In the New York Times, December 23, 2013 was an article entitled, “To Smoosh Peas Is to Learn,” by Perri Klass, Md.
He says:
In a study published this month in Developmental Science, 16-month-old children were taught new names for foods like jelly and syrup, then tested to see if they could connect those names with the foods when they were presented in different colors and shapes.
The conclusion? The toddlers learned better if they had, shall we say, interacted vigorously with the original samples – in other words, had played with their foods.
The study was widely picked up by media outlets, and headlines trumpeted that a toddler’s propensity toward mealtime mess might actually be a sign of intelligence (a media trope not unlike the periodic celebration of the messy desk and the creative adult mind). On some level, it would seem, we are all very ready to cheer for the child with a face well covered in chocolate pudding.
This Grandma is with Dr. Klass. What great fun a toddler has using pudding in the bathtub like finger paint and tasting it along the way. We Grandmas are creative enough and smart enough to use the bathtub as a laboratory for easy cleanup. It also makes for great photographs!
The study had some interesting results:
The psychologists who did this research were interested in the question of how babies learn about “nonsolid” objects. “We had noticed in our lab work before that children are much better at learning names for new solid objects that they didn’t know before,” said Lynn Perry, now a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and lead author of the study.
Since solid objects have fixed characteristics, it’s relatively easy for a toddler to figure out what makes a cup, ball or chair. “It’s harder for them to learn the names of nonsolids,” Dr. Perry said. “You can’t just look and know what it is. You have to use your senses and explore a little more.”
The researchers reasoned that children’s most regular context for exploring nonsolid substances comes at mealtime, and that putting them in highchairs might help them learn the names of such substances. In fact, children sitting in highchairs did learn better in the study.
So the messy eater experiment is really about the developing brain, and the cues and contexts that small children need to create lexical categories – everything covered by a particular word – a challenge especially when the category is not defined by a shape. The children who squidged around in the cream of wheat, tasted it, smeared it, did various unmentionable things with it – they were the children who understood what cream of wheat was. They could identify it even if it came in a different shape and was doctored with green food coloring. The messy eater experiment is also about play, and the way that children explore their worlds and learn as they go. Toddlers play with their food because toddlers play with their worlds. And by playing and exploring, they accumulate all kinds of data, which helps them put together a picture and a vocabulary for the world around them.
“They literally taste the world by putting things in their mouths, by making them make their sounds, shaking them,” said Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, a professor of education at the University of Delaware and co-author of “A Mandate for Playful Learning in Preschool.”
“Didactic information just falls flat,” she said. “They have to figure out for themselves, and the only way they can do this is by messing around.”
There is actual science in toddler meal messes and a way to get them to the 100 words they are supposed to master. So we can celebrate the sophisticated science that toddlers learn in their highchairs, matching new substances to those they have already encountered. “Babies are learning through their play and their exploration, and they can build on that for subsequent learning,” Dr. Samuelson said.
These are great play ideas for Grandma – within reason. Access to a small blow up pool outside of the house is great to hose out instead of having to clean the bathtub. If Grandma does not mind too many messes in a high chair, then there are some ideas to make clean-up easier– floor mats. This Grandma never understands things like washable spill mats for messy toddlers. Then you are cleaning up twice! I like disposable floor mats, great for the visiting toddler: Click here to buy.
Similarly, this Grandma is into Bibsters–disposable bibs of different sizes. I have even used two at one time: Click here to buy.
Something else I learned that I did not know before:
Still, I can’t leave this subject without a word about table manners. Sixteen-month-olds are too young for those lessons, but at a certain developmental point, you come out of the highchair and join those around the table – in exchange for giving up some of the messier mealtime pleasures.
So maybe we should consider manners and polite behavior the ultimate nonsolids for children to identify and master, new real-life learning opportunities that arise when families gather at the table.
So, somewhere I read it takes fifteen times of an introduction of a food for a toddler to develop a taste for the food. I like Dr. Klass’ article, but with this Grandma’s mantra of no responsibility and more joy, I do not think I am ready for fifteen meals of smashed peas, especially if the grandchild is out of a high chair and around the table.
Joy,
Mema
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