Part 2 Building Your Child's Intellect from 5 to 7 months

Let your baby struggle...a little

At this age your 5 to 7 month old gets to learn to cope with gravity from the experience of falling from a sitting position.  Obviously this type of experience should only occur in carpeted or padded areas. When the five- to seven-month-old topples from a sitting position, wise parents will let him struggle briefly before coming to his assistance. Parents who rush too quickly to help often do a disservice to the infant by removing his opportunity to respond to and struggle through this situation successfully.  Allowing him to try to recover from a gentle fall will increase his physical balance and allow him to build muscular capacity.

Part 1 Building your 5 to 7 Month Old's Intellect

By the time a baby is five to seven months old (depending on each child’s individual abilities), he is becoming ego-centered and is demanding more attention. He prefers to be in the sitting position and struggles to be where he can see and interact with others. At this age, his sensory experiences will have increased greatly. He should have many objects to grasp and examine. He should be able to to shift objects from one hand to another. Help him practice this.


Increase your baby’s exposure to music and conversation during this time. Your infant now has more social awareness and will respond readily to things that happen around him. He should have an opportunity to grasp and bang toys or his fists on his high chair or feeding table. This and other similar experiences will stimulate him to make vocal sounds. Encourage his vocalization as much as possible in other experiences besides crying. Try to get him to make sounds and make a special effort to react to the sounds he makes.

Part 2 Playtime with your infant during the first 16 weeks

Delighting your Baby's Senses
Your little baby's senses are very keen, especially to sounds and touch.  That is why this playtime activity is so much fun.  First, position your baby so she is looking directly at you.  Then lightly caress her skin with your fingertips.  As you are doing this, speak softly and pleasingly to your baby.  Now try using a soft toy or fabric and lightly brush this across her arms, legs, face, and tummy.  Last, say things like "tickle, tickle, tickle!" And "oh it's so soft!"  With her keen sense of touch and sound, she will love the intellectual interaction and bond that she is having with you.  

Part 1 Playtime with your infant During the First 16 Weeks

Facinating Faces

Before playing with your infant make sure that he is ready: diaper, recently fed, recently had a nap.  Position him so that he is looking straight at you.  Your baby loves to look at you and is facinated by your face.  Try opening your mouth wide with a smile and making ooooooh and aaaaaaaah noises.  Stick out your tongue and move your eyebrows up and down.  Make silly faces.  Laugh.  This game will stimulate your infant's intellect and will also bond you with your baby.  You may even notice that your infant may be imitating you by sticking out his tongue or making noises.  This simple game may only last for only a minute or two, but will reward you and your baby again and again. 

Part 4 Learning During the First Few Weeks of Life

By the time a baby reaches 16 weeks of age, she will likely have begun to show interest in matters other than feeding, sleeping, and being kept dry and clean. She will want to be held and will enjoy being propped up. Objects that attract attention and stimulate curiosity on a broader scale should come into her experience at this time. She should have her feeding and sleeping routine fairly well established. Encourage her to follow moving objects with her eyes and to reach for things with her hands. Provide frequent opportunities for her to vocalize, touch, and reach for things.


The 16-week-old child should show some emotional response to outside stimuli. She should be cooing and trying to make initial sounds other than crying. She should be stimulated to smile, even laugh aloud, and to respond to all kinds of sound and motion.

Part 3 Learning During the First Few Weeks of Life

"Shhhhh!  The baby is sleeping."   This is a normal statement made by every parent.   However, while it is not uncommon for parents to demand absolute silence when the baby is taking her morning and afternoon naps, this will not help the baby become tolerant of normal household noises or make the home a natural, normally functioning place. Try teaching your baby to sleep with the usual sounds around the home. She will learn to live in a world with a fairly high noise level and be able to carry on her normal routine while adjusting to life’s circumstances.

Please let me know what you think about naps and household noises?  I think this topic deserves some discussion since we all want our babies to have good nap.

When talking about developoment stages, remember each child is unique

As we discuss learning activities and developmental stages, remember that each child is unique. Your child may not respond to certain activities or situations in precisely the same way as other children her age. She may develop at a different rate than what is outlined in this blog. She may master things more quickly, or may take a little more time. These differences are to be expected and should not cause you any degree of alarm. The parameters outlined in this blog are given as general guidelines; individual differences, exceptions and variations are to be welcomed and expected.

Part 2 Learning During the First Few Weeks of Life

Crib Toys

Be sure that the crib is an active, responsive place—a place your baby will enjoy. Inexpensive crib toys are commonly used to offer sensory experiences for the infant from about the age of four months to the time he is able to crawl. Such toys should be colorful so that they attract your child’s vision as he is learning to focus his eyes. They should, if possible, stimulate your child to want to reach, which provides practice in coordinating his arm and leg muscles. Some crib toys should make sounds to stimulate the sense of hearing; they should be responsive to the movement of hands and feet. They should excite and stimulate curiosity. Toys should be rotated frequently so that they do not lose their appeal. The more sound, color, and touch stimulation for your child, the greater will be his opportunity for growth during the early months of life.

Part 1: Learning During the First Few Weeks of Life

The First Few Weeks of Life
Your baby will gain feelings of security by having her physical needs met promptly and regularly in response to her cries. When your baby cries because she is hungry, feed her. If she is fussy because her diaper is wet, change her. If she seems to simply want to be held, hold her. These simple and repetitive acts of serving and comforting your child are the means by which your child learns who you are and that she can trust you. Do all you can to foster the bond that is now being forged with your child.

It is okay to let your child cry sometimes—especially after you have done everything you can to soothe and comfort her. But by and large, you should respond to your baby’s crying in whatever way seems most likely to comfort her. Some babies are quiet, demanding little attention. Busy parents can easily neglect such “low maintenance” babies and fail to provide a stimulating environment. Often the inactive, good-natured, non-crying baby is the baby who needs environmental stimulation the most. Make certain you are consistently comforting, holding, and talking to your baby.

The first 10 months your child’s life should be a time filled with joy and positive experiences as your child learns to know and trust you and gains confidence in herself. Do all you can to help your child have good feelings about interacting with you. Frequently give her your full attention. Smile at her, talk to her, sing to her, and hold her.

Along with nurturing feelings of security, a major purpose of initiating early interactions with your child is to nurture your child’s intelligence. There is overwhelming reason to believe that stimulation of mental activity at the earliest possible age is vital. You should consistently provide varied sensory experiences for your child.

During the first ten months of your child’s life, focus on systematically building her pre-vocabulary skills, encouraging vocalization, and increasing her visual, listening, and muscular skills. Allow your baby to sit or recline in many positions. She should be situated in different locations in the home where she can see a variety of items, shapes, and colors both inside and outside the crib.

Blog Layout

Each upcoming blog will include an overview of the typical characteristics of a child during each developmental stage. It will also offer commentary about what, how, and when to teach your child. You will also finds some blogs called “Parent Play.”  These blogs offers simple activity ideas to try with your child. Some of them may seem so simple and so rooted in common sense that you may be tempted to overlook them as unimportant. Quite often a parent thinks, “Oh yeah, of course. I should take a walk with my kid and talk about what we see. Everyone knows that.” But they too infrequently set aside time to actually do it with their child.
The Parent Play activities will serve as a reminder to do the things you likely already know you ought to do. And likely, some of the activities will be new to you. Each activity is designed with specific outcomes in mind. They are challenging because they do more than entertain—they require your child to use two or more of his senses, and they most often involve physical as well as mental activity. Use these suggestions to your advantage and adjust them to meet your circumstances and your child’s needs. Many of the activities are given as if for one child, but it is not difficult to enlarge the activities to include more than one child. Be creative and think up your own games and activities as well. Your child will love having a playful parent who invents games for the two of you to play together. All of the Parent Play suggestions should be implemented at play activities, which means they should be fun! They should not be approached as “lessons” or as a tedious checklist that you must plow through with your child. Play as you teach and teach as you play.

Nurturing your child’s innate intelligence and bringing it to fruition is a goal within the reach of even the most humble home with the most limited financial resources. The essential element in achieving this goal is not money; it is committed parents who take the time to provide truly creative play, mind-nurturing conversation, and experience-broadening activity in the home, neighborhood, and community. Parents who teach with loving concern, who adjust their teaching to fit their child’s needs, and who realize that their child’s feelings are of foremost importance will see their children blossom.

Individual Differences

Because there are great differences in the growth patterns of children, it is difficult for a blog of this type to take into account the broad span of abilities and readiness at all age levels. Some children will be able to progress faster than will be recommended in this blog; others may move along much more slowly. Some children—in fact many children—have intermittent patterns of tediously slow progress followed by great surges of interest and learning.
Accept your child as she is and work with her on whatever level of ability she may have at any particular time in her life. Do not be alarmed if your child is behind the recommended levels of accomplishment contained in this book or other reference materials. Some children will not be ready for a specific activity at the suggested age. In almost all cases, if you are patient and understanding, the slow phases of learning will pass and rewarding learning experiences will unfold later in your child’s life.

The suggested experiences and desired outcomes presented in this book are presented as broad guidelines, and will not fit every child’s developmental pattern. Very few children will reach all of the objectives at the recommended time since the activities presented are designed to stimulate and stretch the mental capacities of children having widely divergent backgrounds and abilities. Do not worry about a child’s slowness to develop a certain skill unless it departs drastically from what is considered normal. In such cases, of course, consult your doctor for further information and resources.

By the time a child is about a year old, you as an attentive parent will have learned a great deal about how to teach your child. You begin to get a sense of her strengths and limitations. You will have learned some tricks about how to hold her attention and how to interpret certain responses to various learning situations. As such a parent, you are striving to make your home a powerful, responsive learning environment for your child where opportunities for physical, metal, and emotional growth abound. You should be as conscious of nurturing your child intellectually and providing him with a balanced learning “diet” as you are to balancing her physical nutrition.

Be Patient During the Learning Peaks and Valleys

There will be periods in the life of almost every child when he will have a total disinterest in certain learning activities. There will be other times when he will be highly interested and will eagerly seek opportunities to learn and to be involved in the games and in the use of educational toys. Children go through stages of development which are related to their physical, emotional, and psychological growth. Do not be unduly concerned if your child’s level of interest is irregular over a span of time. There will be high and low spots in your child’s responses to learning situations. Wise parents will adapt to these situations without conveying apprehension or worry to their child.

It is by not necessary that your child learn all of the things presented in any particular book or blog, including this one. But it is possible. Too often parents either overlook the need to teach their child basic principles or choose not to teach them for fear of overwhelming their child. You need not worry that you are pressuring your child if you are teaching him when his interest is piqued, and you are applying the reinforcement theory including the 80% rule (please see earlier blog about this subject.) Your child is likely capable of things beyond your expectations. Lovingly offer him the opportunity to try.

Canopy of Love

Remember, teaching your child will become hollow and meaningless if not approached and presented in learning activities and games with love and patience. The loving relationship you have with your child supersedes the importance of teaching your child any particular skill, game, ability or concept. Tenderness must envelope everything you attempt to teach your child or else your most potent opportunities for bonding and teaching will be lost. So, as you are teaching your child the alphabet, keep in mind that your overridding objective is not the alphabet; it is the bond you are creating with your child as she grows. In all of your interactions, let there be a canopy of love casting its comforting shade on you and your child as you learn and grow together.

Building Your Child’s Ability to Discern Differences Using Sight, Sound and Touch

By the time your child reaches the age of five she should have had ample opportunities to use her senses to help her understand the world around her. She should be able to listen to sounds that are nearly the same and detect the differences. She should be able to look at objects and pictures that are almost identical and be able to see slight differences. She should be able to identify objects that she cannot see by touching and feeling them and forming mental images of them. Concentrate on building these skills in your play activities and incidental teaching.

The results of this teaching may not become apparent until much later when your child is learning to read and do simple mathematics, but they will become apparent. Do not neglect the developmental opportunities provided by activities that develop the senses.

Teaching Your Child Numbers, Colors and Letters

Letters are the initial tools your child will use in order to construct and express her own ideas and gain access to the ideas of others. She, of course, must learn letters and their function before she can learn to read. According to her stage of development and her ability, expose your child to letters in any way you can. Teach her to sing the alphabet song; write letters on a lap-sized chalk board and tell her their names; let her try to form the letters. Learning the letters of the alphabet and their sounds can be one of the most fun and natural things to teach your child, if you tackle it creatively and spread it over a long period of time. Your child will not learn the alphabet in one day, one week, or one month. Be content to acquaint her with one or two letters at a time, adding letters only as your child is able to identify them correctly 80% of the time.

Likewise, numbers are the units that will allow your child access to the world of mathematics. They will allow him to count, calculate, tally, analyze, estimate, evaluate and measure. Count things while your child is watching and listening. Count the plates you put into the cupboard, the tiles on the floor, the number of birds you see fly by your window. Your child will learn to say the numbers in sequence before he understands that the number names stand for a certain quantity of things. Let your child absorb the concept of numbers and how to use them slowly over the course of weeks and months and years. Your patience in teaching mathematic concepts will be far more effective than trying to force your child to understand concepts that seem simple to you but are really quite advanced for a young mind. Speak positively about math, and show your child how you use it in your everyday life.

Understanding colors is important on many levels. The simple exercise of looking at two things and distinguishing them by color is an extremely mind-building activity. Mastering the identification of colors gives your child a whole new avenue of describing and classifying things. Knowing that colors occur in fairly predicable patterns—that grass is green and the sky is blue and clouds are white—gives your child a sense of consistency and stability in the world around him. Since your child’s world is filled with color, there are myriad opportunities to talk about colors and identify them.

Games are an excellent way to teach your child letters, numbers and colors. During an engaging game, your child learns without awareness of effort since her concentration is on the game. Using your own imagination, make up games that focus on teaching colors, numbers and letters to your child.

Developing Your Child’s Ability to Reason

All the objects, ideas, and experiences a child is exposed to increases his ability to think about things and make choices based on what he knows. Virtually any experience a child has extends his ability to reason.  Every experience your child has equips him with knowledge to use and apply to future situations. Make sure you are providing many different experiences for your child both in and out of your home. Forests, sand dunes, ponds, buildings, aquariums, libraries, playgrounds and your child’s own bedroom all provide their own diverse opportunities for your child to learn, explore, gain knowledge and apply it.
Most children in the fourth year of life can develop the ability to reason and make judgments after weighing multiple factors in a game situation. When your child reaches this stage, be sure to use objects, toys and games that provide a mind-stretching interplay of several factors. For example, games like that apply mathematic skill with color identification and the use of geometric shapes will provide particularly rich opportunities to development cognitive power. Children who master the ability to use a combination of three or more skills in a fairly complex game will be ready to master even more difficult cognitive feats as they reach the age of five.

Building Your Child’s Ability to Communicate: Reading

Reading is one of the most beneficial things you can do with your child. In the early months of life, your child will not understand the things you are reading to her, but she will understand many other important things from reading with you. She will understand that sitting on your lap and hearing your voice is pleasurable. She will come to understand that a person’s voice moves in a certain rhythm, and the sounds she hears repeat themselves in certain patterns. She will learn that you are interested in what is on the page for some reason, and she will eventually become interested, too.

As time moves on and you continue to read to her, she will come to recognize many words you say and relate them to her real life experiences. She will see that the pictures in the book relate to what you are saying with your mouth. She will come to understand that the marks on the page are called letters, and that when you put them in certain groups called words, they mean something. She will learn that books tell stories that are enjoyable to hear and think about. As she matures, she will come to understand that she can learn just about anything she wants to know by reading. As she hears you read and learns to read herself, she will develop a rich vocabulary which will allow her to express her feelings and ideas and send them out into the world. She will learn to speak, to write and to think from listening to you read.

Building Your Child's Ability to Communicate: Listening

Your child will be able to express all of his wonderful thoughts if you listen to him. The importance of listening to your child cannot be overstated. Seek to have your child express himself in whatever way he is capable of doing so. Encourage your child to express any apprehensions and aspirations he might have. This will yield valuable information to you as parents as well as provide a useful outlet for the child’s feelings. Perceptive parents will learn how to adjust and adapt teaching strategies from what they learn by listening to their child.


Parents should relate to their child in such a way as to provide a feeling of belonging and worthiness. This requires a great amount of loving and listening by the parents. Look at your child when he speaks to you and respond to what he says. Too often, parents provide what they believe is the “right answer” for their child without allowing the child to think creatively to solve problems or express ideas. If your child has a different idea than you, do not put him down or punish him for thinking differently. Value your child’s opinions even if they are simplistic or flawed.


Children need to be listened to with love and understanding in early childhood. Otherwise, the child will go on without gaining vital practice in thinking critically. Let him explain his ideas and his point of view. Ask questions and help him come to his own conclusions. In this way, you will teach your child to think things through for himself and gain self-esteem and confidence.

Building Your Child’s Ability to Communicate: Talking

Building your child’s ability to speak and to understand others is a three-pronged endeavor. It includes talking to your child, listening to your child, and reading with your child.  This blog will focus on talking.

A child learns much from conversation. Conversation, and the vocabulary that develops because of it during the early years of a child’s life, helps to build your child’s cognitive power. In conversation, words are symbols consisting of sounds created by the vocal chords. For a child who does not yet have a vocabulary and who has not mastered the capacity to get meanings from sounds made by the vocal chords, this is indeed a complex and challenging learning situation. Remember that listening to and getting meaning from sounds requires the ability to associate these sounds with something familiar to the child. This is more complicated than you might think, particularly if this task is analyzed from the point of view of the child. Remember that your child is beginning with zero vocabulary, and does not even know that vocabulary exists.


Very young children need consistent speech stimulation, and parents should converse frequently with them. Some studies of child behavior indicate that children will make earlier attempts at speaking and will jabber and make conversational mimicry if, during the early months of their lifetime, they live in an environment where they are talked to frequently. Even at an early age when you may not think your child is understanding you, it is important that conversation (even if it is a one-way chat) occurs frequently. The entire first five-year period of a child’s life is critical to building vocabulary and developing language skills.


Children begin to develop a “word recognition” vocabulary before they can speak. That means he will recognize and be able to respond to many words before he can say them himself. You can enhance your child’s ability to recognize words by clearly repeating simple words for him. When you are putting on his shoes say, “Shoes.” Repeat the word “hand” as you stroke your child’s hand. When you see a dog strutting by, point and say, “That’s a dog. Dog.”


A child who is spoken to as if he can understand will soon learn to understand. He will develop a keen intellect and a powerful means of expressing his thoughts as he listens to you.

What should parents focus on teaching during the first five years? Part II

The Basic Building Blocks


What should you focus on helping your child learn? What things will be of most value to her? There are several key building blocks upon with which all other learning and education stand. First and foremost, a young child must learn that she can trust her caregivers and that she is of value to them. (We will discuss this more in the chapter on nurturing your newborn.) After your child feels secure in your love, there are several other mind-building activities you should focus on as you nurture and educate your child in her early years. Here is a list of five major areas of focus:


1. Building your child’s ability to communicate
2. Developing your child’s ability to reason
3. Building your child’s ability to discern differences using sight, sound and touch
4. Improving your child’s large and small motor skills
5. Teaching your child numbers, colors and letters

What should parents focus on teaching during the first five years of life?

This blog focuses on the first five years of life.  Why?  Because by age five, the basic character of a child is well established. The core of his character includes his ability to empathize, communicate, reason, make choices, assimilate information and solve problems. This is why I parents should be the dominant players in their child’s intellectual, social, and emotional development before (and beyond) age five. If we as parents consistently and lovingly teach our child we will give him a rich emotional and intellectual reservoir from which to draw for the rest of his life.

So what should you focus on teaching your child in her early years? I have found that while it is essential to follow your child’s interests, there are some important things she will not show interest in on her own simply because she does not know they exist.  For example, your one-year-old child is not likely to come up to you and say, “Mom, I’m really interested in learning the alphabet so that I can start reading.” She will not say this because she does not know what the alphabet is or why it might need to exist. Nor does she have the ability to think into the future and consider how she might extend her knowledge base through reading.  Therefore you can slowly, lovingly, and purposefully teach her things that will be of most value to her now and later in life. 

In other words, you don’t have to wait until your child requests that you teach her the alphabet. You know that it will be valuable for her to know the alphabet, so you can begin exposing her to it now by means of the well-known alphabet song. She will learn to sing the song because she likes singing the song with you, not because it is part of her personal long-term learning goals. But you have long-term goals in mind for her, and you can set her feet on the path to achieving them before she even knows that there is a purpose for what you are teaching her. In addition to capitalizing on your child’s natural interests, part of your responsibility is to build your child’s interest in things you know will be of value to her.

Do you agree?  What are your experiences?

The Home: The Best Place to Teach your Young Child

I need to bring up an important point.  Some psychologists and educators advocate starting public school education at two years of age, claiming that a great opportunity will be lost if we do not start sending our two-year-olds to school in order to build their intelligence. Many opponents, myself included, do not agree. Although they recognize possible benefits for some children, they argue that young children will lose much more than they gain if we institutionalize their learning this early in life. They argue that in the early months, the child needs the home. They argue that schools are too bureaucratic and complex to be sensitive to the individual needs of tiny tots. They say that removing a very young child from the home will weaken the home environment and too much responsibility will be placed on the schools. Numerous studies of home and parental influence on learning support this position.
This places great importance on the home, which is where it should rightly be. In my opinion, parents are the best teachers and and whenever possible, the home is the best opportunity for very young children to learn and grow, if parents will take on the responsibility.  I hope this blog will help and inspire parents to teach their young children.  A powerful intellect is one of the best legacy that we can give our children.

Can a Child's Ability to Learn be Increased? Yes!

What we do with our children affects both her feelings and her intelligence.   In the past, many educators believed that intelligence was almost totally fixed at birth and that a child’s capacity to learn was determined by heredity. It was believed that we should strive to teach a child all we could within the limits of her capacity, but that we could not increase the basic capacity significantly beyond the limits inherited at the time of conception. Modern research now overwhelmingly confirms that a human being’s intelligence—or her ability to learn—can be increased. The way parents interact with their child has a significant impact on her ability to learn. Environmental factors—or factors outside the child’s own self—have much more to do with nurturing intelligence than was formerly believed. The results of this research bring great hope and great responsibility to parents.

This places great importance on the home, which is where it should rightly be.  Parents are the best teachers and and whenever possible, the home is the best opportunity for very young children to learn and grow, if parents will take on the responsibility.  A powerful intellect is one of the best legacy that we can give our children.

For the next while I want to focus on the first five years of life.  Why?  Because by age five, the basic character of our children are well established. The core of his character includes his ability to empathize, communicate, reason, make choices, assimilate information and solve problems.  If we consistently and lovingly teach our child we will give him a rich emotional and intellectual reservoir from which to draw for the rest of his life.

So what should you focus on teaching your child in her early years? I have found that while it is essential to follow your child’s interests, there are some important things she will not show interest in on her own simply because she does not know they exist.  Therefore you can slowly, lovingly, and purposefully teach her things that will be of most value to her now and later in life.

In other words, we don’t have to wait until your child requests that we introduce her to math and reading. You know that it will be valuable for her to know the alphabet, so you can begin exposing her to it now by means of the well-known alphabet song. She will learn to sing the song because she likes singing the song with you, not because it is part of her personal long-term learning goals. But you have long-term goals in mind for her, and you can set her feet on the path to achieving them before she even knows that there is a purpose for what you are teaching her. In addition to capitalizing on your child’s natural interests, part of your responsibility is to build your child’s interest in things you know will be of value to her..

What should you focus on helping your child learn? What things will be of most value to her? There are several key building blocks upon with which all other learning and education stand. First and foremost, a young child must learn that she can trust her caregivers and that she is of value to them. (We will discuss this more in the chapter on nurturing your newborn.) After your child feels secure in your love, there are several other mind-building activities you should focus on as you nurture and educate your child in her early years. Here is a list of five major areas of focus:

1. Building your child’s ability to communicate
2. Developing your child’s ability to reason
3. Building your child’s ability to discern differences using sight, sound and touch
4. Improving your child’s large and small motor skills
5. Teaching your child numbers, colors and letters

What is Intelligence?

What is Intelligence?


We have already touched on the fact that what you do with your child affects both her feelings and her intelligence. But what is intelligence exactly? Is one child innately more intelligent or brilliant than another? Is intelligence a trait you are either born with or born without? Is school the only place where intelligence can be built? Is intelligence gained strictly from book learning, or is intelligence the result of the unique coalescing of study and individual experience? In the next few blog posts I will discuss these questions and I hope that you will discuss with me.  For the purposes of this blog, intelligence refers to a child’s mental capacity—her ability to learn.

One More Thing on Reinforcement Theory: Praise, Praise, and Praise

Just one more point before finishing up on reinforcement theory, in our anxiousness to help our children, we tend to correct too much and reinforce too little. Praise is the most powerful tool we can use in guiding our children. If we are wise in the way we apply the reinforcement principle in praising and correcting our kids during the learning process, learning will most often be a happy experience and our kids will seek more opportunities to be involved in it.

During each teaching experience that I will suggest in this blog, remember to actively and consistently apply reinforcement theory.

Please participate in this blog and encougage others to do so.  I think we can have a very vibrant discussion if all readers will participate in a positive way!

The 80% Rule Example

It isn’t necessary to measure an 80% accuracy rate precisely in your informal learning games and other teaching and learning activities. But it is important to ensure your child is responding correctly most of the time so that you can genuinely praise him for his correct responses. Here is an example of adjusting the difficulty to meet your child’s ability during a learning game:
Example: A father wants to help his son learn to tell the difference between numbers through the use of an educational game. When the atmosphere is relaxed and it is play-time for the child, Dad suggests that they play the number game together. The two start playing and the child responds correctly to only half of the items. The parent immediately moves the level of difficulty back to where the child is answering about eight out of every ten problems correctly. This gives the child a feeling of accomplishment, but the level of difficulty is still challenging, as evidenced by the few incorrect responses that are made. After some time, the child begins to show disinterest. Although Dad is anxious for the child to continue, he stops the game without pressure or unpleasantness. He praises his son for success even though he would have been pleased with more progress.

Comment: This parent knows that successful learning will not continue if the child experiences failure too many times. Thus, Dad adjusted the level of difficulty so that most of his son’s attempts were successful. The child ended the game too soon to please the parent, but when gentle persuasion did not entice the child to keep playing, Dad did not pressure his son. The child increased his ability to discriminate between numbers and had fun with Dad as a result of this well-conducted activity.

What do you think?  Please let me know if you are reading this blog.

The 80% Rule Part 3

As your child masters new skills and concepts, there must be sufficient challenge along with successes. If the situation is so easy that the child is responding correctly 100% of the time, she has already learned the task, and the level of difficulty must be advanced.


Success is contagious. Let your child’s joy in each success lead him to conquer new, bigger challenges. In our eagerness to get a child to move ahead rapidly, or in our concern that she may be behind, it is very easy to push too hard or to move the child to a level of difficulty where her responses are most often incorrect. This is self-defeating and must be avoided at all costs. As you and your child work together, it will become increasingly easy for you to adjust the level of difficulty to meet your child’s needs.

The 80% Rule Part 2

If you find yourself in the position of correcting your child almost constantly, you must immediately simplify the activity to fit your child’s level of understanding and proficiency or the whole thing is likely to turn sour very quickly. If you are outside pitching a baseball to your son from 10 yards away and he misses it almost every time, then you must change your approach. Scoot closer and continue scooting closer (and continue to praise his efforts) until he can hit the ball about 8 out of every 10 times you pitch it.

Please share your thoughts and experiences.

The 80% Rule

With the basics of reinforcement understood, we are now ready to move on to another aspect of reinforcement theory: the 80% rule. The 80% rule is effective with virtually any child in any situation. In order for a learning activity to be rewarding or reinforcing to a child, it must be sufficiently pleasurable for him. Experience shows that for a learning activity to be pleasurable for a child, he should be able to respond correctly 80% of the time.


For example, if you are working on color identification with your young child by throwing him one colored ball at a time and letting him tell you what color it is, he should be able to respond correctly 8 out of every 10 times you throw a ball. If you are using four balls of different colors and your child gets every second ball color wrong, then the activity is too hard for him. In order to keep the activity reinforcing to him, remove two colored balls and play with only two balls of different colors. If he can say the correct color 8 out of every 10 times, then the activity is appropriate for his skill level in identifying colors. On a later occasion, add back in one ball color at a time until he is proficient at identifying the original colors and the new colors about 80% of the time.


In any learning activity, it is important for your child to hear consistent praise and encouragement from you. But without following the 80% rule, even your best efforts to praise will not be enough. It is simply not reinforcing enough for a child to hear time after time, “You got it wrong again, but keep trying! That was a really good try!” If a child continuously responds incorrectly, it ceases to matter how much you praise him for his efforts. It will not be fun or satisfying for him to be wrong most of the time.


What do you think about the 80% rule?  Please let me know your thoughts. 

Using the Reinforcement Principle in your Home

Consider these additional examples involving reinforcement theory. They may help you think through how you can use the reinforcement principle in your home to obtain the results you want:


Example: A 3½-year-old child keeps begging to eat ice cream between meals. The parent has determined that the child’s nutrition is adequate and that she should not be hungry an hour after she has eaten. The child is persistent and increases the pressure until the parent gives in “just to keep her quiet.”

Comment: This is applying reinforcement to develop undesired behavior and bad eating habits. The child learns from the success of pressure and persistence that the parent will eventually give in to her demands. The behavior of whining and the habit of eating sweets between meals are unwittingly reinforced.

Example: Mom is tired and hurrying to get dinner on the table. Her five-year-old keeps trying to get her attention to show her the pictures he just drew. He tries to show her several times, but each time she ignores him or says, “I don’t have time to look at that right now.” She does not look at him or respond sufficiently for the boy’s liking. In his frustration, he hits his little sister as she walks by. Mom then gives the boy her full attention; she looks at him and addresses him directly.

Comment: Although the boy is being scolded, he has gotten his mom’s attention, which is what he wanted. Thus, he is learning that hitting gets mom’s attention. He is “reinforced” for hitting when his mother refuses to pay attention to him unless he hits. Although being scolded may not seem to be a “pleasurable” reward, some children consider any attention from their parent (even negative attention) better than no attention at all.

The mother was busy and needed to continue her dinner preparation. But it may have been wiser to look directly at her child and say, “Show me your picture while I work.” After a 20 second explanation from the boy of what he had drawn, the mother could then smile and say, “Wow. Thanks for showing me. I really like the way you colored that mountain. Could you show me your other pictures after dinner?” For the sacrifice of 30 seconds, the mother could have reinforced the behaviors of both artistic expression and kind conversation rather than reinforcing the need to hit.

Example: A little girl proudly holding a broom says, “Look, Dad! I swept the floor!” Dad looks over and sees a small scattering of crumbs still littering the kitchen floor. Dad says, “Thanks so much for sweeping. I didn’t even ask you to! You’re really growing up and becoming responsible.”

Comment: Dad wisely reinforced the desirable behavior of helping without being asked instead of focusing on the less important factor of how well the child was able to perform the task. If a child has done her best, let it be enough. Praise her for what she has done instead of scolding her for what she has left undone. There will be other opportunities for teaching her how to effectively use the dust pan. If you want her to continue to sweep the floor, praise her for doing it. Is she likely to sweep the floor again if her initial efforts to do so were rewarded with criticism? Reinforcement principle says no.

Please let me know what you think about these examples?  How do you think you the reinforcement principle can help you in your home? 

Reinforcing Desirable Skills and Behaviors with your Child

Applying the reinforcement principle is key to helping your child develop both learning skills and desirable behaviors. If a child is consistently reinforced for performing a certain behavior such as making her bed, she is likely to continue making her bed. A simple statement like, “You made your bed! Thank you so much!” accompanied by a hug is usually sufficient reinforcement for a child. If a parent fails to notice or reward a child for the desirable things she does, the child is less likely to continue doing them. So, your job is to think about what behaviors you want your child to persist in doing, and reinforce her for doing them.


Undesirable behaviors can also be “accidentally” reinforced if parents are not conscious of what responses they give to certain behaviors. For example, if a child cries when she is refused a toy at the store and the parent responds by “caving in” and buying her the toy, the parent is encouraging—or reinforcing—the child’s undesirable behavior of crying to get her way.

What do you think? 

Excessive Demands on your Time?

As you continue to follow this blog, you may become concerned about what could seem to be excessive demands upon your time to do all of the activities recommended. You will find, however, that most of the upcoming recommended activities do not require additional time from busy parents. As you learn to recognize opportune moments to teach your child, you will find that much of your teaching occurs in the natural course of a day. You will teach as you dress her in the morning, as you feed her, as you play with her during the day, while you take her shopping, or when you put her to bed at night. The techniques are casual; the teaching is incidental and related to the real-life experiences of parent and child.


This blog promised to give you one answer to the question, “How do I find the right balance between appropriately challenging my child with love and pushing him too hard?” The first answer is: PLAY with him. As often as it is feasible, play what your child wants to play when he wants to play it and look for chances to teach as you go. If your teaching is child-centered and child-directed your child is not likely to feel pushed, hurried or forced into learning. He will learn to love learning because he loves playing with you.

Follow Your Child's Feelings

Whatever activities you and your child choose to play with together, remember that activities will be most effective when they are child-centered and child-directed. As you teach your child and acquaint her with the many wonders around her, let your child’s feelings and desires be your guide. Let her be involved in deciding which activities you will do together and how long they will last. If your daughter gets tired of drawing pictures and letters on the driveway with sidewalk chalk, let her be done! Do not insist that she continue an activity that she has clearly lost interest in. If your son gets bored of sorting marbles into groups of like colors with you after five minutes, move on to something else! Do not force him to sort them all by size as well before you let the activity die. Let each activity be a success in its own right, no matter how small or how short.

It is the compilation of many positive playing activities over the course of years that will have the biggest impact on your child, not one instance of trying to forcibly get a certain point across to him. If your child sees that he is being forced to learn a certain thing, he will most likely rebel against the force being applied to him. However, if he sees that his feelings and desires help determine what happens in his life, he will be more anxiously engaged in shaping his own life and asking you for help as he does so. He will see you as a kind guide not a dictatorial commander.

Educational Toys

In the quest of building your child's intellect, you will not need to purchase a wide array of toys to meet the needs of your child. While there are many excellent educational toys on the market, there are also many items already in your home that can be successfully used as teaching aids. Through the creative use of items commonly found in and around your home, you and your children will find many opportunities to play and learn together. Any of the following items (or dozens you and your child will think of on your own) can be used as “toys” depending on your child’s age and developmental stage: plastic cups, wooden or metal spoons, pans, shoes, brushes, uncooked pasta, washcloths, soap and water, calculators, rocks, boxes, newspaper, squirt bottles, magnets, dirt, trees, paper plates, mops, blankets, lids, sponges, and blocks of wood. The possibilities for play and learning are endless! Be sure that any items you use are age-appropriate and safe for your child to handle, whack, twist, or otherwise manipulate to the utmost limit. For very young children, avoid anything with small parts, parts that could break off or anything that could entangle a child.


If you are considering purchasing some play items to supplement the host of items already available in your home, here are a few simple suggestions that have proven to be worth the money for the long haul: a sandbox, a swing set, a white board and set of colored dry erase markers, Play-Doh, and washable paints with lots of paper. Most children are drawn to these items and return to them again and again through the course of years.

What do you think?  What educational toys do you use? Please let me know if you are following this blog by commenting. 

The Home: A Learning Laboratory Full of Opportunities for our Kids Part 3

If it is your desire to create a learning laboratory at home that is full of opportunity, than this means you should begin establishing a ready source of teaching aids (in other words, play things) for our child to use. These items should be stored where they are easy to get to. If your child shows interest in a certain activity, but you have to search for and assemble what is needed for the activity, it is often too late. Teaching moments are short-lived occasions that require an almost instantaneous response. Be prepared with your “bag of tricks” when opportunity knocks.

The contents of your bag of tricks will change along with your child. For example, when your child is a baby scooting around the floor his main playthings may include soft toys he can squish, sturdy bowls he can pound on or put things in, and board books you can look at and talk about together. However, as your child grows into a running, jumping three-year-old your bag of tricks may expand to include such things as a measuring tape, spools, geometric shapes, plastic pitchers, measuring spoons and a flashlight. A wide variety of music and books should be a staple in any home consciously prepared to provide maximum intellectual stimulation for the children who live there.

As a reader of this blog, I would like to help you construct opportunities for you and your child to play together.  As a part of this, please do not forget that activities you consider to be “work” can be a consistent and extremely useful means of play and learning for your child. Setting the table, putting clothes into the washer, and putting away spoons and forks in the drawer are all forms of play and are loaded with opportunities and means for teaching your child.
What do you think?  Please let me know your thoughts as your are reading this.

The Home: A Learning Laboratory Full of Opportunities for our Kids Part 2

As parents, when we think of building our child's intellect, shouldn't we try to focus on providing hands-on experiences for our children as they learn? Shouldn't we try to provide ample opportunities to touch, explore and create. Kids need to feel, see, hear, and manipulate objects that will support and reinforce learning. Sometimes I think our homes and attitudes about our homes are not child friendly when it comes to learning.  Does anyone reading this agree? As parents, I think to be successful in building a child’s intellectual power, our homes should provide continuous exposure to a wide variety of experiences, no matter how messy, at times, that it makes our home.  These experiences should stimulate the child’s mind and expand the limits of her understanding and ability. 

What are some ways that your homes provide ample opportunities to touch, explore, and create?  Please share what works for you and ideas that seem to make learning enjoyable and stimulating for your kids.