Hello from Sunny California

The Little Lounge Introduce Yourself
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This is such an enriching forum and I am so glad that I found it!

I am a first time mommy to an almost 5 weeks old. My background is in Applied Behavior Analysis and I worked with children with Autism for five years before getting my masters and specializing in Dyslexia.

I had never heard of early learning. I’ve now ordered the Doman books and am looking forward to getting How Smart is Your Baby tomorrow. I feel a bit behind reading all this information (especially in physical stimulation), but also feel good about our first month with the baby.

So far… we have fallen in love with our little girl. We read to her all the time in both English and Spanish (well mainly while she’s nursing or alert). I can highly highly recommend the book The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease. We also have planned to teach the little girl Spanish, English and Mandarin. My husband speaks to her in Spanish and I speak to her in English. We have played background music and shows on youtube in Mandarin, but haven’t taught it in any other way as neither of us know it. If we do childcare in the future, we want to choose someone to speak to her entirely in Mandarin and we may hire someone to come play with her speaking mandarin. Any recommendations in this area?? We have a Mandarin/English preschool picked out for her to go to when she gets there developmentally. We also have black/white infant stimulation cards up by her changing table, crib, etc. and I show her more when she is alert. She thinks they are the best thing ever and will stare at them and try to grab them. I plan to do “sticky mittens” sessions with her when she gets a little older. Oh and we do tummy time when she’s alert and awake and also for a couple minutes after changing her. She’s soooo good at holding her little head up already.

Anyways, I am excited to learn from all of you. I’m interested in exposing her to music and art as well. I’m torn on Little Reader so young because our screen is so bright and her eyes are just developing. Also, I was a very advanced reader at a young age and we never did flash cards as a baby, just lots and lots of exposure to print. I feel like we have time in that area. I’m really interested in reading about the physical goals, swimming and math.

Thank you all! I have already learned a lot through reading past forum posts.

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Read through my blog (it’s short, I haven’t put a lot on there :wink: )

At 5 weeks I’m quite sure we were doing Starfall letters pretty much everyday. Perhaps my largest mistake was waiting to do little reader. I could have begun far sooner. Same goes for YBCR. No one told me the rule was if your baby can track visually (which it sounds like yours can), then they can begin.

Sure, you “have time”… and you do have time. There’s no hurry on anything, but what you do now has an influence on what happens at age 9, 10, 11, 12 months etc. It’s really a question of what you’d like to do, what you’re willing to do, and what you are hoping for and finding the balance between the factors. Good luck!

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Welcome, We are in CA too. I have an almost 3year old and a 7 week old. I am excited to do this with my second child as I lhave learned so much since my first was a baby. We’ve also taught English and Spanish but gave up for now on Mandarin. One day we may pick it up again.

Anyway, We’ll look forward to hearing about your journey!