Oftentimes in my work, I am sent a great deal of information, websites, articles and emails from various organizations and agencies that often sit and accumulate in my inbox, causing me to receive an automatically generated email from my own agency telling me that my “mailbox is over the allotted size” and instructing me to “delete any unnecessary or outdated emails!” Of course, I imagine that these daily reminders only serve to further clog my, apparently, pint-sized inbox, and so I usually find myself quickly deleting them, only to have another identical message pop up the next morning. It is a seemingly endless cycle to which I have no quick solution. However, my inability to achieve a level of organization with my inbox does have its upside, namely, that I can share with my readers the interesting and up-to-date tidbits from the worlds of early childhood development and mental health! And that makes me feel a little bit better.
I recently read of an article published in Pediatrics: The Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics (http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/124/1/342?eaf) that speaks to the importance in adult-child conversations in the language development of children. The study looked at the impact of adult language input, television viewing and adult-child conversations on children’s language development. What they found was that adult-child conversations, more than anything else, were positively associated with a child’s language development. The back and forth nature of conversations proved to be highly valuable in terms of language development, even more so than how much language was happening around the child in his/her environment, such as adults talking to other adults or people talking on television. This research further illustrates the complex connections between early relationships and brain development and underscores the importance of supporting and enhancing these relationships.
And now, I think I am going to go work on cleaning out my inbox!