Gender differences in the development of speech in preschoolers. Stages of child development. Early development

Genius in diapers

One of my earliest childhood memories: Dad is sitting at a table, in front of him is a huge newspaper, I am on Dad's lap and I run my finger over a newspaper page, on which a slogan (which I now understand) is written on top in huge red letters. I name all the letters one by one.

“Now read it,” Daddy suggests.

I try, it doesn't work. Roar with all my urine. The brother looks up from the toys (he is a year older), walks over and reads. I roar again, even louder. It's a shame - my brother could, but I - no.

To be honest, I don't remember at all who and how taught me to read and count... In the kindergarten in the blessed 60s of the last century, they did not even think of preparing children for school. I was a curiosity in the first grade: I learned to read before school.

Now you won’t surprise anyone with this. At the age of five, her husband's niece read Saint-Exupery and, surprisingly, understood everything perfectly and could retell what she read in her own words. What would you like? Early development. Now a child who cannot read will experience tremendous difficulties in the first grade. It just so happened that by school you need to learn to read, to count at least within 20, and it would be better to be 100, and not only to count, but also to add, and subtract ... In general, why, in this situation, the first grade is needed is completely incomprehensible ... But this is a topic for a completely different conversation. And we will return to early child development.

It would not be bad to figure out: firstly, what is meant by it, secondly, what is it for and, thirdly, whether it is needed at all. Go?

Sooner or later?

My baby started to roll over from side to side only at six months. All the doctors grabbed their heads and hinted at his complete backwardness. Nothing! Massages, constant communication, music, reading books have done their job. At 7.5 months we began to get up, holding on to the support, at 8 we could stand, already not holding on to anything, at 9 months we crawled so that we could not keep up, at 10 months we sat down on our own, and at 11 months we took the first step. At the age of one and a half, the son did absolutely everything after the adults. Now (he is 2.5 years old) he asks questions (his favorite question is: “Why are the doors slamming on the subway?”), Knows and confidently shows a dozen flowers, and in general our mouth closes only during sleep. In general, we always comment on everything that we see. Recently, the little one was seriously confused: how so - all the time I saw orange excavators, and then suddenly a yellow one is working at a construction site. For three days he haunted: "Mom, why is he yellow?"

I naively believed that it should be so. The local doctor said: "Oh, what a developed he is beyond his years." And I almost fell into a stupor when my little one, touching her robe, babbled: "White robe."

- Does he even know the colors?

- Yes, why?

- Go home, mom, and calm down. What scattered attention, what a lag, but at his age many boys hardly pronounce "mother".

Then, after reading clever books, I realized: each child has his own pace of development. The eldest nephew began to speak after two years, which did not prevent him from entering MIPT. He calmly caught up with all his lag, including the inability to read at the age of five.

So which development is considered early? In smart books, the definition is given: "early development - the intensive development of the child's abilities at an early age (from 0 to 2-3 years)." But, dear parents, this does not mean at all that at two years old the baby should know the alphabet, and at three - read confidently. Don't drive horses. What is the point in reading if the kid is not able to comprehend what he read and retell in his own words? Have you noticed how a person in the subway, reading a newspaper, involuntarily moves his lips? He repeats what he read to himself. What does this mean? The process of reading and comprehending what you have learned is difficult. Is this what you want? No? Then don't force the process.

Before starting to read, the kid must learn to answer questions, retell what he has heard, develop memory, thinking, speech ... A huge amount of information must settle in his head, and the child must understand what is connected with what and how. In a word, he must mature before reading.

As for the rest, the child will learn a lot on his own. Your task is to create conditions for him to learn all the wisdom willingly and playfully, as if by himself.

Do you want your kid to know colors? And not only their names, but also learned to distinguish them? Then do not be lazy and be kind to each thing that the little one touches, not just name it, but also accompany it with the designation “red”, “yellow”, etc.

- Oh, how loudly your blue car beeps! Do you wanna dig? Then we need an orange spatula. Please give me that yellow chicken ...

You yourself will not notice how the little one will confidently point to the toy and name what color it is. Tested on our own experience.

In order for the baby to start talking, all you need is to communicate closely with him and not lisp, do not distort the words, but pronounce them clearly, distinctly, as it should. And read - poems, short stories, let them listen to music. And also - be sure to do gymnastics for the fingers. All kinds of lacing, which are sold in many in children's stores, will serve well here. Only it is better to buy not an abstract lacing, but, say, a basket to which you need to lace (or, in another way, into which you need to collect) mushrooms. Or a garden bed on which you want to plant vegetables. At the same time, you will find out the names of the vegetables. And tell me how they differ from fruits. Again, tested on my own experience.

Walk, so please name the trees you pass by, pay the attention of the little one to the carved maple leaves (at the same time add - "green"), the white birch trunk and weeping willow branches. Then the kid will learn the names of the trees without special "training".

Any child is a genius

Just think: during the first year of life, the brain develops by 60%, and by three years - by 80%. Impressive? But the brain develops not because new cells are born, but because the nervous network branches out, new connections arise between nerve fibers. That is, the brain does not accumulate information, but systematizes it. The child accumulates basic information by the age of 8-9 months, and then all his life puts it on the shelves, establishes connections between disparate images, facts, words, etc. In parallel, of course, the accumulation of information continues, only in much smaller volumes.

In general, by the age of three, a person accumulates and organizes most of the information about the outside world. We are social beings, in order to successfully interact with other people, we need to know the hierarchy in the group and society, prohibitions, cultural and everyday characteristics. You need to know what you need to survive, understand connections and interconnections and be able to navigate in them. Translated from scientific into everyday language, this means: a child must understand which plants are edible, which are not, which animals are domestic, which are wild, learn to distinguish rain from snow, morning from night, tomorrow from yesterday, summer from autumn and winter, and etc.

Children are inquisitive by nature.... All that parents need is not to interfere, in every possible way to encourage curiosity and awaken children's imagination. And for this, make the environment of the baby interesting. We hung a huge map "Fauna and flora of the Earth" all over the wall. Oh, how interesting it is to travel on it! A toy steam locomotive travels across seas-oceans (we definitely say what the sea-ocean is called, we went north, south or east), collects various animals in wagons: fish with outlandish names, animals from Africa or South America, etc. ...

And how interesting it is to look at pictures in a book! And imagine where the tailor Hans is going or the bun is rolling. And why did the fox eat the bun? An adult will say: "I was hungry." My child answered this question like this: “I wanted to get to know him” (I translate his answer into “adult” language). I explained it to myself this way: a kid, when he wants to know something better, pulls this thing into his mouth. Here is the fox - she liked the bun, she wanted to get to know him better, and therefore pulled it into her mouth. Personally, I like this explanation better.

In a word, the baby must constantly look at something new, discover new details and details in the already familiar, study the world around him with all his senses. Toys should provide a variety of tactile, visual, auditory and olfactory sensations. And, of course, the child must move a lot. Walk as much as possible, walk with the baby, tell him about what he sees, read books, look at pictures, listen to music, dance ... And questions about at what age a child should learn to read, write and count will disappear by themselves.

Development and learning

Don't confuse development with learning. It is one thing to teach to read, it is quite another to develop curiosity, attention, memory, imagination. Develop all this, the child will learn easily and playfully. Listen to your little one and take your time. The pace at which your toddler is developing will tell you when it is more appropriate to take the next step.

If something doesn't work out right away, don't freak out.... Set aside for a while. And then come back to this task again. Again, from personal experience. I bought the toddler the simplest puzzles - fruits and vegetables, the animals must be folded in two or three parts. Spread out in front of him, they say, find me a carrot. Figurines! Plays with separate parts, but it is impossible to add a whole out of them. I almost burst into tears, honestly. He sees parts of carrots, finds them confidently, but put them together - no way! For three days I stubbornly tried to teach the little one to put the parts into a whole. And at least henna! In general, we abandoned this business for two weeks. Then the little one accidentally stumbled upon a box in which there were ill-fated puzzles, took it out, opened it ... And you should have seen with what passion and interest he began to look for "spare parts" from an elephant and a lion, a carrot and a cucumber. And then, somehow, by itself, all the "spare parts" fell into place, it turned out to be amusing animals, vegetables, fruits.

Since then, I have been doing this. I show something new, let it play with it and hide it. But so that when the opportunity arises, the kid will surely stumble upon it. He stumbles upon and, of course, begins to study. This is how we gradually master the logic blocks of Dienes, the counting sticks of Kuisener and much more.

The most important thing (again, I learned from my own experience) is not to constantly check what the child has learned and what has not. Don't give your baby exams. You are not developing it for the report. The child himself will demonstrate his knowledge when he sees fit. So, I quite accidentally found out that my son, it turns out, already knows how to count to eight. We are constantly counting toys with him. You need to know how much we have already collected, and how much more needs to be put in place. And the steps of the stairs from the elevator to the entrance door I diligently recount all the time. And then suddenly the little one began to count them, without waiting for me. And surely he counted! No prodding.

Mom and Dad, please remember: you are the best educators for your baby.... The child looks at the world through your eyes. Children need an emotional experience with adults and the world around them. He receives information through looking, feeling, through sounds, emotions - completely different from us adults. It is, of course, easier for us to write signs with the names of things and hang them around the apartment. And according to the mind, it would be necessary to read a fairy tale, but not once, but twenty-one times, and with your own comments, ask the baby questions, listen to the answers, reflect with the baby about why the bun left the woman and the grandfather and why the grandfather and the woman are crying, when the golden egg broke, if they themselves wanted to break it. Oh, after reading one single fairy tale, you can ask so many questions about it ...

And how exciting it is to sculpt with the baby from plasticine, draw with him, make applications! By the way, this also develops fine motor skills (and hence thinking), color perception, and imagination. It is difficult for us to find constellations in the sky, to answer numerous children's questions, to teach a child to obtain information. It is much easier to teach him to count and read, and let the child occupy himself. We reduce communication with children to purely technical issues and thereby impoverish ourselves, first of all.

There are many methods - only one kid

Finally, a few more tips. Children are great conservatives. Therefore, there is no need to rush from one method of teaching and development to another. And when choosing a technique, take it critically. For example, I liked our teacher at the development center because she skillfully combined elements of soft school with the Montessori method, Nikitin, little by little she took from both, creatively reworked everything. It turned out interesting and very exciting.

What exactly is right for your child, except for you, I'm afraid no one will determine for sure. Therefore, while working with the baby, be careful, learn to change the wording and tasks on the go, show the same thing from different "angles". And don't try to raise a genius or a prodigy. As all the same experience shows, only a few of those who were considered geeks became outstanding people. After all, an ordinary but good person is much more valuable than all evil geniuses put together.

Boys and girls are different from the start and develop in different ways.... Boys are usually larger than girls at birth, with a larger head and more weight. Boys begin to walk about 2-3 months later, 4-6 months later they begin to speak. But all this is visible to parents and to the naked eye.

When a mother teaches a boy, her own childhood experience is of little use to her. It is wrong and useless to compare yourself with him in childhood, to give yourself a little one as an example to your son. When scolding the boy, state briefly and precisely what you are unhappy with. He cannot withstand emotional stress for a long time. His brain turns off the auditory canal, and the child simply stops hearing you.

But the St. Petersburg neuropsychologists, recording the biocurrents of the brain of newborn children, found that the brain of boys and girls from the very beginning works differently, so that, having analyzed the interaction of electrical potentials of different areas of the cerebral cortex, it is possible to say with a high probability what gender this baby is.

Up to 8 years of age, boys' hearing acuity is on average higher than that of girls, but girls are more sensitive to noise. Girls have higher skin sensitivity, they are more irritated by bodily discomfort, and they are more responsive to touch and stroking.

Girls' games often rely on close vision: girls lay out their wealth - dolls, rags, beads, buttons and play in a limited space, a small corner is enough for them. Boys' games often rely on distant vision: boys run after each other, throw objects and shoot at a target, using all the space around them.

Boys generally need more space for full mental development than girls. If the horizontal plane is not enough for the naughty ones, they master the vertical one: they climb on cupboards, run along the backs of sofas, hang on the door frames ... Do not scold them - this is completely normal.

Nature's design

Why does nature need differences in the psyche of boys and girls? In evolution, two opposite tendencies are always fighting: on the one hand, nature needs to fix in the species those traits that it needs, inherit them and make the descendants as similar as possible to their parents. On the other hand, progress presupposes further changes, a variety of great-grandchildren, among whom there will be someone who will allow the species to adapt to new conditions, expand the habitat.

These two trends embody the male and female gender. The female sex retains in the genetic memory all the most valuable acquisitions of evolution, while the male sex, on the contrary, easily loses the old and acquires a new one. The female gender is oriented towards survival, the male gender towards progress.

Many women are needed to continue the species. Therefore, nature protects the female sex, and she “does not feel sorry for the male”. All the novelties of evolution are worked out on males. Women seem to be more alike; men have more mutations that are both beneficial and harmful. That is why there are more boys among children with squint, stuttering, and dyslexia. And speech therapy groups of kindergartens consist mostly of them.

A man's brain is larger, more developed, but less reliable and very vulnerable. With all the changes, both natural and social, men suffer more. But nature has endowed them with a searching behavior: so that they can survive by finding another habitat, where it is warmer and more satisfying. Therefore, men, including boys, are inclined to explore new spaces, take risky actions, they are quick-witted in difficult situations and are able to make unconventional decisions.

Who is stronger in what

How do these features of the male structure affect the learning of our children? In preschool and primary school age, girls have better developed speech, but thinking is more the same type. Boys think outside the box and are interesting, but since they are silent, this is not immediately noticeable.

In the first grade of one of the Moscow gymnasiums, they conducted such an experiment. Scientists asked the children what a brick could be used for. The first answer lay on the surface: build a house. Then the girls seized the initiative: you can also build a barn, a garage, a fence ... When the topic of construction was exhausted, the boy gave a voice: "When mom picks mushrooms in a bucket, she puts a brick for the weight." Again the forest of girly hands - and all sorts of examples of how you can use a brick as a load. The topic has been exhausted. And again the boy: "You can put bricks on a fire so that the grass does not catch on fire." The girls rushed to develop this topic as well. And a new twist - again from the lips of the boys: "You can put a board on a brick, you get a swing", "Bricks can be thrown like shells" ...

Of course, this does not mean that not a single girl will put forward a new idea, but still, fundamentally new problems are better solved by boys and men. At the same time, they do not attach importance to the thoroughness of the solution and the accuracy of the design. A boy can find a non-standard solution to a math problem, but make a mistake in the calculations and, as a result, get a two.

Girls and women are generally better at performing typical, routine tasks, and carefully working out the details. Girls have fluent speech, they read faster and write more beautifully, but the selection of word associations, solving crosswords is better for boys. Research has found that 6-year-old boys already have a brain specialization for spatial perception and thinking, while girls do not even at 13 years old. Therefore, boys often solve geometric problems using spatial methods: mentally rotate the figures and superimpose them one on top of the other. And girls, including female teachers, designate corners and sides with letters and then operate with letter symbols and template-theorems.

If your son is much slower at learning to read and write than his older sister, poorly retelling and carelessly writing letters, do not be upset: this is a feature of the male mind. In addition, boys lag behind girls in development. Their childhood lasts longer. By the age of 7, boys are, as a rule, by their biological age younger than girls of the same age by a whole year.

Boys have their own way of growing up, but since they are more focused on the assimilation of information (in contrast to girls who are more interested in relationships between people), there is no need to worry about their intellectual development.

To begin with, the process of forming a child as a person begins even before his birth (by the end of the third week of pregnancy, the nervous system of the embryo is laid) and continues until senior school age. Actually, any of us can psychologically change and develop throughout life, but after the onset of adulthood, this process is much more complicated.

To change the worldview of a mature person, as a rule, it is necessary to "break" him, because the foundation of the personality, its foundation, is laid even in preschool age. Over time, more and more new "floors" are being erected over this foundation. The older a person is, the more difficult it will be to get to the foundations of his character, and even more so - to change them. Accordingly, every parent must take care to lay the correct and solid foundation for their child in time. Let's take a look at some of the important aspects separately.

Any person is surrounded by a huge amount of information. The most important component for its assimilation, processing and further use is memory. Another important aspect is closely intertwined with memory - attention. You need to be able to concentrate it and distribute it correctly. Many parents have questions: "How to develop a child's memory?" and "How to develop attention in a child?" Here are some helpful tips and exercises:

• When working with younger preschool children, try to accompany the oral explanation with visual examples and vivid illustrations. As a rule, the object of memorization, "attached" to some interesting image for the child, is deposited in his memory automatically, without effort. This is also called "involuntary memory".
• Gradually teach your child to independently create such auxiliary images for themselves. Point him to a certain object and ask him to tell about what it is, what it looks like, what it is associated with. You can do the opposite: read the story to the child and ask him to draw what he imagined while listening to it.
• Try to involve your child in group communication, especially from 4-5 years old. At this age, the so-called "voluntary memory" is formed - a person learns to memorize the things necessary for him consciously, without necessarily being tied to a vivid image. To join the team, you need to pay attention to those around you. To earn the praise of kindergarten teachers, you need to remember the requirements they put forward. To win in a collective game, you should remember its rules. So the child learns to independently "turn on" and "turn off" the memorization mechanism.
• Suggest more convenient ways of assimilating information. Teach your child to focus on the most important thing. Read a short text to him and ask him to write down the key, most important words. Then offer to retell the text based on them. Work through the mistakes together. This will be very useful for the future student.
• The famous game "Find the Differences!" Is an effective tool for developing attention. The goal is to compare two seemingly identical pictures and find a given number of differences.
• Another exercise: place several different objects on the table (for a start - no more than seven) and invite the child to remember their sequence. After 30 seconds, take him out of the room and swap a few things. Ask the child what has changed and invite him to restore the disturbed order. Increase the number of items gradually.

Another integral part of child development is speech. She is one of the key skills required for a fulfilling life. So how to develop speech in a child? We offer you a little memo:

• Talk to him as much as possible. Tell him about everything that happens nearby, comment on objects and phenomena, call the surrounding people by name.
• Walk more with your child, if possible, choose new places for a walk each time. The more new impressions, the better.
• Pick an easy poem and read it to your child regularly. After a while, start asking him to continue the line you started.
• When communicating with your child, remember that he perceives you as a role model. Try to speak loudly enough clearly, do not jabber.
• More illustrated books. Discuss pictures together, take turns reading.
• Work on fine motor skills. It has a lot to do with speech. Finger games and mosaics are what you need. Constructors with small details are also suitable (UNDER THE OBLIGATORY SUPERVISION OF THE PARENTS!).
• Encourage any attempt by the child to speak.

Finally, let's talk about how to develop your child's abilities. Sooner or later, all children begin to get involved in this or that occupation. For some, this can further develop into the main business of life. But do not rush: even if your son strumming the guitar all day, this is not a reason to predict his career as a great musician. Exactly, as well as not a reason to snatch the instrument from his hands with a shout "Better do something useful!" First of all, observe.

Do not shy away from healthy, restrained criticism - if a person is not promptly pointed out his mistakes, sooner or later he will reach a dead end and stop developing. There should be room for encouragement - but only if progress is really there. Empty praise does not lead to good consequences. Try to guide your child competently: if you see that he is making progress, enroll in courses where he can develop his talent, give him a useful addition to his hobby for his birthday (a big encyclopedia for a novice chemist, a training equipment for a future athlete, etc.) etc.). Let him know that he can count on your support.

If the child does not have pronounced tendencies to any kind of occupation, you can try to identify them. If you notice that your offspring is significantly ahead of their peers in anything - ask how close this area is to him. It may happen that when he easily “snapped” a problem in mathematics, he does not have the slightest interest in this science. In this case, you cannot impose a hobby, you can only carefully try to arouse additional interest. For example, offer to solve a non-standard, "Olympiad" task in order to whip up pride. Or "to test the waters" for a child's interest in related fields of science - a young mathematical genius can "suddenly" go headlong into physics, for example.

You can also undergo diagnostics aimed at identifying children's abilities. This is usually done in city psychological clinics or in public leisure centers.

You can either write your own.

There are simple words and even expressions for which it is quite easy to formulate a definition. And there are words and expressions, the meaning of which is well clear to everyone, but there is no exact definition for which and it is rather difficult to give it. The same is the case with the concept of "early development". Many people involved in this very early development cannot clearly formulate what they are actually doing, argue among themselves and cannot come to a consensus.

Everyone knows what development is. There is no need to explain what early is. But what about "early development"? What is it? Why and why is it early? Is it necessary? Is it worth depriving a child of childhood? And so on ... There are a lot of questions, disputes and objections. Let's try to figure out what it is and why it is needed.

Every child is different. He develops at his own pace, mastering his own capabilities gradually, step by step ... Each child develops this or that function in its own way. This does not need to be proved to anyone. But, undoubtedly, there are age norms: how and when a child should start sitting, standing, walking, running, drawing, reading, writing ... it will still be the norm for now. If this or that function is not formed by the required age, it is customary to talk about developmental delay. This usually happens when the baby is seriously ill or when he does not receive the attention of adults, when no one is doing anything with the baby.

But it is worth starting to pay at least a little attention to the child, playing with him, telling him something, showing pictures, reading books, how he begins to develop, grow wiser, grow up, become more mature before our eyes. Such a kid is interested in everything, he asks to work out with him again and again.

Well, if you do not just play and read, but apply any of the well-known early development methods, teach the child something (naturally, through the game, and not sitting at the desk), then the baby begins to develop even faster and more intensively. His speech is strikingly different from the speech of his peers (and from his very recently). He begins to amaze parents with his intelligence, memory, ingenuity, creative streak.

The kid begins to develop earlier than he could if no one was doing anything with him, and not earlier than the neighbor's boy or cousin. This can be called "early development" of the child.

Many authors (Doman, Suzuki, Lupan, Zaitsev, Nikitin, Tropp) insist that such development is not early, but just timely, that traditional pedagogical science, based on the experience of past centuries, lags behind modern methods. That human potential is much richer than it was assumed until now (Although we know that generally accepted norms have changed a lot over the past 20-30 years: who will you surprise with reading a five-year plan? And before, almost all children came to school without reading).

The point is that classical teachers are lagging behind innovators in terms of the start of training and children begin to learn just at the time when the brain growth is already over (about 7 years). In this case, the child is really beyond the strength of the load that is offered to him at school. He hardly learns to count, read, it is hard for him to master writing. In the future, this leads to difficulties in all school disciplines.

Based on this, we can give a second definition of the term "early development" - the intensive development of the child's abilities at an early age (from 0 to 2-3 years). Naturally, at this age it is completely incompatible with the traditional, "kindergarten-school" teaching methods. This is something completely different.

• This is a specially created environment in which the baby lives, filled with interesting and unusual objects for viewing and exploring with all other senses.
• These are a variety of toys (from the simplest materials at hand) that give a lot of tactile, visual, sound, olfactory sensations.
• This is unlimited physical activity, "reinforced" by specially equipped corners in the baby's room, giving him the opportunity to better and earlier master his body, study it well, be more agile, stronger, stronger, and feel safer.
• These are games made specifically for him by his parents, based on his interests and age capabilities (which is quite difficult to find on sale).
• These are books written for him in large understandable letters in warehouses, with large pictures, with pages that even the smallest toddler cannot spoil.
• These are cubes with letters (or, even better, from warehouses), which the baby just plays with his mother.
• These are constant walks, excursions, conversations, reading books and much, much more. Early development is an active position of the mother in relation to the child in the first years of life. This is a continuous process, it is painstaking work that requires constant "involvement" in the child's life, constant creative stress. Early development is the path to understanding with your child. Early development is the desire of parents to fill the gray everyday life with the joy of learning and joint creativity. This is an understanding of how fleeting and unique the time of preschool childhood is and how important it is for the kid to live it fully and colorfully.

  Now let's take a look at what should be considered before starting classes with your baby.

  The most important thing is not to set yourself the goal of raising a prodigy, a genius. Chasing results can overwhelm your child. And demonstrating these results to others can spoil the character of the baby.

  Second, there is no need to rush from one fashionable hobby to another. Small children are conservatives, they quickly get used to this or that way of life. And changing it is always a minor injury. And if you often change your views on the development and upbringing of the baby, you can even damage his psyche.

  Be critical when choosing one way or another to learn. Do not take everything blindly and without looking back. In any technique, there may be something that suits you and your baby, but something that is not quite suitable. Do not be afraid of your lack of professionalism. Only you can know exactly what is good for your child and what is not.

  So, you have chosen which of the directions or techniques you like best. It can be one or a combination of two or three methods that are similar in spirit. After that, try not to change your pedagogical views.

  When working with your baby, try to use a limited range of teaching aids. Do not buy more and more educational games and materials. It is better to make the most of one (or more) one (or several), from all sides, than to develop the child with several dozen games and aids. He will not be able to really master any game, but will only get confused. Show your creativity, come up with new tasks for familiar games.

  Enter all games and activities according to the principle "from very simple to simple, from simple to complex, and then to very difficult." If the kid is not coping with something, simplify the task to the maximum, even if it does not correspond to the instructions. Do all the tasks together first, and then let him try it himself.

  Do not worry if something does not work out for you at all, postpone this or that activity or game. Try again after a while. After all, you are not chasing a record, but communicating with the child, helping him to understand the wisdom of adult life, to master his own mind and body.

  Do not set yourself any standards for the time and number of classes per day. First, such norms are difficult to comply with (due to various household and family circumstances). Without completing this or that planned exercise or without playing a game or lesson, you will blame yourself for not being able to provide the baby with full development. This is not the case. Because even a small amount of classes is better than nothing. Exercise as much as time permits.

  Secondly, your baby can be very, very fascinated by this or that business. You do not need to stop him to carry out the next "event" on the list. Better to show himself most fully in what interested him.

  Never involve a child in an activity if he is sick or even simply does not feel well or is in a bad mood. This will not benefit him, but harm.

  If you want to give your child knowledge about anything, provide him with as many ways as possible to obtain information, do not limit yourself to cards or some other fashionable hobby. Give it from different angles, from different points of view, cover one topic in games, posters, other manuals, books, films.

  Try to talk to your child more, talk to him about everything at home, on the subway, on a walk - an adult's speech is more important than any methodological manual.

  The information that you give to a small child should be built on the basis of the principle "The child and his environment" and its boundaries should gradually expand depending on the age of the child. There is no need to grab at a lot at once or at a very difficult one.

  Do not give your child the knowledge that will not be useful to him in the near future. Because while he needs them, he can simply forget them. And precious time can be spent on learning and mastering what is needed now in the first place. Do not make "stocks of knowledge", live for today.

  A kid who is doing something during the day should not be overwhelmed by watching TV. This is unnecessary information for him and a strong load on the brain. He needs time and a calm environment to absorb and assimilate the acquired knowledge and skills. Help your child learn to acquire knowledge on his own. Give him creative freedom in this process. Rejoice in every success of your child, even the slightest attempt to prove himself, especially if this is the first time.

  Don't go deeper in any one area, like reading, math, music, or physical education, and forget the rest. Comprehensive development is much more important for a baby than a record in one of the directions.

  I hope that these tips will help you to make communication with your baby interesting, rich, and useful for both of you.

  And most importantly, improve yourself. Let the kid see that it is interesting to learn and learn, it is necessary for everyone.

  Let your baby have an active mother!

Here is the definition of the term of interest to us is given, for example, by Anna Rapoport: "Early development is the intensive development of a child's abilities at an early age (from 0 to 2-3 years)." Why, then, are these words sometimes perceived so negatively? It is likely that the answer lies on the surface: the whole point is that the concept of "early development" involves many different interpretations and interpretations.

Early development is called as opposed to traditional. In European culture, to which we also belong, due to certain historical and social reasons, there is a tendency for children to learn quite late - about 7 years. Therefore, educational programs for children of younger (3-4 years old) and middle (4-5 years old) preschool age are perceived as early development.

Within the framework of developmental psychology development can be classified as premature, timely and late. What is premature development? These are attempts to teach a child what he is not able to understand and master due to insufficient physical development and lack of the necessary stock of knowledge. For example, teaching a newborn to sit. What is late development? This is the desire to form those knowledge and skills that should have already been formed by a certain age. For example, to start learning to read after 7–7.5 years old, when the productivity of any study drops sharply. Considering all of the above, every sane person should seem attractive precisely timely, or normal, development - development corresponding to the age indicators and individual characteristics of a particular child.

Another misunderstanding of the words "early development" is the identification of development and learning. Many people associate classical teaching in our education system with a school desk, “hammering in” knowledge, cramming, and the like. This is what is often motivated by the harm of early development. Of course, no reasonable parent wishes his child a similar fate, especially from the most tender age. However, don't mix development and learning. Early development is not only and not so much preparation for school. First of all, this is the development of basic mental functions: attention, imagination, memory, logical and spatial thinking, the ability to analyze and generalize. This is the creation of a kind of interesting information environment for the kid, which will become a solid foundation for further successful learning.

Some practitioners working with preschoolers strongly oppose such a definition as early development, considering it distorting the very essence of the concept of "development".

Hardly anyone would argue that all children, without exception, need timely development. However, modern science does not stand still, and what was considered correct 100 years ago is no longer relevant today.

Pedagogy and Physiology

As scientists have found, any child is born with great potential: a newborn has 300% more connections between nerve cells than an adult, and all of its sensory areas (responsible for information from the senses) and both hemispheres are connected to each other. This means that when they talk to a child, show him something, swing, his senses act as a whole. A few months after birth, those connections between nerve cells that did not have time to consolidate disappear, and most of the nerve cells that are left without connections with other neurons die off. That is why it is so important to start developing the child as early as possible.

But is it really necessary to actively develop connections between nerve endings? The fact is that the brain of a little man contains a trillion cells, of which 100 billion are represented by neurons connected in a network - the foundation for the development of intelligence, creativity, emotions, consciousness and memory. Increased development of the brain occurs during the first six years of life, and what will result from a small child is determined precisely by these years.

For a full life of a child, it is very important to develop all the senses. This happens when they are exposed to various stimuli. In nature, everything is natural and consistent: first, some parts of the brain develop, which then stimulate the further development of others. Different periods in the life of an infant are directly related to the gradual formation of parts of the brain. Each such stage takes some time, more or less the same for all children. This feature of the human body was noticed in her time by Maria Montessori, describing the sensitive periods, i.e. periods of special susceptibility of children to certain types of activities, ways of emotional response and behavior in general.

Having described the sensitive periods by age, we get the following picture.

Starting from the very birth - a sensitive period of mastering self-control. In the first months of a baby's life, when he cries and is taken in his arms, the first neural connections are established (excitement - inhibition) and the beginnings of self-control are formed.

6 months to 3 years:

• the sensitive period of language acquisition (the appearance of words and sentences);
• a sensitive period of love for order (peaks at 3 years).

A sense of order- not a conscious, but a physiological need of the child. This means that the baby gets used to the established way of life and negatively perceives any changes in it. For example, he may refuse to eat if his chair is slightly moved. In children under 1 year old, the desire for order is expressed in crying when a stranger appears in the house.

From 1.5 years- a sensitive period of perception of small objects (placing beads in a vase with a narrow neck).

About 2 le t - the sensitive period of the ability to "enter a group".

First, the ability to play in dyads (pairs) is formed, and only closer to preschool age - communication in a peer group.

2 to 4 years old- a sensitive period of repetition of geometric shapes, which leads to a better study of mathematics (geometric shapes, sizes, divisions).

2 to 5 years old- a sensitive period of control and refinement of movements. The baby has a natural urge to walk along the line, it is easy to teach him how to use the toilet, brush his teeth. All movements must be in the area of ​​the child's practical life (pouring cereals and sand, pouring fluids, etc.).

From 2.5 years old- a sensitive period of vocabulary expansion.

2.5 to 6 years old- the sensitive period of sensitivity to sensory impressions. The child develops the ability to refine all the senses (for example, he very easily picks up small differences).

From 3 to 7 years old- a sensitive period of music and rhythm perception. During this period, music and mathematics are perceived by the same part of the brain - the right hemisphere is working. At the same time, intuition also develops.

3.5 to 4.5 years old- the sensitive period for tracing letters with a finger, preparation for writing.

4.5 to 5 years old- a sensitive period of explosiveness in relation to writing.

Starting from 5 years, the desire for order slowly declines.

5 to 6 years old- the sensitive period of the transition from writing to reading.

From the age of 6, the left side of the brain turns on and causal consciousness arises.

6.5-7 Years- a sensitive period that reveals a passion for grammar (playing with word order, building them, playing with parts of speech, etc.).

As you can see, the sensitive periods do not alternate one after another in a smooth sequence. At a certain age, a child may have "prepared the ground" for learning several types of activities at once. If you miss this auspicious moment, it will be much more difficult to catch up. According to M. Montessori, for individual sensitive periods, time is allotted from several days to weeks, and it is impossible to compensate for it in the future.

Existing techniques

Let us dwell in more detail on specific methods of early development, their main ideas and differences.

Education system American physiotherapist Glenn Doman is based on the principle of the organism's compensatory nature: by stimulating one of the senses, one can achieve a sharp increase in the activity of the brain as a whole. G. Doman devoted his life to the treatment and rehabilitation of children with various brain injuries. Over the course of 15 years studying with seriously ill patients, he achieved amazing results and made a number of amazing discoveries: for example, in cases where the process of development and growth of the brain is stopped or slowed down, it turned out that it can be made to work by acting on it through any of the available channels obtaining information (sight, hearing, touch). Doman also found out that the process of growth and development of the brain can be strengthened and accelerated.

Learning to read according to the Doman system is based on the visual-figurative thinking of the child and is built mainly on visual perception. The information necessary for assimilation is located on special cards with words written in very large print. The cards are presented to the child at a fast pace with a loud pronunciation of the written words. At the same time, children are taught to crawl, hang on the uneven bars and different ways stimulate their physical activity.

According to Doman, when the child turns 1 year old, in parallel with physical development, it is necessary to begin to develop mathematical, linguistic and other abilities. In particular, teaching mathematics according to the method of G. Doman is that the child is shown cards with large red dots (five each) and their number is loudly named. The use of dots instead of numbers is due to the fact that the child can feel a real number, and not an abstract symbol.

At the heart of the early development methodology developed by by Italian physician Maria Montessori, there are two fundamental principles. The first is the interest of the child himself, and the second is an individual approach to him by an adult. Faced with the problem of raising and developing children with disabilities, Maria Montessori came to the conclusion that dementia is in a greater sense a pedagogical problem than a medical one, and it should be solved in kindergartens and schools.

At the beginning of his life, a child has a natural tendency to move: he wants to master space in order to become better acquainted with the things around him and be able to use them in a meaningful way.

M. Montessori proposes to give the baby the opportunity to do this at the age of 2.5–3 years by arranging in a certain sequence all kinds of cups, trays, sponges and brushes, sticks and cubes, beads and rods, cards and boxes.

Equipment in size and convenience should be matched to the strength and height of the child. And in order for the activity to be useful, the teacher (adult), seeing the child's interest in certain materials, gives the child a short (2-3 minutes) lesson, during which he shows how to handle objects in order to achieve a result.

The little researcher is invited to accept only one clear rule: take it, work it - put it in place. Maria Montessori generally believes that order is organic for a child, but he still does not know how to organize it on his own. The main task of an adult is to help children learn to focus on an activity that is interesting to them. This is where the Montessori pedagogy motto “Help me do it myself” arises. In educational games, specially selected materials are used - various insert frames, lacing, containers with loose fillers, toys with fasteners, etc. They are an integral part of the so-called pedagogical "preparatory environment", which encourages the child to show the possibilities of his own development through self-activity, corresponding to his individuality.

Maria Montessori calls not to accelerate the development of children, but also not to miss the moment, discovering what is needed here and now. She selects exercises from practical life, while some of them come from everyday household chores.

Along with individual exercises, the child participates in activities together with other children. This helps the toddler become aware of group movements such as walking on a line. Other group activities, such as conversations and role-playing games, help the child learn social behaviors.

The main idea of ​​early software development Cecile Brai-Lupan consists in the fact that only parents are capable of a sincere interest in a child and for a child they are the best teachers. Teaching methods for a child, as well as knowledge in general, are offered to him upon the emergence of interest, taking into account natural inclinations. Combining the spiritual component - a sincere interest in the baby, love for him and attention to his needs - with elements of Glenn Doman's methodology, S. Lupan is trying to develop the child's intellect in the best way and at the same time raise him as a psychologically healthy person, revealing the secrets of his own motherhood in the book "Trust in your child."

In his methodology S. Lupan pays great attention to such things as teaching newborns to swim. She has compiled entire programs for teaching history, geography, art history and drawing, music and other areas of knowledge for toddlers and preschoolers. On the basis of S. Lupan's recommendations, any parent will be able to independently draw up a development program for their child.

Nikitins technique is a system of educational games designed for children to play together with their parents. Most of these games are presented in the form of puzzles aimed at recognizing and completing images, i.e. on the development of logical and imaginative thinking.

Innovative educators Boris and Lena Nikitin are the parents of seven children. They invented and tested a new health improvement system on their children.

Their main invention - the so-called Nikitin games - have a high degree of variability, i.e. they can be adjusted to suit yourself, your level, your interests. Each game is a set of tasks that the child solves using cubes, bricks, squares made of cardboard or plastic, parts from a construction set, etc.

Learning to read according to N. Zaitsev's methodology is based on the principle of warehouse reading. A warehouse is a pair of a consonant with a vowel or a consonant with a hard or soft sign, or one letter. Using such warehouses, the child begins to form words. Zaitsev wrote these warehouses on the edges of the cubes. He made the cubes different in color, size and tinkling that they create. It helps children to feel the difference between vowels and consonants, voiced and soft sounds.

The methodology for teaching mathematics proposed by the author is based on a system of tables that immerse the child in the world of numbers and clearly show him what number consists of what, what properties it has and what actions can be performed with it.

How not to overdo it?

And yet the closest to the truth is the explanation of the term "early development" as the development of a child up to 1 year old.

Early child development up to 1 year old is a specially created environment filled with interesting and unusual objects for studying by the senses. It is unrestricted physical activity, supported by specially equipped corners, which gives the baby the opportunity to gain control of his body better and earlier and learn to feel safer. These are constant walks, conversations, reading books, benevolent attention and caring support from parents. Early development is also the active position of the mother in relation to the child in the first years of life.

In terms of raising children, of course, there are many stereotypes, so I would also like to dwell on the dangers of misunderstanding early development. Erroneous beliefs lead to such dangers, on which we will dwell in more detail.

All excesses in the understanding of early development can be conditionally attributed to two extreme positions: categorical rejection and fanatical enthusiasm. Let's start in order. So…

• Early development is a fashionable innovation that has many unexplored negative consequences. The ideas of early development are by no means new: some techniques are over 100 years old. Scientists from many countries (Japan, USA, Russia, Italy, Germany, France, etc.) are constantly studying this phenomenon. For example, in Italy it is M. Montessori, in the USA - G. Doman, in Japan - Masaru Ibuka, in Germany - Jaroslav Koch.

• Babies with whom they are engaged in early development develop faster than their peers.

Such children develop faster than if they had not been trained! Each specific child has its own developmental timing. Of course, there are age norms, but the dynamics in the individual development of each baby is determined by comparing his today with him, only yesterday! Parents do not need to assess the "development" of their child in relation to other children, and even more so to draw such categorical parallels. It's just that a child, whose developmental environment is thoughtfully and specially organized by adults, has much more opportunities for research, comparison and new impressions, which give an impetus for "accelerated" development. Therefore, the rates of early development for these babies are different.

• "We want (do not want) to have a child prodigy."

Most likely, this statement either hides the unwillingness of parents to devote time to their child, or the consequences of how they themselves were "terrorized" by their parents - all sorts of unloved circles and sections. The goal of early development is not to "cultivate" geniuses.

The opposite point of view - the desire to raise a child prodigy at all costs - is obviously just as harmful for the harmonious development of a child. Because she reveals exorbitant parental ambitions and an attempt to self-actualize at the expense of the baby, to embody in him what we once did not manage to ourselves.

• Early development can overload a child's brain and lead to serious health problems later on.

The brain of a little fidget is equipped with a system of "fuses": in a situation of emotional or information overload, it simply "turns off" - this is how the instinct of self-preservation works, which most of us, unfortunately, lose with age. If the baby starts to be capricious, distracted, yawn, show signs of impatience - this is a sure sign that it is time to rest.

• Early development are the usual educational programs offered to younger children.

The basis of early development is to stimulate the cognitive activity of the baby. This technique has nothing to do with classical teaching systems. A special developmental environment is created around the child, filled with interesting objects for study, stimulating all the senses. In such an environment, the baby has the opportunity to intensively study the world around him and satisfy his innate research interest. Any training is carried out through games. The main condition is the interest of the child himself.

• Early development "steals" a carefree childhood from a child.

This statement carries with it a misunderstanding of the main idea of ​​early development: everything should be unobtrusive, playful. No hammering, no violence! The child does only what he wants himself, what he is interested in. And the task of the parents is to expand his interests by offering a choice of a lot of exciting things and activities, and to catch the moment when the child is interested in one thing.

The desire to learn, to learn something new is necessary for a little man like air. This is his main goal in the first years of his life. Without this innate ability, he will never become a full-fledged member of society. So why not support and develop a natural desire, why not give the crumbs the information that interests him? And let him take what is in this moment most important to him. If classes with a child are conducted without coercion in the form of an exciting game, if they bring joy and benefit to the child and the parents, what kind of stolen childhood is there? The question "Why does he need this in principle?" disappears by itself.

In fact, the deeply philosophical opinion that a child “knows himself what and when he needs for normal development” turns into indifference to the child and his needs, and even a formal attitude towards him on the part of the parents. Here I would like to remind you that without the timely help of an adult who creates the conditions necessary for the development of the child, the intellectual and psycho-emotional level of the baby may remain very low.

• Almost all methods of early development are very laborious and require considerable time from parents to study them and prepare didactic materials.

The most difficult problem, with no single solution, is indeed the problem of timing. However, not everything is so simple, and its solution largely depends on the ability of adults to organize their time. Spend half an hour, not an hour and a half, cooking dinner, but devote a free hour to communicating with your baby. Invite a grandmother or housekeeper to clean the house, and in the free hour, glue and write the necessary materials and games. There would be a desire, but there will be time!

Development rules

Before you decide on the development system you need, it is worth remembering a few simple rules:

Explore early development strategies that you find interesting. Check with your pediatrician, early childhood development specialists.

Collect information from different sources and try to interpret it critically, double-checking the reliability of the facts offered. If you decide to send your child to a preschool specializing in early development, find out his reputation and rating on the informal forums in your city.

Don't overwhelm your child by chasing results! You should also not rush from one extreme to another, dramatically changing the baby's lifestyle. The main task of early development is a healthy, harmonious and happy childhood.

Try to ensure that child development activities do not contradict, but complement each other. You should also not rush from one extreme to another, dramatically changing the baby's lifestyle.

Enter any games and activities according to the principle "from very simple to simple, from simple to more complex, and then to very complex." Be sure to consider the child's level of interest and joy.

Always praise the child (for interest, for diligence, etc.), even if something does not work out for him the first time.