June 5th Barker Waiting Parents Meeting

Catherine and I went to the Barker International Waiting-Parents meeting last night from 6:30 to around 9pm. We did indeed meet Mikayla, the new daughter from China of John and Barbara. Mikayla was wonderful---full of energy and quite a "ham." The parents described her as the joy of their life. Here is a picture from their blog, which you can access at: http://richardsonwolf.blogspot.com/

This is when they first got her, and you can see the emotion in Barbara's face. When they pulled up to the orphanage, there she was outside in the parking lot walking toward them, and they got to interact with her immediately! Their experience was a bit unique, since Mikayla came from a western location in a rarely visited area of China near Vietnam.

The second hour was a presentation by Kathy Hosty, a speech and language pathologist. It was worth hearing her talk. One key recommendation: set up an environment for your baby without a lot of noise pollution or even much background noise. "Noise" makes it difficult for the brain to work on speech. Also, talk constantly and naturally to the baby, giving her a running commentary on everything. Especially name and talk about anything that your baby shows an interest in or points to. Interaction with you and the real world is what the baby wants and the brain loves to work on language acquisition. The ASHA organization has an excellent chart of developmental stages in hearing, understanding and talking, which you can access on their WebSite at: http://www.asha.org/public/speech/development/child_hear_talk.htm
Studies have shown some interesting differences between welfare homes, working-class homes, and professional homes. There are 80,000 more discouraging statements that a baby receives in a welfare home than in other homes. In a welfare home, a baby hears 13 million discrete words per year spoken. In a professional home, a baby hears 45 million discrete words spoken. That's an amazing difference and has quite an effect on speech and language development.