Birth to three matters - Communities and Local Government

in the first 18 months. Depressed motherswere less focused on their babies’experience and less likely to encourageor even acknowledge the child’s agency(growing personhood and attempts to beindependent, develop a self-concept – seechapters 3 and 6) than non-depressedmothers. Again,the quality of the mother’sinteractions was found to impact oncognitive development. Work by Molfeseet al (1996) found associations betweenperinatal risk (see chapter 6 section onpoverty) and language development,which have implications for the use ofmaterials for testing very young children’sprogress. They argue that professionalsshould check scores on a variety ofindividual sections of assessment scalesrather than the final summed predictorsonly. What is particularly important aboutthis issue is the fact that in general, boys’language development is slower than thatof girls (Hutt 1972). This is said to relate tothe relative immaturity of the male centralnervous system at birth and it hasconsequences for both girls and boys.Firstly, boys may be assessed as beingless able, when in fact they may beconcentrating on other modes ofexploration and discovery; it may alsomean that adults provide girls withexplanations for events and phenomena,instead of encouraging them to explorefirst hand through play.The component of the Framework headedFinding a Voice provides the following keydevelopmental guidelines:-Young babies communicate in a varietyof ways including crying, gurgling,babbling and squealing.Babies enjoy experimenting, exploringand using sounds and words torepresent objects around them.Young children use single word andtwo word utterances to convey simpleand more complex messages.Children use language as a powerfulmeans of widening contacts, sharingfeelings, experiences and thoughts.BILINGUALISMAccording to Siraj-Blatchford and Clarke’s(2000:30) review of research onbilingualism, there are many advantagesto being exposed to more than onelanguage from birth. These include:-‘self-esteem, positive identity and attitudestowards language learning, cognitiveflexibility, increased problem-solvingand a greater metalinguistic awareness.’Further, these researchers tell us thatwhere children are ‘sequentially’ bilingual(learn their second language later, sayat a nursery) it is important they haveopportunities to carry on developing theirhome language because it is the strengthof this that provides the basis for theadditional language.In her highly informative chapter on‘Young bilinguals’ Whitehead (1996)synthesises research findings withprofessional and personal experience toprovide information about bilingualism73