Myriam Szejer talks to newborns. For over a decade she has worked in the maternity ward of a hospital outside Paris. Called in by hospital staff when a baby or its parents are suffering, Szejer uses the psychoanalytic techniques of careful listening and talking to reach failure-to-thrive and other suffering newborns and reverse their conditions. Talking to Babies is the story of her important work. Having psychologists or psychiatrists available to new mothers on maternity wards is not unusual. But having a psychoanalyst available who also talks to newborns is completely revolutionary. Szejer has pioneered her unique approach to treating struggling infants through years of study and apprenticeship. And in Talking to Babies she describes in thoughtful and convincing detail the theory of her practice and how her interventions work, illustrating with the moving stories of the numerous infants she has helped. In the very first days of a baby's life, the newborn, still struggling between birth and its entry into our world, already needs words. By "needing words," Szejer means that infants need to be talked to about the specific situations into which they are born. They need to hear about their mothers, fathers, siblings, and caretakers, but they also need to hear about problematic aspects of their histories, such as the death of a twin sibling or the death of a baby before them. These words must be spoken to the baby in the presence of his or her mother and father if at all possible. Such speech helps everyone-newborn and parents-to find their places in the altered world created by the birth. When such words are not present, physical symptoms and illness may emerge. Talking to Babies is the first book to show how the "talking cure" can help infants and their parents. Post-partum depression in mothers, failure-to-thrive in babies-these problems might be approached quite differently if maternity wards incorporated some of Szejer's practices. High-tech interventions are all too common in American maternity wards; Talking to Babies offers a more humane route for restoring health. Preface: "Sometimes, as I am leaving the hospital late at night, I stop to look in on a patient who has recently given birth. And often, as I open the door, I catch a special moment: the new mother leaning over the crib, or more often face to face with the newborn on her lap, looking intently at him and murmuring motherly words . . . In a maternity ward, however, everything is not always so rosy. Birth is sometimes accompanied by suffering, a suffering too rarely perceived in our Western societies . . . When I met Myriam Szejer, an unknown field opened to me: the reality of the newborn's preverbal behavior. Szejer dares psychoanalyze newborns, dares talk to them, dares intervene before the symptom has taken root, particularly in dangerous situations . . . Her approach ought to become known to all who make perinatal medicine their career. Her approach is innovative. What woman has not been shaken to her very being by becoming a mother; what man has not trembled at becoming a father? Babies feel that profound apprehensiveness. They need to be listened to, which is a form of respect." --from the Preface by René Frydman, M.D.

In their first three years of life, babies face the most complex learning endeavor they will ever undertake as human beings: They learn to talk. Now, as researchers make new forays into the mystery of the development of the human brain, Golinkoff and Hirsh-Pasek, both developmental psychologists and language experts, offer parents a powerfully insightful guidebook to how infants—even while in the womb—begin to learn language. Along the way, the authors provide parents with the latest scientific findings, developmental milestones, and important advice on how to create the most effective learning environments for their children. This book takes readers on a fascinating, vitally important exploration of the dance between nature and nurture, and explains how parents can help their children learn more successfully.

Language acquisition is a contentious field of research occupied by cognitive and developmental psychologists, linguists, philosophers, and biologists. Perhaps the key component to understanding how language is mastered is explaining word acquisition. At twelve months, an infant learns new words slowly and laboriously but at twenty months he or she acquires an average of ten new words per day. How can we explain this phenomenal change? A theory of word acquisition will not only deepen our understanding of the nature of language but will provide real insight into the workings of the developing mind. In the latest entry in Oxford's Counterpoints series, Roberta Golinkoff and Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek will present competing word acquisition theories that have emerged in the past decade. Each theory will be presented by the pioneering researcher. Contributors will include Lois Bloom of Columbia University, Linda Smith of Indiana University, Amanda Woodward of the University if Chicago, Nameera Akhtar of the University of California, Santa Cruz and Michael Tomasello of the Max Planck Institute. The editors will provide introductory and summary chapters to help assess each theoretical model. Roberta Golinkoff has been the director of The Infant Language Project at the University of Delaware since 1974. For the past decade she has collaborated with Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek of Temple University to solve the question of language acquisition in children.

Psychiatrist and clinical research Dr. Paul Holinger decodes for parents the nine easily identifiable expressions hardwired into every human being.

From an international expert on infant-parent communication, a rich and accessible gift book on baby “language,” gorgeously illustrated with forty black-and-white photographs. Through intimate access to babies and their families, Dr. Kevin Nugent and acclaimed photographer Abelardo Morell capture the amazingly precocious communications strategies babies demonstrate from the moment they are born. Your Baby Is Speaking to You illustrates the full range of behaviors—early smiling to startling, feeding to sleeping, listening to your voice and recognizing your face. The newest research—including information on subtle and fleeting behaviors not seen or explained in any other book—illuminates the meaning of the things babies do that concern and delight new parents: – the language of yawning – the rich range of cries, and how to understand their meanings – baby’s earliest “sleep smiles” and sleep states, and what they signify. Your Baby Is Speaking To You delivers the information parents crave in gentle, accessible style while giving parents the confidence they need to respond to their own baby’s way of communicating during the very first astonishing days and the months beyond.

Talking from infancy teaches interactive methods the adult can use to stimulate and encourage a child's language and speech. The companion video, Talking from infancy, shows scenes of adults interacting with infants and young children illustrating specific techniques that have proven useful in the author's research. The video, Little Neva learns to talk, takes the viewer through the language acquisition of Neva, age 3-23 months, demonstrating the gradual expansion of her vocabulary, sentence-making and talking skills.

Teach your baby to speak sooner! Simple tricks and techniques to encourage babies, children and toddlers to talk early, as well as assist in bringing children up to speed who may be taking longer than normal. The Talking Baby Endorsements and reviews by Speech Therapists, Child Psychiatrists, Pediatricians, Psychologists, Elementary School Teachers, Parents, and other child experts.

The Essential Parenting Guide-NOW COMPLETELY UPDATED AND EXPANDED! In 1982, child development experts Linda Acredolo, Ph.D., and Susan Goodwyn, Ph.D., discovered that babies can communicate with simple signs-even before they're able to talk. The result: Baby Signs, the groundbreaking technique that has changed parenting forever. Now, with the widespread popularity of signing with hearing babies and new and exciting research findings to report, the authors have completely revised and expanded Baby Signs to create this indispensable new edition. Featuring an American Sign Language approach, as well as a set of “baby-friendly” alternatives, this comprehensive new program offers all the information any parent needs to join the hundreds of thousands of families around the world who are using Baby Signs to help their children communicate their “joys and fears without tears.” (Newsweek) Inside you will find . . . An expanded dictionary with easy-to-follow photos of 150 ASL signs along with a set of 35 “baby-friendly” alternatives New research showing the benefits of Baby Signs for children's emotional development, for the parent-child relationship, and for reducing frustration and aggression in childcare settings Information to help parents use the magic of Baby Signs to meet the challenges of potty training (as seen on CBS's The Doctors) Real-life stories of parents achieving both stunning and heartwarming communication breakthroughs with their children

In this fascinating and informative book, Margaret Maclagan and Anne Buckley - two specialists in children's language development - explain the subtle and extraordinary process in which children learn to talk and the very important role that parents and grandparents can play. Combining a comprehensive understanding of speech development with fascinating scientific facts - did you know that babies cry with an accent? - 'Talking Baby' offers numerous practical suggestions and real-life examples of how parents can best help their children to learn to talk. The authors also provide many ideas for 'talking' topics, as well as ways to use the everyday things in life to encourage children's comprehension and speech. Drawing on their combined 40 years' experience, the authors also address some of the more commonly asked questions by parents such as: -Why can my child imitate a word accurately but continues to use the wrong pronunciation in his speech? -Do second and other children talk later than first children? -My 18-month-old child isn't saying anything. Should I be worried? -Is it better to use grown-up language to talk to young children than 'baby talk'? -How early can I start reading to my child? -English isn't my first language. How can I help my children to speak it well? -My child is repeating words a lot, especially when excited - does this mean she's stuttering?