The Magic of Play

Helping Parents to Help Their Picky Eaters

Many developmental psychologists say to offer children a variety of things but also to involve the children in the process.

In a study, researchers found that children were more likely to eat food they were involved in making like salads and desserts.

They suggest making things kids can assemble like salads and tacos.  They can choose what they want to put on. (protein and other toppings.)

Their biggest tip is to start small.  Let your child put a little dressing on lettuce so they feel a part of and take ownership of what they made to eat. It will motivate them to eat it if they made it.

Give yourself and your child time to adjust to this.  They suggest not starting on a busy weekend where there is so much going on that you just want to get food on the table.

Information gathered from the article "Help for Picky Eaters (And Their Parents, Too!)" from General Health & Wellness, Nutrition  May 28, 2019

Research from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195666318308419

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Some more ideas...

As we are getting closer to summer months and gardens, if you plant a garden, you can let your child/children help pick the food and prepare it for their meal (wash, peel, etc.). 

You can also let your child/children help get food items at the grocery store.  Help them make a small list for themselves of items they can find in the store when you are out and about. This will help them be more a part of the process of getting and preparing meals for them.

Some more ideas are to check out books at the library about food and read them to your child/children, sing songs that talk about food, and do art with food (potato stamps, fruit necklaces, panting with a dip and objects like carrot sticks, bananas, apple slices, celery, etc.

Another fun idea is to let your child/children create a character on their plate with their food. Peas for the eyes, spaghetti for their hair, apple slice for their mouth, etc. There are also ways you can by or make a plate with a basic face and they can add food to it to create a character. Here are a few ideas:
-Create your own face plate with paint and a plate. (Many ideas on Pinterest, type in "Food Face Plates"
- "Fred" by FOOD FACE (plates with a face where children can add food to create the rest of the face like adding peas in the shape of a hat, etc). See pictures below

Developmental Milestones Apps

Learn the Signs. Act Early. Resources

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have a number of free resources for tracking and supporting motor development. Available in English and Spanish, the resources also address other areas, such as social/emotional, language/communication, and cognitive development.

Milestone Tracker App – Free and downloadable, this easy-to-use app can track a child’s milestones from two months to 5 years with illustrated checklists. The app also offers tips from CDC for encouraging a child’s development and a summary that can be shared with doctors and others.

https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/milestones-app.html

 

Milestones in Action: Photo and Videos – Free photos and videos illustrate important developmental milestones from two months through five years in gross motor and other areas.

https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/milestones/milestones-in-action.html

We Did It!

The Social Services Appropriations Committee prioritized funding for Baby Watch Early Intervention Programs with internal funds, which means the funding recommendation has been approved!  This will help us to continue to provide services to the growing population that is eligible for early intervention.

Please take a minute and thank the members of the Social Services Appropriations Committee for their recommendation!  Here are links to the members of the committee representing Davis County.

Rep. Paul Ray (R), House Chair  
Rep. Raymond P. Ward (R), House Vice Chair
Sen. J. Stuart Adams (R)
 Sen. Todd Weiler (R) 

Also, THANK YOU to the parents who sent emails encouraging the committee to prioritize this money for services for young children.  We couldn't do this without your help and support.

Communications time bomb: Parents’ smartphone use could be the new secondhand smoke

USA TODAY published Jan 16, 2020

Theresa H. Rodgers,  Opinion contributor

We’ve all seen it, and many of us are guilty of it: A parent is preoccupied using a phone at the playground, in line at the supermarket, at a restaurant or in a doctor’s waiting room as the child sits nearby.

But anyone raising or caring for children today should know this hard truth: When parents or caregivers spend too much time turning away from their kids and toward technology, the foundation for a child’s communication skills is weakened. In a world with competing priorities and limited time, experts in my field of speech and language development are already seeing the impacts on children who have missed out on hours of essential, real-life face time — and the results are concerning. Many of my colleagues across the nation say they are seeing more children entering kindergarten with limited communication and social skills. Older children, they say, are unable to handle formal social interactions, like ordering from waitstaff at a restaurant. 

While we know that too much technology harms children's brains, parents’ digital habits play a role, too. What might seem like innocuous scrolling could be the new secondhand smoke — a personal habit that could endanger their children’s health and development in ways we don’t yet fully understand.

Different effects from smoking, but a similar danger

Unlike cigarettes, of course, parents’ phones, tablets and laptops won’t give their children asthma or ear infections or lead to sudden infant death syndrome. Nonetheless, there’s a disturbing parallel: Just as with smartphones today, we knew that secondhand smoke was dangerous for decades, yet Americans were largely complacent until the science and research overwhelmingly confirmed what was suspected. Millions of people breathed in damaging smoke in homes, offices, airplanes, restaurants, bars and cars. Even now, despite much progress promoting smoke-free places and steep declines in the share of Americans who smoke cigarettes, more than a third of 3- to 11-year-olds are exposed to secondhand smoke.

With technology, we can’t wait 10 or 20 years until the damage to a generation of children is done. A child’s communication clock starts ticking on day one, and from then forward, children need quality interactions with their parents and caregivers. A child’s communication skills blossom between the crucial ages of 0 and 3, and human interaction and conversation are the most effective ways to foster healthy development.

To learn to read emotions and engage socially, kids need to see faces and make eye contact. It’s how we’re wired and how we connect. To learn how to communicate and be prepared for academic — and eventually professional — success, they need parents who are tuned in to their signals and engage them in the back and forth of communication.

Regular, quality interactions with parents — talking, listening, singing, reading and playing together — fuel children’s language development and their acquisition of communication skills. And for children to get the brain food they need, parents need to be able to notice and respond to coos, smiles, eye contact and, later on, words, facial expressions, gestures and emotions. With hours less of these interactions each day, a child’s foundation for communication and social development is weakened, potentially impacting school readiness and creating a ripple effect throughout that child’s life.

Parents can’t respond meaningfully when they are buried in their phones and drawn to constant and unprecedented digital demands and distractions, from work emails, texts and calls to the 24-hour news cycle and the surround sound of social media.

Parental tech use, by the numbers

Parental tech use is already an issue for the majority of American families, and a recent YouGov poll commissioned by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association found that among parents with children ages 8 or younger:

►95% say their tech use interferes with daily opportunities for talking, playing and interacting with their child without distraction at least a little.

►82% are at least a little concerned that their own use of technology might impact their child’s communication health and development.

►Half would not want their child to develop their screen-time or tech habits, now or in the future. 

For years, speech and hearing experts like me have warned that Americans’ technology habits are a ticking “time bomb” that could lead to diminished communication abilities and skills across the population. We can’t wait any longer to protect children from the unintended consequences of our society’s tech obsessions.

Systemic changes, such as employers assessing the 24/7 digital demands on employees, should be in play. During well-child visits, pediatricians should ask about tech use in the home — just as they ask about smoking and other health risks — and be prepared to have tough conversations and offer tips for reducing parental tech use. And parents themselves can be more mindful of the amount of time they spend using their phones and other digital devices around their children.

A fix for kids' social media addiction:Teach them to use tech more responsibly

The smartphone habit might not be easy to kick or curtail immediately, but intentional efforts — even small ones — can begin to make a difference in a child’s development. Parents and caregivers are the only ones who can truly defuse this communications time bomb, but we all need to recognize what our children are losing when a device’s bright screen becomes more alluring than a child’s bright face.   

Theresa H. Rodgers is the 2020 president of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), a national professional association for audiologists and speech-language pathologists. She is a speech-language pathologist and special education consultant in Prairieville, Louisiana. Follow her on Twitter: @theresahrodgers

When Playing with Children, Play Not Only Affects Children's Brains but Adults Too!

Play is important for children to grow up healthy, a National Institutes for Health article states.  It is a way to prepare children for the complex social world we live in.  They also state that children do not need expensive toys to obtain the benefits that come from play.  “Parents are children’s most enriching plaything.”

When infants are playing with toys and objects, their attention to the toys/objects and what is happening creates bursts of high-frequency activity in their brains.  When adults play with their children, research from the National Institutes for Health stated in the same article, is also showing that the adults experience similar bursts of high-frequency activity in their brains as well.  If you want to learn more about this and about ways to support both children and adults in playful interactions visits this website.

In English:

https://newsinhealth.nih.gov/special-issues/parenting/its-kids-job 

In Spanish:

https://salud.nih.gov/articulo/es-un-trabajo-de-ninos/ 

Information from: 

Baby Talk: Resources to Support the People Who Work with Infants and Toddlers

Issue No. 93   February 2019

Reposted from 2-28-19

Baby Watch Early Intervention Program Is In the Governor's Recommended Budget

Baby Watch Early Intervention is the program in the Department of Health that funds the local early intervention programs in the state of Utah.  Governor Herbert has included a funding request made by Baby Watch in his recommended budget which will now go to the legislative committees for approval.  There are a few ways parents of children receiving early intervention services can help.

• Contact your legislators by email or by phone, thank them for supporting Baby Watch Early Intervention Program in the past and ask for their continued support.  You can share your story with them or let them know why funding is important for your child and family.  Please refer to the program as Baby Watch Early Intervention Program instead of Davis Early Intervention Program, since we are only one of 15 programs that would benefit from the funding.
• Attend one or both of the events at the capitol next week for people with disabilities.  Disability Advocacy Day is January 30, 2020 from 12:30 to 3:30 at the Utah State Capitol Rotunda and  the Legislative Coalition for People with Disabilities (LCPD) Annual Legislative Reception is January 30, 2020 from 4:00 - 5:45 at the Utah State Capitol Rotunda.  Please register if you plan to attend the LCPD  reception at the utahparentcenter.org website events page or by calling 801 272-1051.   If you are able to attend the LCPD reception, let your legislator know and ask them to meet you there so you can talk with them personally.
• We may have opportunities for families to share their stories with the Social Services Appropriations Committee or the Executive Appropriations Committee in the coming weeks.  If you are interested, let me know and I will contact you if the opportunity arises.

Baby Watch Early Intervention Programs has not requested additional funding since 2017, however the number of children served has increased by more than 34% state wide.  Too many children go without early intervention services they need.  Utah’s Baby Watch Early Intervention Program serves only 2.75% of the children age 0 – 3, well below the national average of 4.97%.

You can find your legislator by entering your address on this website: https://le.utah.gov/GIS/findDistrict.jsp