod, point a finger.
At this age, the child becomes interested in games with a climax (such as âby bumps, by bumps, into the hole - bang!â) He recognizes the familiar text and enthusiastically awaits the moment when there will be a âbangâ. Two things happen here. First, the child holds attention to speech. Secondly, he builds up tension in himself from expectation, so that later with a climax he joyfully release this tension. The child exercises in what will then allow him to listen attentively (and listen to the end) what the other person is saying.
At this stage, simple alternating games appear. Here the child throws the toy out of the crib, and here the mother returns it to its place, but he again throws it out, and so on in a circle. What it is? This is the simplest interaction model, an elementary game dialogue. My move, your move, my move, your move. The ability to alternate their actions with the actions of another person then allows the child to be in a dialogue - and play all the games where you have to take turns. If the mother supports such games, she supports the childâs desire for dialogue and interaction.
4. From nine months to a year. Imitation and constancy
From nine months to a year, a child discovers the opportunity to imitate - the foundation on which the ability to learn anything rests. He imitates facial expressions, actions, sounds, tries to repeat simple babbling words for adults. He accumulates a passive vocabulary - he understands up to thirty words. Now the child already understands simple commands and requests and can fulfill them. You can ask him: where is mom, where is the doll, where is the nose?
If until now the game came from a child, and an adult tuned to it, or an adult played a child, and a child more or less passively participated in the game, now an adult can ask a simple game (let's jump, throw me a ball), and the child will will support. At a fairly simple level, a child and an adult become partners in the game: now each of them can add something to the game, because imitation has become available to both.
An important theme of games for this age period is the body. The child sits down, then gets up, begins to walk, takes different poses. Since he actively uses the body, his idea of ââthe body begins to be detailed. An important part of his vocabulary is the names of body parts. The refinement of perceptions of the body allows the child to localize his sensations. If he is hurt, he can show where it hurts. At this time, the child is interested in games with attention to different parts of the body. For example, you can ask the child to show parts of the body - on himself, on the doll, on the dog. You can play the goose, which nips the child for different parts of the body, or the butterfly, which sits on the handle, then on the leg, then on the nose.
At this age, the formation of concepts begins at the most elementary level. If a child uses the word av-av (dog), then he can apply it to his dog, neighbor's dog, unfamiliar street dog - and even the dog in the photo. By the year the child is ready to perceive not only the objects themselves, but also their image in the picture, he can already relate one to the other. Now itâs already possible for the child to start showing Malyshevâs cardboard books - hereâs the ball on the page, hereâs the bear, whereâs the doll?
The child is interested in looking at himself in the mirror, and he responds to his name. His self-consciousness begins to take shape. He begins to divide adults into friends and strangers; at this moment the fear of an unfamiliar adult appears.
Together with elementary concepts, an elementary understanding of cause-effect relationships appears. The child discovers that when you press the button, something happens. He can turn the lights on and off, and turn the music on and off. At this moment, toys on which there are buttons are relevant for him, and we must be given the opportunity to play enough of such toys, because this is the development of thinking.
Subtle movements become available to the child, and he can be given pyramids, laces and boards with inserts. On boards with inserts, visual-effective thinking develops - the child learns to correlate the insert with a hole by directly turning it in his hands. Hand manipulations indirectly stimulate the speech areas of the cortex - and the more diverse they are, the better. The use of tools becomes available to the child - now, for example, he can play a game where you have to tap not with your hand, but with a hammer.
5. The first year of life. Development challenges, one year crisis
Throughout the first year of life, the child exists in close symbiosis with his mother. This is an important period in many aspects, but the main task that the child faces in the first year is to learn how to be in close relationships. The main, most important activity for a child of the first year of life is communication with mom. If the relationship with mom is warm and safe (mom is nearby, she doesnât disappear unexpectedly, where she is, she is emotionally warm, she shows her love to her child), then the child has a basic attitude that itâs great to communicate, and close relationships are something something good and pleasant. A child with whom he spoke very little in his first year of life (for example, because he was in a childâs home) may close and lose his desire to make contact. Other aspects of its development will also suffer, because in the first year of life, the development of a child is especially strongly linked to interaction with an adult. While the child does not walk and crawl, he cannot even examine the environment himself â he needs an adult who will bring him and show him various interesting things. Physical contact (when a mother strokes a baby, hugs, holds in her arms) has vital significance in the first year - a child who is only fed in the institution, but not stroked or hugged, can literally die from a lack of love.
Communication between mother and child is supported by the fact that the child responds positively to it. Mom approached the child - the child smiled, mother is pleased to come up to him again and that he smiled again. An autistic child does not give such feedback, and the motherâs desire to communicate with the child begins to fade. A vicious circle is created - the less feedback the child gives, the less stimulation he receives, and the more his speech and communication development is inhibited. The mother of an autistic child has a more difficult task than usual: she needs to persistently continue to communicate with the child, despite the fact that he hardly supports her in this.
When the child begins to walk confidently, the initial symbiosis with his mother breaks. He is torn physically - the child can now move independently, and after that he is torn psychologically - the child begins to assert his self, becoming stubborn and intractable. The ability to move independently allows the child to rush to interesting objects and examine them, without waiting for the help of an adult (and regardless of his approval or disapproval). For a while he is captured by objects, and attraction to them overpowers the requests and instructions of adults. Since the child has the opportunity to do something dangerous or destructive, prohibitions also appear. If there are too many prohibitions, there is a risk of suppressing the childâs craving for research, raising shyness and indecision. On the other hand, since the child is already capable of potentially dangerous actions, but still does not calculate their consequences, it is important that he firmly grasp the word "impossible." It is not good when there are a lot of prohibitions, but some things should definitely be unacceptable. For example, you must not touch the stove with your hands; you must not run out onto the road. The rules primarily exist in order to guarantee the safety of the child, and the mother, who firmly insists on them, creates the feeling for the child that he is under reliable protection. The environment at this time needs to be adapted to the fact that an enthusiastic researcher is running around it, and the dangerous thing that can be removed from the access zone is better to simply remove it from the access zone than to prohibit touching it.
Games of this period are distance-setting games. Here the little sparrows scattered, and here they hurry back to the nest. Here the car drove far, far, and here it returns to the garage. This is about distance in interaction. The child runs away from his mother to feel freedom, and returns when he is afraid of one. In the end, he needs to find a distance where he will not be too dependent, and sufficiently protected. The successful solution of this problem is the first stage in the development of the ability to agree: the child must accept the existence of the rules and learn to act in light of their existence.
6. From one to two years. I myself, I can
From a year to two, a child learns with what he discovered during the crisis of one year. He explores what he can and cannot do, where it is dangerous to be, and where it is safe. At this moment, he may, for example, begin to be afraid of stairs, because he suddenly becomes aware: you can fall off the stairs!
Having realized himself as an individual, the child begins to strive to do everything on his own. At this time, the environment should be designed to support the desire to act on one's own. For example, itâs good if the child has a small jug in his access, from where he can pour himself water in a glass, and clothes and shoes that allow the child to dress independently (that is, socks are pulled effortlessly, the clasp on the dress in front and not on the back etc.). âSamâ is a very important word for a child at this time. If you support him in this, the foundation is laid for the development of an independent, confident and proactive person. And if an adult stubbornly does everything for the child (because itâs faster than waiting for the child to cope), the child after some time refuses the desire for independence and resigns himself to the fact that the adult will do everything himself anyway; what is called learned helplessness is being formed.
Starting from the year the child can already turn to the adult for help and support (bruised knee, scratched, saw a terrible dog - running to his mother); on the other hand, he also wants to share positive experiences - he shows his toys to adults, demonstrates that he can, and seeks approval and praise. Soon, the child assumes another role - now he himself consoles, helps, treats. This is the very beginning of positive social interaction. At this time, the childâs interest in contact with another person reaches a new level: now communication for him is not only an exchange of positive emotions, but also mutual assistance and mutual support. Later, on the basis of this experience, the child will master cooperation and cooperation.
At this time, the child begins to talk a lot and constantly demand the attention of his mother, because he has a lot of impressions (everything is new and interesting!) And a great desire to share them. The child is outraged if the mother does not suddenly communicate with him, but with someone else, and he does not allow her to talk on the phone for a long time. For adults, this is a difficult period, because the childâs need for communication often far exceeds the willingness of adults to be in dialogue. At this point, adults begin to form an idea of ââthe child as a bothersome creature that needs to be neutralized with toys so that it does not bother with its need to communicate. Actually, this attitude of adults is the main brake on the development of speech in a child.
The vocabulary of a child is enriched with nouns and adjectives. He discovers the properties of objects and begins to distinguish among them those that he likes or dislikes. He has distinct preferences in food, clothing. He can become moody or squeamish. The word âmineâ appears - the child begins to appropriate the objects that he sees around him: my hat, my house, my cat.
An important topic of games of this period is domestic story games where the child takes care of the toy: feeds it, takes it for a walk, puts it to bed. For the first time, a child tries on the role of one who takes care of another himself. The child may have a beloved plush animal, which he seeks to carry with him everywhere. This beast is a close friend of the child, and the child feels better when he is with him. Thus, the child overcomes the anxiety that he experiences by acting independently of his mother.
Starting from the year, the process of preparing the hand for writing begins - the child can already be little taught to use pencils, crayons, paints (still at the level of doodles), you can play simple finger games with him. The child begins to master the sets - he builds rows and pairs of small objects, puts them in piles, arranges them in boxes. This is a simple classification model. Based on this game, the child then proceeds to the organization of phenomena through concepts and generalizing words. An idea of ââthe stability and constancy of objects is formed, and the child likes this constancy. He insists on observance of everyday and playing rituals, he is annoyed by the violation of integrity (cutting of nails and hair, in particular), rearrangement of furniture can cause a violent protest.
At the same time, other children become interested in the child. There is still no true interaction at this time, but if the child comes to the site where the children rush and they have fun, then he becomes infected with emotions, rushes and has fun with others. The child has a general attitude that the company is good, great. Children of this age can play with one pile of dice, but each will build his own tower for now.
7. From two to three years. First stories
After two years, the child appears in the speech the pronoun "I". By the way, itâs interesting that first âmineâ, and then âmeâ. First, the child is aware of the objects and his attitude towards them, and then he discovers himself as a subject. The child begins to form an image of himself. He proudly demonstrates what he can do - "here, look, this I have done." The nature of the assignment is also changing. If until now âmineâ was what is in the childâs living space, now âmineâ is what belongs to him. A child who is still willingly sharing becomes greedy.
Awareness of roles appears. This is the very beginning of the role-playing game. The child portrays family members: he pretends to smoke like a dad, cooks like a mom, puts on glasses - like a grandmother. He depicts familiar animals (cat, dog) and representatives of familiar professions (primarily doctors, because this is the most exciting topic). The childâs impressions are reflected in his game, and for the first time he begins to use the game as a way to cope with fear. What the child has played becomes for him more intimate, familiar, manageable - and less intimidating.
The plot becomes available to the child. In scribbles, which until now were completely shapeless, an image can stand out. A child can create a fantasy world in which his toys operate. He is already ready to accept fairy tales: you can read simple tales with him, play them on toys, and invent your own. Writing stories becomes available to the child. He develops imagination, and now he can imagine that something terrible is in the dark. A fear of the dark appears.
The child begins to play with the rules. On the one hand, he watches over adults so that they do everything right, and on the other hand, he likes to joke, deliberately breaking the rules. A lot of fun, for example, when socks are on the hands, and mittens are on the feet. At the previous stage, he learned to follow the rules; he is now practicing not to follow them on purpose. In later life, he will need both one and the other: the first for successful socialization, and the second in order to be a happy person.
Two children of this age can already play common toys together and interact a bit in this game - for example, roll cars together on the same railway. At this time, for example, you can visit a group of a short stay in kindergarten: there a child can gain experience interacting with peers and gradually learns to be in a large company and without a mother. The year of visiting such a group makes it much easier for the child to enter the younger group of a full day, because the situation for the child is already familiar, and other children are also familiar.
8. The crisis of three years. I want to choose
About three years, another age crisis sets in. Having realized his subjectivity, the child begins to contrast his desires with the desires of adults. First, he determines his desire through denial, refusing to do what adults offer. âLet's go for a walk!â Says Mom. âI wonât go!â The child says. He plays with the ability to oppose his will to the will of another person. If in a crisis of one year the child resisted, because he was attracted to himself by environmental objects, now resistance comes from within the child. For a one-year-old child, âI wonât goâ is âI wonât go, because there is such a tree, a flower, pebbles,â and for a three-year-old child, âI wonât goâ is âI wonât go because I want to decide what I will do.â It is important for him to start with denial, because if he does what his mother said, he will not be able to understand whose desire follows - his or her. I went for a walk because I wanted to, or because they told me so?
This is a difficult period for both mom and baby. Itâs very difficult for mother to cope with a child who suddenly became uncontrollable again, and itâs difficult for a child because he is torn between two desires: on the one hand, he wants to make choices and manage his actions, and on the other hand, he really wants them to admired, approved, praised.
This is the second free will match in the development of the child, where it is important that none of the participants come out victorious. If an adult manages to prevail and force the child to abandon his desires and intentions, the child will again be controlled, but his will will be broken and he will lose contact with his desires for a long time, becoming an obedient performer. For those around him, after that he will be very comfortable, but he will feel very unhappy.
Not the best situation is when the child manages to prevail over his mother.This often happens in families where the mother is a soft, kind, compliant woman, and the child is very temperamental and characteristic. If the child affirms the priority of his desire, then he acts only as he wants: he does what he wants, behaves as he wants. Mom, in turn, adapts to the desires of the child and organizes to him what he himself has chosen. In family conditions, such an existence can be maintained for some time, but when a child enters an educational institution, it becomes a very difficult and traumatic experience for him. He is completely unprepared for an environment where you canât follow your desires all the time. Even games with rules can be very difficult for such a child, because he is ready to play only according to the rules that he himself has chosen.
A favorable solution to the crisis involves finding a compromise between oneâs own desires and those of others. The child accepts the reality that not all his desires can be realized (and not at any moment), and the mother accepts the reality that the child now has his own preferences and his own opinion, which must also be taken into account. Say, now, going with a child for a walk, she needs to ask exactly where he would like to take a walk: to the playground, or to the forest, or to look at the windows? The childâs opinion should not be decisive (mom always has a veto), but his desires should already have a certain meaning. This is another step in the development of the ability to negotiate: now the child is aware of his desires - and he knows that they can be opposed to the desires and requirements of other people.
Playing at this time is good at giving the child the opportunity to choose. For example, sets with flat clothes - choose a suit for a doll, for a bear. Playing the store is good too. Want to buy a carrot? I do not want! And what you want? I want an apple! Great, you have a coin.
The ability to talk about oneâs desires, which is very important for building relationships with other people in the future, begins to take shape at this time.
9. Three to four years. The beginning of the era of role-playing game
From the age of three, the child's activity becomes productive. He wants to create something. Now he doesnât just carry a brush along the sheet, but creates a picture (though he can start to draw one, but in the end he will get something completely different - he can change his mind several times in the process). Many children go to kindergarten at this time, and there their readiness for productive activity creates favorable conditions for mastering the very first stage of the educational program. With three-year-olds in the garden they draw, sculpt, make applications. They master elementary forms - lines, circles, squares. A child who at the previous stages of development did not accept the rules and did not learn to follow them will be very difficult at this time, because the teacher will insist that the child remain within the framework of the assignment.
Children still play quite independently of each other, but there are already situations when several children play the same story at the same time. For example, five people simultaneously represent themselves as doctors, they all gather in the same zone (the one where the doctorâs sets are) and treat each of their teddy bears. An adult at this time coordinates the children so that they successfully share the toys with each other and all is enough. He is engaged in the distribution of roles: come on, Vasya, you will treat the bruises, and you, Masha, will catch a cold. This is a preliminary step before a collective game, when several children are in contact with the same adult at the same time around the same plot. As time passes, children come to the conclusion that they can interact with each other too,but constructive interaction between children does not arise in itself - it needs to be taught.
If a child in some situation does not know what to say correctly, then by default he does not say anything. If Petya snatches a toy from Vasyaâs hands, this first of all means that he does not have a ready-made phrase for such a situation. (Secondly, this suggests that when he wrests something from his motherâs hands, his mother gives him a readiness, and heâs used to it.) So, the teacher and the child approach another child and say: â Petya, please give Masha a ball! âIf you are lucky, Petya gives a ball. If you are not lucky, and Petya is sorry, the teacher says: âYou see, Petya is playing with this ball himself. Letâs go and look for another one for you. â These are the very ready-made phrases that then become part of the child's communicative repertoire. The second level of difficulty is when the teacher approaches Masha with Petya and says: âTell me - please give the ball!â"And Masha repeats the familiar phrase:" Please give the ball! "Then everything follows the same algorithm. The third level of difficulty is when the teacher tells Petya: âPetya, look, Masha really wants this particular ball. Letâs play a little bit, and then a little bit? â- but at three years old children usually donât succeed because they live in the present.
Since the ability to use such ritual phrases per se does not arise, it can often be observed that the child, even at the age of five, does not yet know what to say instead of tearing the object out of his hands. Some children survive without this skill until adolescence. This is not because their development itself is distorted, but because the surrounding adults do not have time to teach them the rituals of social interaction.
Interaction is one of the topics that appear in the role-playing game of a three-year-old child. Now he is interested in not only individual roles, but also what is happening between two people with different roles. Itâs more interesting for a child to treat a mother or a teacher than a bear, because an adult can assume the complementary role of a patient. In the same period, interest in doll houses and sets of figures for the plot game flourishes, because they can play the interaction of people among themselves. If the child saw a pattern of social interaction, then he can then repeatedly play it in the game. It is not necessary that he himself do the same; but he learns that this happens, and that in certain situations, people behave in this way.
10. Four to five years. Conflicts and defending borders
About four years old children ripen to collective play. They are already striving for game interaction, but since the children are still not very good at negotiating, there are many conflicts in the collective game. An adult who organizes the game assumes the role of a moderator - he resolves conflicts between children, simultaneously explaining to them exactly which phrases should be used in one or another case. A child goes through many conflicts with peers and gets the experience of being offended. At this moment, moral ideas begin to take shape - still very simple, at the âgood-evilâ level. Gradually, the child comes out of life at the present moment, and on the one hand, he is already a little oriented to the future (he knows, for example, when he will be taken from the garden, and can calmly wait for it),and on the other hand, it takes into account previous events. A child who used to quickly forget the bad can now become touchy and vindictive.
Interaction with a peer in terms of difficulty is higher than interaction with an adult. Firstly, an adult is more inclined to give in and play along with the child, if possible (he does not mind). Secondly, in an adult, the communicative skill is usually still significantly higher, and he seeks to resolve the conflict situation without offending the child. The other child does not have such constraining factors: he is more likely to hit, call, call, take away the toy. Therefore, in interaction with peers, the child begins to develop the ability to fend for himself. At this point, problems are manifested in children who have unsuccessfully gone through the crises of one year and three years: if they lose the free-fight, it is very difficult for them to defend their borders, and these children will often be offended. In practice, it looks like thisthat the child comes from the garden and says: âI donât want to go to the garden, Petya offends me there!â Sometimes the child is transferred to another group - but there is some new Petya there. Such children need to specifically learn to leave the role of the victim and take on some other, strong role: to play the tiger, lion, dragon, queen.
11. From five to six years. Board Games, Template Phrases, and Gender Stereotypes
By the age of five, children who have trained to play together develop sufficient co-operation skills in order to collectively engage in productive activities. For example, they can already make a collage or layout together under the guidance of a teacher.
If until now the game was rather chaotic, and a lot of effort was spent on coordinating the children among themselves, now the coordination of children is relatively easy, and at this time the children begin to play board games with enthusiasm. On the one hand, they already have the skill of self-regulation in order to adopt the rules and wait for their turn, and on the other hand, they already have enough basic mathematical ideas to count cards, chips, actions, move points and the like.
Five-year-old children already have access to a serial role-playing game - they can play a piece of the plot, and then continue a week later from the place where they stopped (and they remember where they left off). Some children have their favorite franchises (Star Wars, superheroes), based on which they build the plots of their games. In a childâs game, you can see a lot of things that he did not experience from personal experience, but he saw in cartoons or movies. If a child reads books, then from there he also borrows a lot. Since the child learns a lot about the world around him, he may have catastrophic fears - fear of war, fear of volcanic eruption. The emotional life of the child becomes more controlled, and he does not directly manifest many of his feelings (because he already knows that you canât fight in hysterics and stomp his feet), but expresses through the game. For example,educated, correct girls with pleasure lose stories where aggression can be expressed.
At five years old, the child already understands very well the boundary between reality and fantasy. If you say to him: âWhy do you beat the doll, it hurts her!â - he will answer: âHow can it hurt? Sheâs rubber. â On the one hand, it becomes unpleasantly pragmatic, as if deprived of imagination. On the other hand, he plays the plot of violence, clearly realizing that he does not do any real harm with his imaginary bullets. He expresses irritation and pretentiousness not to do it for real.
A five-year-old child actively replenishes his communicative repertoire, selecting phrases and other means of expression from wherever possible. The nuance is that he does not know how to take into account the social context. For him, the replica has only one parameter - this is the situation in which it was heard. An adult, consciously or unconsciously, takes into account the social hierarchy. Often, he believes that he is above the child in the social ladder, so he has the internal right to speak rudely, dismissively, and downward with the child. And the child simply assimilates these phrases, without a social context. Then he begins to communicate with peers with the same phrases. For example, children sit, draw. One girl begins to sing loudly. Vasya says: âHow tired you are with your singing!â (This may be my motherâs phrase when my mother was very tired). Petya says: âYes, you are not in a singing lesson!"(This is the phrase of the teacher when he did not like the fact that the child sings in mathematics). Masha: âMy ears already hurt from you!â (Maybe they donât hurt, just grandma says so). The least controversial, albeit terrifying speech therapist option is: âCan you please not sing? I want to paint in silence. â But for a child to be able to say so, he needs to be surrounded by a person who is able to talk so calmly and politely in a situation when something annoys him.who is able to talk so calmly and politely in a situation when something annoys him.who is able to talk so calmly and politely in a situation when something annoys him.
A child selects some means of expression from cartoons. Again, he learns how to express feelings, not realizing that in real life people donât. Here the child pretends to faint: it was from the cartoons that he realized that this should be done if something shocked you greatly. But he imitates vomiting: it was from cartoons that he realized that disgust is expressed in this way.
About five years old, the child begins to adopt gender stereotypes. If so far he could afford to play with any toy that interested him, now he has an internal brake. The boy can say: I will not play this - it is pink, which means for girls. Children begin the process of segregation by gender: boys prefer to play with boys, and girls with girls, because now they have different playing interests.
12. .
In the group of six years, a social hierarchy is already being developed. Leaders stand out - those children who assume the role of educator and begin to lead the common game. At this time, the collective game of children no longer needs the participation of an adult - the children themselves will come up with a plot, they will share roles, they will make their own props and they will resolve the conflict situations that arise. Clicks are formed - small subgroups of children, usually homogeneous by gender, who always play together and do not allow others to get involved in their game. Couples are formed - more often these are two children of the same gender, between whom there are relations of unusually close friendship; less commonly, these are romantic couples from a boy and a girl. Children begin to feel almost grown up (of course, they are about to go to school), and with adults they already want to talk on equal terms.Sometimes at this moment adults begin to hear all those phrases with which they spoke with the child: âhow did you get meâ and so on. Children again become very high-handed and stubborn, because they feel that they have already grown out of the social situation in which they are and are ready for something more.
Important topics for this age and often played out are death, marriage and the birth of children. Children become interested in interpersonal relationships of adults. As part of a family game, girls of this age often play in pregnancy and caring for the baby.
By about seven years old, an important milestone in the development of the child â preschool childhood â is coming to an end. The plot game, leading the activities of this period, is for the child the main means of developing social interaction and communication skills. In the plot game, the child tries to act in different situations, learns to coordinate his actions with the actions of others, learns to be in conflict and get out of the conflict. Ideally, by the time they graduate from kindergarten, the child knows how to negotiate well, and can even organize others. He can talk about his desires and feelings, dream out loud, compose a story and describe his impressions of some bright event. The key word is ideally ...
13. What could go wrong
All of the above, in general, related to how the social and communicative development of the child should occur in the most favorable conditions. In fact, everything happens much less smoothly, and further we will consider how and why this harmonious process breaks down. (For example, why the child is already six years old, and he still does not have a detailed phrase.)
One of the main brakes, paradoxically, is how well a mother learns to understand her child during the first year of his life. He only squealed at a different key, and my mother immediately realized what was wrong and what needed to be done. Over time, she begins to predict the wishes of the child. At that moment when he has the technical ability to speak in words, he does not feel the need for it, because Mom will do everything and so - enough of a look, a gesture to let her know what is needed. The child does not need the word "give" if he can pull the thing that his mother holds in her hands and her mother will give it right away. You donât need the word âopenâ if you can take momâs hand, bring her to the nightstand and put her hand on the door.
In most cases, a person is inclined to follow the path of least resistance and choose the mode of action that requires minimal effort. For the child, the path of least resistance is to continue to speak with babbling and gestures, if he is already well understood. And for mom, the path of least resistance is not to force the child to say something, but simply to do what he needs to do right away.
14. What to give him to shut up?
When a child starts talking, it causes him a lot of delight, and he wants to talk all the time. He wants to chat almost 24/7. Surrounding adults are often completely unprepared to communicate so much, so the main task that adults solve in interaction with a child is to switch his attention so that he lags behind and does something else. For the first time, this task arises when speech starts (that is, from an average of three to three years), and then it remains during the whole pre-school childhood, because the child has been looking for attention all this time. He just wants to talk, he wants to play together (and talk), he wants to go for a walk (and talk). Mom at this time wants to do all her work, and then she wants to relax.
Toys do not always work, because the child wants some kind of feedback and interactivity - it is preferable that the adult play with him. If other family members live with the child and his parents, then an irrepressible thirst for communication is distributed among several adults. For example, you can send your child to play with grandfather or grandmother. If there are two children, and they have a slight age difference, they can communicate with each other. And if the child lives with mom and dad, but dad is at work until evening, then most of the burden of continuous communication falls on mom.
For some time, the mother holds on, and then begins to lock the child on a tablet or phone.
A tablet (or phone) for a young child is very addictive. While the childâs sensory zones in the cortex mature â the visual cortex, the auditory cortex, and so on (that is, somewhere up to seven years old), the child is determined to actively seek sensory stimulation. He reaches for everything that is bright and booming. The tablet seems to be doing just that - it sparkles with all colors and makes sounds. There are two pitfalls here.
Firstly, the development of fine motor skills (which should indirectly stimulate the development of speech) is strongly inhibited in a child who adheres to the tablet. To interact with the tablet, in fact, you need only one action - move your finger across the screen. And the result of this action is completely insensitive to the force of pressing. As a result, a child spending a significant part of the time with the tablet is often very poor at dosing muscle effort. If he picks up a sheet of paper, he wrinkles it. Chalks break in his hands. He canât press the pencil harder or weaker (to get different shades). Finely coordinated actions, such as lowering the beads, may simply not be available to him.
Secondly, when a child watches cartoons for hours, he seems to be in a speech environment - there is always someone saying something. But the child cannot enter into a conversation with the cartoon character, he can only listen to him. Understanding speech is practiced to some extent, but your own speech is not.
An ambush of any addiction is that it is easy to form it, and it is almost impossible to completely remove it: you can bring a person into remission by isolating yourself from the object of dependence, or you can switch it to something else by changing the object of dependence, but the personâs state as a dependent person extremely stable. Having sat on the gadget, the child voluntarily does not get off of it. He continues to live, sticking to the tablet. To justify this, they usually talk about how much everything a child can do with the help of gadgets. But this is cunning: if a child has developed addiction, then, as a rule, he does not strive to use all this developing potential at all, but plays something very simple and monotonous - wasting time when you need to learn how to perform subtle hand manipulations and replenish vocabulary .
After seven years, the sensory cortex matures and the program of active search for sensory stimuli is turned off, but the addictive potential of tablets and phones does not disappear. A schoolchild can also form a game addiction (and this is a common problem), but its mechanics will be slightly different.
15. And so everything is clear
A significant part of situations when a child and mother are talking are everyday situations. Mom needs to know what the baby will be for lunch. She wants him to stop playing and start going for a walk. She recalls that itâs time to go to bed. And so on.
The ambush here is that for effective communication on everyday issues a detailed phrase is not needed. If the mother wants to know that the child will be at lunch, he answers in monosyllables: "Potato." And this is enough, the necessary information has been transmitted. Mom doesnât need the full phrase âI want potatoes for lunchâ to understand what needs to be cooked.
Moreover, even a high level of understanding of speech in everyday life is not needed, because the context is quite transparent. If you are given a hat, in general, itâs clear that you need to put it on your head. Therefore, sometimes a mother may not notice for a very long time that the childâs understanding of speech is impaired or hearing is impaired - this is not noticeable in everyday life.
Ideally, when a child comes to kindergarten, teachers should start pestering him with a requirement to give out a full phrase for any reason. In fact, if one teacher steers a group of thirty preschoolers, then most of his working time is devoted to ensuring order and ensuring that no one is crippled, does not cripple a friend and does not smash the room. There is very little time left to talk with each individual child (and get a detailed answer from him). If in the classroom children are still asked to answer in detail, then the rest of the time the teacher will often be satisfied with monosyllabic answers.
If we take the situation of lunch in the garden, then when the group is small, the teacher can afford to ask: âWhat will you be on the second?â âPotato!â - says the child. âSay it completely.â âPut me the potatoes!â âAnd the magic word?â âPlease put me the potatoes!â But, letâs say, the child wanted compote, and he says: âI need compote!â âWho are you talking to?â âLisa, I have compote ! ââ What do you want compote for? ââ Pour me some compote! ââ And the magic word? ââ Lisa, please pour me some compote! âIt is obvious that when you are thirty children, you wonât be able to talk like that - everything will cool down while the children are to build detailed phrases. Therefore, in large groups, the speech therapy component of lunch is excluded: the children are simply laid out in advance, and if they donât want something, they just donât eat it.
Even in a role-playing game, you can successfully dispense with an expanded speech, simply methodically choosing for yourself speechless roles: a cat, a dog, or the smallest baby who is only agooking.
Thus, a child can go through all preschool childhood without having developed the skill of expanded phrasal speech. It may turn out that he simply does not need this skill: at home they only talk with him on business, the teacher in the kindergarten also has no time to talk with him (she has thirty more), and in the game with other children it is possible to agree in monosyllables.
At school, the special task of teaching a child detailed phrasal speech is not worth it, because it is assumed that the child has taken this skill out of kindergarten. Since teacherâs questions can often be answered in a monosyllabic way, and tests do not require any speech skills at all, then the child can continue to move from class to class, continuing to have no expanded speech skills. As it is clear, there are a lot of conflicts between children who have failed in the skill of extensive communication: then the necessary information was not transmitted on time (âwhy didnât you tell me?â), Then they didnât understand each other, they canât come to a compromise because they donât know how to discuss options.
16. Storytelling
And here, in fact, the situation is saved by games with storytelling mechanics - that is, those where the child needs to make a short story. They specifically create a situation where the child needs to talk, and he cannot deliberately get off with a monosyllabic answer - he needs some kind of phrase.
The simplest storytelling for a child becomes available in two or three years. Having learned to understand a simple plot and after listening to a certain number of fairy tales, the child can already try to compose some kind of fairy tale himself. Everything is clear with the preliminary work: if a child reads fairy tales, he can compose them. If you donât read, then it cannot. Drawing up his own plot, the child takes as a basis those fairy-tale plots that he already knows, and his own, still very poor life experience. Here, while the child does not have any special game task: he simply composes as he wants.
By the age of five, when children, and in general, mature into board games (that is, they become more interesting for a child than dolls and cars), you can introduce storytelling with the rules. For example, a wonderful thing is Rory's story cubes and their counterparts. A roll of a dice gives a random icon. Three pictograms form the task: the first sets the theme for the beginning of the story, the second for the middle, and the third for completion.
Suppose a child needs to come up with a story where at the beginning there will be a soccer ball, then a lake, and at the end - a flying saucer. It would seem that everything is simple: for example, at the beginning of the story, the boy plays the ball, in the middle the ball accidentally flies into the lake, and at the end the aliens save the situation: they fly on a plate, catch the ball and return it to the owner.
How will a child compose history on the same task, with whom they speak only on domestic issues? âThe boy was playing the ball. And then he suddenly saw a lake. And then aliens appeared from somewhere. â
Why is this happening? Because the idea of ââsemantic and causal relationships, more complex than âclicked a button - the light turned on,â is formed in a child primarily in a conversation with an adult. When we simply read books to a child and consider pictures with him, then he himself often does not ask about semantic connections. For him, history is just a series of images and events. Something happened. Then for some reason something else happened. And then something else else. This, in fact, reflects the life situation in which the child is: a significant part of what is happening around him is incomprehensible to him. He simply takes it for granted. Adult people are doing something, rushing somewhere, talking about something. A child sits amidst all this and plays a typewriter. The machine is interesting to him, but he just does not think about everything else. He perceives books and cartoons by inertia in exactly the same way. Something happened. Well, let it be. But something else happened.
For the child to begin to see logic behind the plot, he needs to ask questions. Why did the wolf chase the hare? Did they play catch-up, or did he want to eat it? Why did the boyâs dog bite? Does she want to eat him, or is she angry with him? Why angry? And so on. At first, the child shows a fantastic depth of misunderstanding of stories that seem completely simple and self-evident. Then, if we systematically discuss books and cartoons with him, he will gain a certain supply of ideas about what kind of connections can be at all. He already takes into account the motivation of the characters, takes into account the physical properties of objects and so on. When, armed with this knowledge, he begins to make up a story with the given elements, then in this plot some logic is already observed, because the child already has some idea how one can be connected with the other.
As in the case of expanded phrasal speech in general, there are no automatically working age standards. Children naturally differ from each other in terms of quick wits, but the main role is played by talking to them about cause and effect relationships or not talking. Some children understand them well already at the age of four and can describe in detail what consequences this or that action will have. You ask, for example, the girl Masha: âWhat will happen if you jump out into the street without a jacket in winter?â âYou will freeze!â âAnd yet?â âMom will be scared where the child disappeared. Run out, will search. " âAnd yet?â âYou can still catch a cold and get sick.â Another child at the same age, in response to the same question, may say: âYou will turn into a snowman,â and this is not a metaphor for him, he imagines it to himself exactly that. Some children come to elementary school without understanding the logical connections: both at three years old they perceived the plot as a set of unrelated scenes, and at eight they continued to perceive it the same way. If the ability to detect logic at some point is not in demand, then it does not form further - a person lives in a world that he does not understand, and the consequences of his actions are completely unexpected for him every time.
17. They themselves will offer everything and everyone will give
A modern child lives in an environment oversaturated with incentives and information. So he was born, and they immediately begin to give him toys. After a while, there are a lot of toys: you walk around the apartment, and they are everywhere. The child does not have to make efforts to get the amount of impressions necessary for the development of the brain. Mom herself runs after him and then he will show him a book with pictures, then something else. She is trying very hard to develop a child.
While the child does not walk and does not even crawl, this is a natural situation: he cannot look for sensory stimuli himself - he can only wait until their mother presents them. Further, the development program is arranged in such a way that the child himself regulates the number of impressions. As soon as he becomes bored and wants to get some new experience, he goes to explore the environment. That is, for example, climbs into all cabinets. If there are too many incentives, and the child is overloaded with them, the opposite effect occurs: the childâs search behavior first fades, and then he begins to actively shield himself from the incoming information. Mom at this place is very surprised: âHow is it that I show him so much, but heâs not interested in anything!â This means that the child is oversaturated with impressions, and he has no strength to accept new ones. At this time, in fact, it would be necessary to keep up with the child and let him get bored so that his head would be unloaded. But if on the one hand there are a lot of colorful toys, on the other a tablet, on the third a TV, and on the fourth - a playground, a kindergarten, mugs and classes, then itâs just that the child cannot unload, so he always has to be in the state of information defense.
Part of a childâs search and research behavior is when he asks questions. First, utilitarian questions: âwho is this?â, âWhat is it?â, âWhere are we going?â, âWhen will mom return?â Later, all kinds of âhow?â, âWhy?â And âwhy?â Appear. There are two ways to suppress a childâs desire to ask questions. The first way is to give absolutely empty answers to the childâs questions such as âbecause I said soâ, âit doesnât concern youâ and âcurious Barbaraâs nose was torn offâ. In this case, the search behavior fades because it is inconclusive. The second way to suppress the childâs desire to ask questions is to provide the child with a lot of information, without waiting until he becomes interested. In this case, there is simply no need for questions - the child already receives information, and even more than he really needs.
Children, accustomed to defend themselves from an avalanche of impressions and information, give the impression of being extremely inquisitive. They donât feel like looking at the posters on the walls, they donât ask what is written on the toys. âDo you want me to read you a book?â The adult asks. âI don't want to,â the child says. At school, these same children drive teachers into longing for the fact that they seem to be not interested in anything. School performance, of course, suffers, because the child is screened from the material of the lesson.
A less obvious consequence is that the childâs relationship with peers is affected. If in the period of preschool childhood friendship revolves around the fact that children play together (and the simplest communication skills are often enough for this), then in school, children's relationships are more and more tied to the opportunity to talk and agree. If a child is used to not asking questions, he will not ask a classmate: âWhat kind of sweets do you like?â, âDo you want to go out for a walk?â, âWhat were we asked in mathematics?â, âWhy are you so sad?â. Children who do not ask each other questions enter into very superficial relations among themselves, and they know each other very poorly. If we add here that they may not have the skill of detailed speech and understanding of cause-effect relationships (because at the stage of preschool childhood they had a lot of toys, but they talked very little), then we get a situation of constant discommunication - regular conflicts disassembly and misunderstanding.
18. I love autumn because ...
By the time the child goes to school, board games become available to him, which have a lot of text on the components. At six years old, you can start playing such games, but you need an adult who will act as a leader and read, for example, to all players the text on the cards with the tasks.(After the child learns to read, the adult function can be reduced to helping to understand the rules, and then the children play on their own.)
Accordingly, schoolchildren can already play communicative games, where the topic for the story is set not by pictures, but by text. This, for example, the game series "Conversion." One of the players pulls a card, reads a question on the card, and then everyone who has something to say on a given topic speaks out in free form. For example: âWhat is the best gift you received for your birthday?â, âWhat is your favorite season?â
Several things happen here.
Firstly, children find themselves in a situation where you cannot get away with monosyllabic remarks, because many questions require a fairly detailed answer (a whole short story about an episode from your life). In a situation where detailed speech is needed, expanded speech begins to develop (which is especially true for those children who have gone without this skill all their pre-school childhood).
Secondly, children learn to ask those questions that help to establish contact with other people. They get at their disposal a lot of template replicas, which later they can use in a natural conversation. As mentioned above, the child says when he has an idea of ââwhat to say. If the child does not know what to say in a given situation, then he does not say anything. Even the ritual phrase âI donât know what to sayâ, the child actually needs to learn specifically. If the child does not have ready-made remarks that will help to start a conversation with an unfamiliar peer, other than âmy name is Petya, what about you?â Then it will be difficult for him to make friends.
The third is, in fact, that when the children begin to answer questions, they learn more about each other, and they have a basis for experiencing emotional kinship. They find that they have some kind of similar memories, similar experiences, similar preferences, similar interests. The moment when another player shouts: âMe too! It was like that with me too! âIs the moment when two people get closer to each other. They now have something to talk about further, because they have discovered a common theme.
19. What does the elves have to do with it
When a child enters adolescence, reflection begins to develop rapidly. On the one hand, a teenager is absorbed in thinking about himself: he is trying to understand himself, to understand his desires, his character. On the other hand, he is trying to understand the world around him and develop a certain philosophy of life. At this point, he matures to role systems like Dungeons & Dragons. The complex process of creating a character is the process of self-awareness through the metaphor of a fairy-tale hero. The teenager is trying to understand what mode of action, life path is more suitable for him. Does he like to act directly, strictly guided by principles, like a paladin does? Or does he want to act cunningly, stealthily, like a rogue? Who does he look more like, a sophisticated and contemptuous elf, or a stubborn dwarf? Creating one character after another,a teenager tries on different characters and different strategies of behavior and looks for what resonates with him the most. In inventing the background for his character, a teenager creates a metaphor for how he experiences his place in the world. At this point, storytelling begins to turn into a way of introspection.
A common adventure of several players is a joint story writing. Since the character created by the teenager is a reflection of his ideals, the interaction of game characters is a clash of different beliefs, essentially a model of philosophical discussion. If the thief wants to stab him in the back, and the paladin tries to convince him that this is dishonest, then their interaction at this moment is already communication at the level of values. The teenager learns first to realize, and then to defend his beliefs. On the other hand, he learns to understand the ideological position of the other and accept the fact of ideological disagreements.
At the same time, since each character has his own set of skills and capabilities, players have to coordinate their actions and separate functions in accordance with who gets what is better. At this point, the ability to cooperate goes to a new level: adolescents learn to consciously consider each other's individual characteristics. There comes an understanding that in many cases it is impossible to solve the problem alone (there will not be enough skills), and coordinated efforts of the team are needed to achieve success.
20. This is not a pyramid.
What is the result? From birth to adolescence, a person goes through a long process of developing the ability to negotiate, receiving at each stage some additional functions and opportunities. The important point here is that this is not a strictly linear process, where one necessarily relies on the other, and the child can skip certain stages. For example, we can see a very intelligent child with rich phrasal speech, but without the ability to cooperate and without the skill of finding a compromise. Or a child who can agree on some utilitarian issue, but cannot talk about his desires. In the end, each one gets his own profile of abilities and capabilities that add up to a communicative skill.
Some aspects of this skill help rock board games, but as you know, this is only part of the process. Even with a child it is very important to just talk. He also needs a company of peers with whom he can communicate on equal terms.
Much of what was missed can be made up later (although it will be longer and more difficult). Sometimes you need the help of specialists. And if the environment, it seems, is conducive to the child talking, but for some reason he is still silent, you should definitely consult a speech therapist.
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