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Is your child developing normally?

Every kid is different, of course, but research shows that there are things you could and should be doing to appropriately stimulate and engage your toddler. There is increasing evidence that experience-based brain development in the early years of life sets neurological and biological pathways that affect lifelong health, learning and behaviour.

To help you understand and enhance your child's early development, Dr. Stuart Shanker, president of the Council of Early Child Development, was online earlier to take your questions.

Your questions and Dr. Shanker's answers appear at the bottom of this page.

Dr. Shanker was recently appointed the President of the Council for Early Child Development (CECD). In recent years, he has learned a great deal about brain development in the first three years of a child's life and believes that an alarming number of children are not receiving the experiences they need. He views the CECD as an excellent opportunity to put science into action for children in communities.

He is also co-director of the Council for Human Development and is distinguished research professor of philosophy and psychology at York University. He is currently serving as director of the Milton and Ethel Harris Research Initiative (MEHRI) at York University, a privately funded initiative whose goal is to build on new knowledge of the brain's development, and help set children (including those with developmental disorders) on the path towards emotional and intellectual health.

Editor's Note: globeandmail.com editors will read and allow or reject each question/comment. Comments/questions may be edited for length or clarity. HTML is not allowed. We will not publish questions/comments that include personal attacks on participants in these discussions, that make false or unsubstantiated allegations, that purport to quote people or reports where the purported quote or fact cannot be easily verified, or questions/comments that include vulgar language or libellous statements. Preference will be given to readers who submit questions/comments using their full name and home town, rather than a pseudonym.

Rasha Mourtada, Globe Life web editor: Good morning, Dr. Shanker, and thanks for coming online today. We've got lots of questions, so I'm going to get right to them.

Niobe Thompsn, Edmonton: We are raising a girl toddler (19 months) in a biligual Danish-English environment. In all respects, our daughter seems happy, curious and socially engaged, but she is certainly not as far along in acquiring language as her peers (who live in unilingual homes). Our pediatrician has even suggested we get her hearing checked, although we know her hearing is fine. We have heard that children often start using language later when they are exposed to two languages from early on. Could this be the cause of our daughter's delay, or should be worried that something might be wrong?

Stuart Shanker: Let me respond to this question both as a psychologist and as a parent, as we did the same thing with our son (English and Spanish). There is some evidence of a slight lag in acquiring the first language, and this is definitely something we observed with our own son. However, there is also evidence that when the child does begin to speak he or she progresses through the 'language milestones' very quickly, and this was also something we saw in our son. Finally, a colleague of mine, Professor Ellen Bialystok, has done extensive research on the effects of exposure to two languages on a child's cognitive development, and she has shown that this results in a cognitive advantage in the child's attentional abilities around the age of 3 or 4, although unilingual children begin to catch up fairly quickly after that. As an aside, when my son speaks Spanish he does so with a beautiful accent, and he also has a remarkable ability to mimic other types of sounds (such as bird sounds). Of course, he might have had this ability from the start, which is why he was able to pick up Spanish and English sounds. But one always wonders.

I would only add that if the pediatrician has some concerns and would like to have her hearing checked, I cannot see what harm this could do. But I am reassured by your opening comment that your daughter is happy, curious and socially engaged. By the latter we would want to see her, not just paying attention to or responding to other people in social encounters, but also initiating interactions with sounds, gestures, looks etc. We would also want to be sure that she can stay 'engaged' for more than just a fleeting moment -- e.g., that she's able to exchange back-and-forth signals with her parents about something for more than just a few seconds.

Steven Ferguson, Quebec: My son, who is turning 3 this month, seems to display a lot of compulsive behaviour. He is extremely particular about how things are placed on the table, what he wears, where people sit etc. Is this normal? Is this just a phase?

Stuart Shanker:This is indeed something that we see all the time and you should view this not as something to be anxious about, but rather, as an important opportunity to engage with your son. By that what I mean is that instead of letting yourself become excluded from whatever it is that your son is focusing on, you have to engage with your son in a playful manner, so that the activity, whatever it is -- e.g., lining up his trucks, or deciding what he's going to wear -- becomes the basis for playful communicating back-and-forth. We want to use your son's interest in whatever it is that has captured his attention to get him to communicate with us, rather than withdrawing into himself: he has to tell us where to put the truck, or which pants he wants to wear. You can become playfully obstructive or obtuse at times, so that your son has to tell you what he's supposed to do! Of course, we don't want to upset the child, or cause a meltdown. Rather, we want to draw the child into sustained back-and-forth interactions with us, which, fairly quickly, will lead into joint problem-solving activities, where the two of you decide how to arrange the toys or set the table, etc.

Carolyn Hammon,Toronto: The introduction to this story reads that you have 'learned a great deal about brain development in the first three years of a child's life and believe that an alarming number of children are not receiving the experiences they need.' What exactly are the vital experiences for a child in the first 3 years? And how long can you leave these critical experiences before it's too late?

Stuart Shanker: Your question is wonderful: one I would want to ask myself if I were to read this story. As parents we are being constantly bombarded by messages about how such-and-such a toy or video will stimulate our child's intelligence, or that doing certain exercises will get our child to read earlier. But these are not at all the sorts of "early experiences" that we are learning about in our lab and in our clinical work.

Over and over the message we get is clear: a child needs warm, nurturing experiences in the early months and years of life for healthy brain development. All the things that we sometimes take for granted -- smiling and making funny faces or sounds and playing games like peek-a-boo with our baby, or singing nursery songs and rocking our baby in our arms, or holding our infant and reading a story, or responding warmly to our child's needs or distress and helping her to calm down when she gets over-aroused -- these are the sorts of things that human begins have been doing for hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions of years, to promote healthy brain development.

Our concern today is that a large number of babies and infants simply aren't getting enough of these quality nurturing interactions with their parents or caregivers. What builds healthy brains, with long-term implications for both mental and physical health -- are the back-and-forth interactions with their parents or caregivers which enable the child, first, to self-regulate and attend to the world around them, then, to form a warm attachment with their primary caregivers, then, to respond to and initiate brief back-and-forth exchanges (using gestures, facial expressions, vocalizations, body movements), and then, to start to engage in sustained, problem-solving activities with their caregivers (e.g., pointing to a cookie on the top of the kitchen cabinet and perhaps making a sound to get the caregiver's attention, then leading them by the hand to the counter so that they can fetch the cookie for them). A related concern is that a large number of infants are being exposed to too much artificial stimulus -- e.g., visual or auditory -- and not enough 'natural' stimulus, such as the smells, sounds, and sights of a forest or park.

R. Fleming, Canada: My daughter is 28 months old. I know it is normal for toddlers to want to exert their independence, but my daughter's behaviour seems a little over the top. She disagrees with absolutely everything I say, even inarguable facts. I'll tell her a cup is red and she'll say 'No, yellow.' If I point to my knees and say 'knees' she'll say 'no, elbows.' If I offer her milk, she wants juice and vice versa. The surest way to get her to do something is to tell her not to. Asking her to stop doing something is guaranteed to make things worse. We avoid power struggles like the plague, but sometimes we have no choice, and they become marathons of will. She is incredibly stubborn and uncooperative. I see all these other kids her age sweetly doing as they're told, and I wonder what we're doing wrong. We offer her choices, and either she doesn't understand the concept, or she feels cornered by having to make a decision and refuses to. We praise her good behaviour. And apart from time-outs we are at a loss as to how to cope with her defiance. Is this behaviour normal? Is it just a personality trait that we have to adapt to? If the latter is true, I worry about how she will do in school, and am wondering how I can prepare her for a world where she will be expected to follow instructions and rules.

Stuart Shanker: I suspect that all over the country there are parents reading this email and saying to themselves: 'But that's exactly what my child is like!' One of the best things we ever learned happened quite by accident. We had arranged to have a meeting with a bunch of first-time parents, all of them strangers to each other, to go over some of the things we were interested in. We were a little late in getting our equipment set up and had left this group of parents sitting around a large table. As I was fussing with a projector I heard one of the parents saying something almost identical to what you have written above. She said it with great trepidation, almost as if she were afraid that she was going to be censured for having a 'problem child,' or even worse, for being a 'poor parent.' But the effect on the group was magical: it was as if the flood-gates had been opened, and all of a sudden, everyone was rushing to tell their own version of what was essentially the same story.

One of the things that I learned from this, and which has come to concern me more and more, is that so many families today seem to be cut off from these kinds of experiences with other parents. We are all so busy, and it seems to be so difficult to engage with other families in relaxed, informal settings. But I also learned another lesson, which takes us to the heart of your question. I love what you are describing about your child. I love that this child wants to assert her independence, constantly wants to challenge her parents, and see how they are going to respond to her. Believe me, I sympathize with how difficult this can be at times. But I worry that, as a society, we are becoming overly concerned that our children are 'compliant'. By treating what are really very typical behaviours in a 2 year-old -- and there is a reason why they are called "the terrible twos"! -- as "power struggles," we may lose out on some wonderful opportunities to engage in playful interactions that will really get our child's communicative skills cooking. For example, the child who insists that your knees are really 'elbows' has just given you a wonderful opportunity to start a game -- and many times, this may be exactly what she had in mind. So now if you point to your elbows and call them your knees, or your nose -- whatever -- what will she do? What we care about here really isn't so much about what she says as how long can we keep this game going: how long can we keep her interested and engaged and having fun.

To be sure, there are going to have to be times when you will simply have to assert your will. If you're in a situation that could be dangerous, like a parking lot, you just have to take control. But most of the time you want to nurture your child's independence and will, which are going to help her develop into the most wonderfully independent and self-confident young adult.

There are two related points that I might also mention here. One is that we have so much evidence now about how counter-productive yelling is, especially when the child is in a state of over-arousal. What you have to learn are the conditions that have led up to this, and then avoid them in the future. But as for the actual tantrum, which is going to strike you as so irrational: you always have to remember that this is such a young and developing brain, that does get over-loaded, and when it does a warm hug and reassuring caresses will be so much more effective than escalating the child's arousal state by yelling at them or punishing them in some way. And we would make a similar point about time-outs. If used judiciously, and as a way to help the child to calm down, this can be effective; but if used to punish the child, then you are merely asserting your power and not helping them to develop the mechanisms they need to regulate themselves.

Rae Vandengerg, Canada: Dr. Shanker, My son's speech was not developing normally. At 2, on my own initiative as my doctor did not suggest it, I took him to an audiologist where it was found his Eustachian tubes were plugged. He had ear tubes put in about 4 months later as his tubes were still plugged at the time of his operation. He has made tremendous gains in speech since then. I'm just glad I caught it early. Given that good hearing is key in healthy and speech development and that many ear infections leading to hearing loss go undetected in the young, why am I not reading more advice about routine hearing cheques for young babies? Why is our ministry of health not advocating for more routine ear screenings?

Stuart Shanker: Dear Rae, I wonder if we could somehow print your letter in bold, or in a different colour, so that everyone sees it! What you say here is just so important, and something every parent needs to hear. But there is some good news: the Ministry is indeed aware of how important this is and we are starting to see all sorts of very important universal screening initiatives cropping up all over the country. Thank you for this question.

Robert Williamson, Vernon, B.C.: I have a 1st grandchild. She is 2 and 1/2. I helped to raise 3 girls all of whom are bright and successful. However I know that research into child development indicates there are windows of opportunity for activating parts of the brain to maximize the potential for creativity, intelligence etc. I understand that different parts of the brain are more involved with some aspect of learning than others. When I play or read books with my granddaughter I try to do so in such a way as to force her to use her cognitive abilities as much as possible. eg. If there is a picture of a wheel barrel in a book, I ask her where the wheelbarrow is? She points it out. I then ask her things like - How does someone use a wheelbarrow? How would you push a wheelbarrow? What type of workmen use a wheelbarrow? Would it be fun to ride in a wheelbarrow? What can you put in a wheelbarrow? I don't try to push her into giving an answer if she can't, in which case I might suggest something to her. If she can, great, but if she cannot I feel at least I am getting her to think beyond merely identifying the wheelbarrow. Am I on the right track? What advice do you have for grandparents who are a bit removed from child-rearing and are not current on contemporary trends in child development, regarding activities that will reasonable challenge her and maximize her learning potential? Thank you Rob Williamson

Stuart Shanker: Dear Rob, What a lucky granddaughter. We wish that all sorts of kids could have these kinds of experiences. Did you know that while you're holding her and reading to her you're also having some wonderful effects on the development of her brain, just by stimulating her sense of touch?

There are just a couple of things that we would want to add to what you have described, all of which you is clearly aware of, but are still worth articulating.

- First, we need to always remember that the most important thing is that the interaction is fun. There could be no greater proof that we are doing something 'right' than the grandchild who runs up when she sees you with her favourite book in her arms.

- Second, we psychologists use some a pretty fancy terms to describe what you're doing: we say that you are matching your questions to your grandchild's 'zone of proximal development'. What this means is that you want to keep 'raising the bar' for your child, but you want to do it in such a way that it is within the child's reach. If you raise the bar too high -- if your question is, say, too complicated -- then you're going to find yourself with a child that 'tunes out' from reading the book very quickly. Another way to put this is that what you're doing here is helping your granddaughter develop some very core capacities: the ability to pay attention, to figure out patterns, to develop her language skills. In fact, we now know that even just looking at the pictures in a book with a child can have a powerful effect on their later interest in reading. But what we're not trying to do with an infant is "teach them" something, to stuff them with information. I love what you say in your question about getting her to think beyond merely identifying the wheelbarrow. What you're saying is, you wants her to start to think about what this thing is used for, what it's function is, and not just something that has a label attached to it. And this is indeed an enormously important element of healthy development.

Mary Davis: Dr. Shanker, Thank you for taking my question. I have heard that it is important for children to complete each 'milestone' in sequence and that if one milestone is skipped (for example, a child learns to walk without ever crawling) then they can have developmental difficulties later. Is this true and how does one ensure that a child completes each stage well enough before moving on to the next?

Stuart Shanker: I should have known, Mary, that my last question would be my hardest! There is indeed some interesting research showing that if some major milestone is missed, like the one you mentioned (walking without ever crawling) it might have some repercussions later in life. But this particular example is a pretty tricky one, simply because a lot of things are connected with it in early brain development. In general, however, we take 'developmental milestones' with a huge grain of salt. For example, it is not uncommon to have children skip all sorts of so-called 'language-milestones' and go straight from the one-word stage to speaking in short sentences, and there is nothing worrying about this.

There are some much broader 'stages' of development -- what Stanley Greenspan and I refer to in The First Ideas as functional/emotional stages of development -- that we really do want to see children progress through and master. I referred to these briefly in one of my earlier responses: the stages here have to do with, first, self-regulating and attending to the world; second, forming a warm attachment with primary caregivers; third, engaging in co-regulated interactions; fourth, participating in joint problem-solving interactions; fifth, mastering symbolic thinking and language; and sixth, building logical bridges between idea, distinguishing fantasy from reality. There are some higher stages that are important too for the slightly older child, but just concentrating on these, I want to make one important point.

The way to help a child master these stages is not by trying to "drill" the child on some particular milestone. This is one of the things that really concerns us about those 'milestone' charts that you see everywhere. It has the effect of making a parent feel that they have to carefully monitor where the child is on the chart and then ensure that the child masters the next step if they're going to "stay on track." But development really doesn't work like this, and in fact, this could actually be counter-productive, in terms of building up the child's abilities to be creative, spontaneous, to take the initiative, behave in a purposeful manner. So we come back to the point that I've been harping on all morning: we develop these capacities through warm, nurturing interactions, and in activities that might be educational, but most of all, are fun. In this manner you'll greatly enhance the development of your children's brain, and as a result, set them on a long trajectory of mental and physical health.

Rasha Mourtada, Globe Life web editor: Thanks, Dr. Shanker, for sharing your knowledge with our readers. To our readers, we're sorry we couldn't get to all of your questions. Are there any last thoughts you'd like to leave us with, Dr. Shanker?

Stuart Shanker: I'd like to thank your readers for such a stimulating morning. It is when I get questions and insights such as we've had this morning that I become most optimistic about the future of our children. My final message would be that the future of our country quite literally depends on our doing everything that we can to ensure the healthy development of every single child in Canada. There are so many parents who didn't have a chance to ask a question -- who never get a chance to ask such questions. We need to reach out to each and every one of them, so that their children truly have the opportunity to develop their unique potential to the fullest.