Joint Attention

🔸 Joint attention means BOTH of you know you’re talking about the same thing and are actively sharing the experience.

🔸 Repeat the word a minimum of 5 times during the interaction.

🔸 For example, while on a walk your child is looking at a dog that is nearby. You look at your child and point to the dog and say “Doggie! I see a doggie” Your child looks at you and smiles and looks back at the dog. “Ha-ha-ha (panting), ruff ruff, big doggie. Hi doggie! Bye bye doggie!”

[correction: wrong source in image 🤦‍♀️ it’s firstwordsproject.com]

🔸 I said “doggie” 5x during that interaction, but you could keep going if your child is still interested. You could describe what it looks like, maybe go over and say hi and pet it, etc. You could easily say “Look, so cute! He looks so soft” where you don’t say the key word at all, so be cognizant and make sure you include it “Look! Doggie is so cute! Doggie looks so soft!”

🔸 Research tells us that we should plan to model a new word 12 to 18 times before we expect a child to try to repeat it. This doesn’t mean in the same sitting (that might feel forced and unnatural), but just overtime as it continues to come up in your shared experiences. 🧡

This post was brought to you by @raisinglittletalkers. More than a toy designer, be mindful is a community of parents who are going through the process of building the best denizens of next generation.  As such we encourage and delight in our community participating in our blog and social media efforts.  Your voice will be heard across our community and who knows which kid or which parent your wisdom will enlighten!  Feel free to email us at howdy@mindful-engineering.com or submit an inquiry on our site if you have a blog post idea you want to share!