Serve and return is a winner for parents and babies


  • September 20, 2016
  • /   Reggie Dogan
  • /   education

Storytime at Myrtle Grove Preschool is a good example of the "serve-and-return" strategy of caregiver-child communication.

One of the most essential experiences in shaping the foundation of the developing brain is “serve and return” interaction between children and significant adults in their lives.

Young children naturally reach out for interaction through babbling, facial expressions and gestures.

And adults respond with the same kind of vocalizing and gesturing back at them.

This back-and-forth process is fundamental to the wiring of the brain, especially in a child’s earliest years.

While I wasn’t aware of the child development term until recently, I naturally used the technique early and often as part of being an engaged and attentive parent.

In recent years attention has increasingly focused on the most critical period of life — the first 1,000 days from pregnancy to the third birthday. It is considered a critical window of life that sets in motion a person’s intellectual development and lifelong health.

Among the goals of the Studer Community Institute is to improve the community’s quality of life, and providing quality education is an important part of it.

Early education is key to preparing children for kindergarten and helping them along the way to high school graduation and beyond.

Studies increasingly show from birth to age 3 are critical times for child development and learning.

Serve and return is a vital part of communicating and interacting with your infant, even if your infant is still smaller than a tennis racket.

To put it simply, brain development depends on activity. Electrical activity in every circuit — sensory, motor, emotional, cognitive — shapes the way the circuit fits together.

Like computer circuits, neural circuits process information through the flow of electricity. Unlike computer circuits, however, the circuits in our brains are not fixed structures.

Everything we do — whether it is learning to walk, riding a bike, reading a book, writing a blog post — activates certain neural circuits and leaves other inactive.

Those that are consistently turned on over time will get stronger, while those that are rarely energized will weaken and may eventually go away.

The elimination of unused neural circuits, also referred to as “pruning,” may seem like a bad thing, but it generally is not.

Basically it streamlines children’s neural processing, making the remaining circuits work faster and efficiently. Without pruning, children wouldn’t have the brain space to learn to walk, talk or even see correctly.

Serve and return interactions start simple enough and become increasingly complex over time. As your infant grows, he or she will engage in more specific “serve” interactions that develop particular areas of the brain.

A good example is when a child points at an object (serve) and the parent responds with the name of the object (return), the child then makes the mental connection between the object and the sound.

Through this process, your child is developing the language and literacy areas of his or her brain.

To be sure, social interaction is the most important kind of stimulation a young child needs for healthy and expresses what serving and returning is all about.

If, for example, your baby serves up an opportunity for attention with baby talk, as a parent you should return that serve in a direct and meaningful way by ensuring that your baby can see your smiling face or touch your hands to show the baby that they have your attention.

These interactions play a critical role in strengthening brain connections between all of the different areas of the baby’s brain — helping them develop the emotional and cognitive skills they need later in life.

When it comes to emotional development, serve and return interactions can help children develop confidence, cope with stress, form friendships, develop compassion and perform better in school.

When parents and caregivers are sensitive and responsive to the needs and the signals served by a baby, the return creates a nurturing and supportive environment that is enriching with cognitive interactions.

Parents who understand and pay close attention to serve and return with their babies help the little ones become winners in school and in the game of life.

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