Birth to three matters - Communities and Local Government

adults and siblings around them. Theworld of the family is the first culturalcontact a baby encounters and the familymembers and carers who surround herhelp her to understand and develop therole she needs to play to become part ofthe drama of family life (Bruner 1983;1987;Dunn 1988;Gopnik et al 2001).The Framework ‘Birth to Three Matters’sums up the key development points forthe component Being Together as follows:-Young babies are sociable from birth,using a variety of ways to gainattention.Babies make social contact accordingto their physical possibilities.Young children form friendships andcan be caring towards each other.Children learn social skills and enjoybeing and talking with adults andother children.The implications of the re s e a rch findingswhich lead to the above state m e nts abo u tbabies and young children as ski l f u lco m m u n i cators and the impo rt a n ce ofbeing together are pri m a ri ly that they needre l a xe d, p l ayful and loving co nve r s at i o n sri g ht from birt h . Ad d i t i o n a l ly, p a re nts needre a s s u ra n ce that talking with their babieswill fo s ter their language deve l o p m e nt sot h at by the time they are in their third ye a rt h ey will be ex pe rt at taking turns ands ocial inte ra ctions which include talk. Fro mas early as po s s i b l e, it is impo rt a nt too b s e rve, n o te and discuss with pare nts anya p p a re nt co n s t ra i nts on a child’s ability tod evelop speech due to impairm e nts in thep hys i cal or nervous sys te m ,so that helpcan be sought.Some of the other key messages forpractice are that babies need and/or seemto enjoy:-responsive and encouraginginteractionsturn-taking patterns of interactionmotherese, rhyming games, singing andword playnot too much background noise (eg.from television).FINDING A VOICEThe early sounds that babies make areoften thought to be merely a mimic of theconstantly repeated sounds that adultsmake to them. Imitation, though,is ahighly sophisticated skill and certainlyVygotsky maintained that it is more thana simple mechanical activity, as we pointedout in chapter 2. He argued that ‘toimitate, it is necessary to possess themeans of stepping from something oneknows to something new’ (Vygotsky 1986:187). But as Meltzoff (1988) claims that thisability to imitate, demonstrated in hisprotruding tongue experiments withbabies who respond similarly, can evenbe seen in newborns, we can assume thatimitation forms one aspect of languageacquisition. It is not, however, the wholestory, because babies and young childrendo not simply mimic what they hear. Theyactually create language, and practitioners69