Having a child may some day make me a better teacher. We'll see. In any event, it has opened my eyes in new ways to how people (in this case, one rambunctious fifteen-month-old) learn to do new things. I hadn't really realized that Nicholas would be receptive to mnemonic devices, that is, little ways of making it easier to remember a task (a good example from grade school, the order of the planets via the mnemonic, "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas," though that dates me as pre-Pluto's demotion).
We've been working with Nicholas for a few weeks on using utensils, mostly by letting him try to feed himself his yogurt or cottage cheese. The forks that he uses just aren't sharp enough to get food on them, and usually the solid food we give him is slippery, either vegetables or pasta/meat with sauce of some kind on it. So we've been using spoons and dairy, because even if you do it wrong, you can usually get some to stick to the spoon just by swishing it around.
So he's been doing that, but with only limited success. Today at snack time, I'd given him some cottage cheese, and for some reason (it wasn't conscious), I decided to try to help him by holding my hand over his to show him how to do it. Fine. While I was doing it though, I very carefully said, "Down, and Scoop, and Eat!" When spoken theatrically, this line produced a laugh from Nicholas, so I did it again on the next bite. And then I let go of the spoon and just said it. And with a way to focus, he managed to successfully scoop himself his snack for quite a while!
At some point, of course, the bowl got too low for his skill set, so I had to help him finish. But now I'm going to have to think of more mnemonic devices as we work on more skills with him. Good to know.
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