Robin (00:33)
Today, our guest is Dr. Kimberly Nesbitt. Kim is an associate professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of New Hampshire. She received her PhD in Lifespan Developmental Psychology from North Carolina State University and was an Institute of Education Sciences postdoctoral fellow at Vanderbilt University. Her research is centered on cognitive development in early childhood with a focus on identifying practices that enable young children from different backgrounds to learn and succeed in preschool through third grade settings. Kim’s work has been published in leading psychological and educational journals. In addition to her research, she’s the program coordinator for UNH’s undergraduate early childhood education teacher certification program. She also works with schools and community groups all over New Hampshire and is committed to improving early childhood education throughout our state and our country. Kim, thank you so much for being with us today.

Dr. Kimberly Nesbitt (01:32)
Robin, the pleasure is all mine.

Robin (01:33)
So to get us started, could you explain to us what cognitive development in early childhood is?

Dr. Kimberly (01:40)
Yeah, cognitive development in early childhood is really all about how young children learn, explore, and figure things out. It evolves their abilities to understand the world around them, solve problems, develop memory and language skills. This process includes learning to recognize shapes and colors, understanding numbers, and starting to use words and sentences to communicate. It’s like the brain is building a toolkit for learning and interacting with the world. Cognition comes from our brains. So when I think of cognition, think of your mind. Brain is like a powerful engine that drives cognitive development, helps children learn to remember and to grow. And it grows every day. What I find really cool about cognitive development in early childhood is that when children are young, their brains are growing really fast. This growth helps them learn new things every day, like how to talk, how to walk, and how to play. It’s important to provide children with lots of opportunities to use their brains. The more they use the brains, the stronger their cognitive skillset gets. Think of the brain as a muscle that we just need to exercise like every other muscle. What is great here is that children are just starting to learn about the world. So there are a lot of new things for them to learn every second of their lives. So a lot of things to exercise. This can come from simply giving them things to touch, see, hear, smell, and taste, and the everyday things that make up our amazing lives.

Robin (03:03)
That’s amazing. It sounds to me like based on the way you just described it, there might be different areas of growth that come into play with cognitive development. Can you break those down for us a little more distinctly?

Dr. Kimberly (03:16)
Absolutely. So there are quite a few important things that happen in our earliest years that are impacted by our brain development and impact how we think and perceive the world. A big one is just our memory. This involves children’s ability to remember and know things. It’s their mental library of how and where they store information. This includes their memory for personal experiences and events, which we call episodic memory, as well as memory for general knowledge about how the world works, which we call semantic memory. In early childhood, a big episodic or autobiographical memory milestone includes establishing our first memories, which is something we can still recall to this very day. I can remember my first you know, from dating back to when I was a little kid, and I bet you can too. So you can really think about how important this is for us forming our memories of events and experiences. On the semantic memory side of things, children are well equipped little scientists to constantly learn new things about our world and are learning new ways to understand and to navigate this world. So memory though, there are kind of a couple of specific types of information that we learned that are really important and I would want to highlight to families today. So one big memory component is language. We are learning language. This includes learning to understand and use it too. So we understand what you’re saying and we, like I am right now, am using it. Children can begin to form sentences, learn new words, and understand more complex instructions from birth to age five. So across these early years, we’re learning all kinds of cool things. The growth in language skills over these early years is truly amazing to watch as they develop their own way of communicating with the world. The journey is unique for every child though. And it is fascinating to see children transition from babbling and making their first sounds to their first words, to building bigger vocabularies in their first years of life. When they enter toddlerhood, we get to see them learn to build sentences and to better express their thoughts, these thoughts that they have in their head. They can get them out to you and they’re learning to do that and they do this to help them interact with others. And it’s really just magical to see.

Robin (05:25)
Yeah, my favorite part of early childhood with my kids was when they began to engage with others and speak in sentences. It was like their personalities really started to emerge. You could really see who they the things they were saying and the way they were saying them. I’m curious, from birth to six months, is that too early for parents and caregivers to start thinking about this kind of language development that you’re talking about? Are there things that families can do to help language skills in babies that young?

Dr. Kimberly (05:54)
Absolutely. There’s so much we could be doing from the very first days of life that support language development. So, learning to communicate with others requires us not to both speak and listen. So communication and language development both is about what we receive and what we express. So from birth, children are learning how to communicate with others. When you respond to their cries, they learn that if they make a sound, somebody responds to them. That’s communication. They’re also learning how to talk every time you talk to them. Learning to understand what others are saying emerges well before we ourselves start to speak. You probably saw this with your own children. They responded to what we are saying. They will smile when you say a word they know. They will look for and follow your gaze when you refer to things in their environment. From day one, children are looking for patterns in the world. The more you talk, the more you give to develop this understanding of what you’re saying in your language and to understand the world. This even extends beyond language. We also see that children are developing a grasp of the basic concepts like numbers, shapes, colors, and size. So this is highly related to the language development. So language and understanding and developing words and understanding words helps us develop these bigger concepts. Children learn to also do great things like categorize objects and understand simple math concepts because they now have the language to do that. We actually call this ability of being able to understand bigger concepts about how our world works, conceptual development. We will see the skill in action when our children begin to know their numbers and count. We will also see how skills they are making sense to the world when they categorize things into groups. Children start to sort objects by how they look, often by color and shape. We also start to see them develop sophisticated understanding of how things are used. We can color on paper. So they might learn things like we can color on paper and sidewalks with chalk, but we can’t color on our walls and the couch. That’s conceptual development. They’re understanding that under certain conditions, I can color and on other conditions, I cannot. And so these are very complicated and very important skills that they’re learning because they now are developing the language to understand you and respond to you, like shaking your head no when they do something wrong, even without saying the words is communication. That is part of this memory development and this language development.

Robin (08:13)
Okay, got it. So you’re saying conceptual development is when young children are beginning to understand the foundations of early math concepts too, like kind of what we call early childhood web pages, number sense. And through categorizing things and understanding like quote unquote rules about how things are used and basic numbers and counting knowledge during this time is, do I have that right?

Dr. Kimberly (08:38)
That is absolutely correct. So one of these big areas of conceptual development we learn when we’re young is math, it’s number. And you’re exactly right, that concept of number sense, right? Math isn’t just about being able to echo a set of numbers back without understanding them. There’s meaning behind those numbers. There’s a sense to those numbers. So math and number sense is all about understanding patterns and rules. And that’s what all conceptual understanding and development is about. That’s what memory is about, is about finding patterns. So through these patterns and understanding the rules, basically understanding, how do numbers work? So for example, the idea that two follows one when we count or that 10 cookies is a lot more than five cookies, that’s number sense, right? I’m learning these patterns that two follows one when I’m counting or that I really want my sister’s pile of 10 cookies and not my pile of five cookies. So being able to group or to create for example, I will say I’m a big Taylor Swift fan. And so thinking about friendship bracelets, you develop your pattern. I’m going to do a red bead, then a blue bead, and then a red bead. And knowing what comes next is my blue bead. That’s patterning. And so all of these things together help number sensibility. So we’re teaching them to do those things. helpful to be able to understand the regularity of numbers, shapes, and other elements in math. And that’s a big component of conceptual development.

Robin (10:05)
That’s great. Thank you for breaking that down for us. What do early math skills look like for babies, toddlers, and then preschool, kindergarten age children? I’m assuming that there’s some very distinct differences with these age groups.

Dr. Kimberly (10:21)
Very much so. So let’s look at just learning to count. This is a key math concept and a big milestone for young children. You would actually be surprised how complex learning to count is. We take it for granted every day because it’s just something we’ve learned to do. But there are little steps that we all took to learn something that is now second nature to us. As early as six months, we as humans start to recognize when one group has more than another. So the cookie example. I will be as early as six months be able to see that one group has more than another. I can perceive that distinction. At one year, we might start to recognize some written numbers. So we actually see that the number one can be represented with this little shape that we can draw on paper or that I can see in my environment. And we’ll actually start to say numbers ourselves. But you’ve got young children, you see they often say them out of order. So they start to grasp that there are numbers and there’s distinct words for numbers. We just might not have that order exactly down pat when we’re one years old. Then though, at two, we might actually start to pick up the pattern of row counting. So here’s that pattern piece again. And we might actually start to recognize our numbers up to 10. So now that we started picking up on the pattern of numbers, we get more reliable to counting up to 10. And then as we move into age 3, we will start to count things. We learn cool things that with each object we count, it is connected to a single number. I can only count one object once and give it the number one. I have to count another number and give it the number two in my counting sequence. And we also learned something where we learned that the last number we say in a set, so if I’m counting one, two, three objects, that last number is the number of objects that I just counted. So do you remember the count from Sesame Street? Yes, I do. Yeah, that is why he always repeated the last number when he was counting, because it’s this idea that we’re learning the skill that when I count a sequence, the last number represents or gives me the sense of the total number of objects that I have. As we move through preschool and into kindergarten, we start to increase how much we can count to about 20 items at age four and about 100 items at age five. So this is very similar to vocabulary. What we see is that the skills are kind of a little bit slower to come on board, but when they do, we see an explosion in the number of the numbers we can count as well as an explosion in the amount of words we can speak and understand. After that, then we also start to learn the ability to write our numbers. The cool thing about kids is that they’re searching for patterns in the world, right? This is how we are operating as kids. We just wanna make sense of it. So we are very lucky as caregivers that we just need to focus on exposing them to numbers and counting. You can read books, play with toys and sing songs that have numbers in them. Draw their attention to quantity. Say things like, you have more crackers than I do. Let’s count. And you can do this all just through the very everyday interactions we have with kids. The amazing ability to seek patterns is also seen as children are learning other things in life. So I spoke a little bit to this about language, but this also pertains to how we think and interact with other people. So this is another cognitive skill we call social cognition. So you are also learning the rules and thinking about how to recognize emotions in others, develop empathy and understand social world. So patterning and identifying the patterns in the world come from learning language, comes to our conceptual development, as well as the social cognition.

Robin (13:59)
This is fascinating. So is social cognition also called social emotional development? Are those the same?

Dr. Kimberly (14:06)
That’s a great question. Social cognition is highly related to social and emotional development. They are deeply interconnected, but slightly different. They can contribute to each other, but one is really about the brain and how we think about things. That’s the social cognition piece. It’s about the cognitive elements. And then we talk more about social and emotional development as kind of being the emotional reactions and the interconnections in the actual acting on our thinking. So the element of being able to recognize emotions and understand social rules for those social and emotional or broader set of skills, like those things of being able to manage our emotions and to engage in effective social interactions. It actually goes vice versa too. So our social and emotional skills can actually impact our cognition and our social relationships actually support our cognitive development. So for example, it is much harder for us to learn new things if we’re sleep deprived or tired or emotionally aroused, right? So our emotions impact our cognition. And similarly, as all those examples I’ve given you previously of how important families are in supporting their child’s development by giving them lots of really cool everyday interactions to decipher these patterns. Our cognitive development is dependent a lot on having social interactions with other people. So these are really interrelated and important things. Another great example of the deep connection between cognition and social and emotional development is the connection between our ability to regulate our emotions and our ability to regulate our thoughts or cognition. So there’s regulation happening both in the social and emotional side of things, as well as in the cognitive side of things. And so on the cognitive side of things, we tend to talk about this as things like, can you pay attention? Can you focus? Can you control your thoughts? Whereas on the emotional side, we tend to talk about things like being able to calm down if we are upset or be able to maybe say things in a different way to make our friends feel better. So this skill though is another really key element of cognitive development. The skills of being able to pay attention, to focus, and to control our thoughts. And what’s really cool about these skills, and these are skills that I’ve really got into studying since I was in grad school, are important because they are foundational to these other things that I’ve already talked about. So being able to develop your memory, to be able to learn language, to be able to develop a number of sense, and to develop the social cognition, is all dependent on our ability to pay attention, to focus on key information, and to control our thoughts. So Robin, you may see this ability growing a lot in your own children. You might have seen that they can pay attention to games for longer periods of time, or one that I love is when they start to be able to play by themselves for longer and longer periods of time. They learn to also do things like pausing and think before they act. They learn to think ahead and decide what they need to do. They learn to switch gears and find new solutions when their plans don’t work out. You might’ve also heard of all these skills go by the term executive functions. These are essentially the same concepts, right? It’s the ability to control your thoughts and that’s your executive or your kind of like higher level thinking. So these executive function skills are the skills that help us manage our thoughts. What’s great in how you’ll see these things develop over time is that there’s gonna be a huge growth in these skills of these executive functions around three to four years of age. And so this is also coinciding with a lot of the coming on of our ability to develop more complex relationships and understand how the world works more complexly. So again, as these things grow, the other cognitive skills also grow. That’s probably also why you are not really remembering your first memories from your life, until you’re about three to four years of age, right? So they kind of, these things coincide together in the preschool years. And it really makes it one of my favorite years to study. So these executive function skills, in addition to supporting things like our memory and supporting things like our number, sense, and language development, also support very cool things like our ability to solve problems. So we need these, if want and as humans are constantly solving problems in our world. It’s a key skill that any employer will say they want and an employee is to be able to solve problems. And so these executive function skills allow us to start engaging what we call in goal directed behavior in order to solve problems, right? We have a goal and a problem is that we need to solve is how do we get that goal? I want that cookie. How do I get that cookie? I want my dog to fetch the bone. How do I get him to fetch the bone I want? These are all problems that kids are solving in the world. So they start to solve problems and this also contributes to being able to understand things like cause and effect. Like if I throw my rattle on the floor, mom and dad will pick it up for me, right? So this is cause and effect. I do this thing and they do it. And so they start to do things like solve problems, understand these concepts of cause and effects we start to see in them the ability to use tools to achieve goals. So all these kind of really cool problem solving things are happening. So they might, in order to reach something that they hadn’t been able to reach before, they might find a tool or they might pull a string in order to get my, you know, I have a string attached to a like a little pool cart. I realized that, I can pull the string to get the cart to me, even though I can’t reach the cart, because it’s out of my reach. So they can start to do that thing. So they start to use tools. So these executive function tools on top of being able to help us to solve problems. One reason for that is because we can be more creative and solutions for solving these problems. So these executive function skills also support children’s ability to think creatively and to engage in imagination. So I mentioned that key age of three to four. Well, we start to see pretend play also emerging at this time. And so that, you know, a reason for it, right? If I can control my thoughts and think and create goals and put ideas into my head that I project on my world, that allows me to engage in this imaginative play. So we see these amazing skills in action when our children start to engage in pretend play and come up with really creative solutions to solve problems.

Robin (20:27)
This is fascinating. So you talked a lot about toddlerhood and like them learning
to plan and use tools and things like that. Does this kind of skill development, I’m assuming based on what you’ve said so far, like this skill development must start developing cognitively earlier than toddlerhood. Is that correct?

Dr. Kimberly (20:49)
Yes, absolutely. From the very first days of our lives, we are actually learning to solve problems and think creatively. So it might get more complex when we hit that three and four-year-old age when our executive function and attention skills start to improve dramatically, but it’s there from the very beginning. And so it just looks a little bit different. When we are young, we might not be too complex in these strategies or too playful in our actions, but you might see an infant figure out how to reach a toy that is slightly out of their reach. So they might learn to roll over to be able to get over to that spot. I can’t walk to it, I can’t crawl to it yet, but I might be able to roll over to reach it. That’s a very creative solution to a problem. They might not be able to reach a toy or something that’s in their realm or within their immediate reach, but they might cry for you to come and help them get it. Right, that is a creative, planful solution. So in infants, it’s happening very early. It’s just not as complex. It might be a simple, I do this thing and I expect one solution. So I might be on a one-step problem, right, as opposed to taking multiple steps to get my goals. Yep. It does also though, Robin, extends into toddlerhood.

Dr. Kimberly (22:02)
So I do want to also highlight that in toddlerhood, we start to engage in trial and error to figure out how things will work and get the things we want. So that’s the other piece I want to really highlight as a precursor is that you’re going to see them try something over and over again. And you’re like, why do you keep dropping your spoon on the ground? I keep picking it up and giving it back to you. And you keep dropping it. And so that’s not bad behavior. They are actually, again, looking for the pattern. If I do X, do I get the solution I want? And so you’ll see them repeat behaviors a lot because they’re trying to do this trial and error to learn the pattern to understand how the world works.

Robin (22:41)
So is it good for us as parents to keep picking up that spoon? Are we showing them like, yes, you’re thinking about this correctly?

Dr. Kimberly (22:49)
Yes, absolutely. We want to be responsive to their cues. They’re trying to look to us as social cognition, right? We learn from them, from other people. So they’re constantly, and in particular, if they look at you or they start to laugh, it is because they’re trying to say, yeah, if I drop this thing, they’re going to do what I want. And then you’re going to start seeing them expanding it to new situations, right? Like, it worked this time. Let me try it in this other context and see if they respond the same. Yeah. They’re looking for us to give them the answer.

Robin (23:18)
Wow, that makes so much sense now. So how does this, the early childhood cognitive development, how does that, what’s happening birth through five influence later stages of learning and personal growth?

Dr. Kimberly (23:31)
Great question. I really like this one because you’re like, let’s take the example of the memory thing. I don’t remember anything before the age of four. So how important could that be? Well, that can actually be, couldn’t be further from the truth. Early childhood cognitive development plays a huge role and shapes how we learn and grow for our entire life. So I think you can, it’s important to think of the child’s brain like a house. These early years are when the foundation of our house is built. Activities like talking, reading, and playing with our children help create a strong foundation by building these connections in the brain. So we are actually building biological connections in the brain in these early years. And these are connections that are growing at a rate unprecedented at any point in our lives. So we are sponges, are literally little sponges. Well, not literally, figuratively little sponges. gaining information from our world. And so there is no better time to support cognitive development than when it’s coming online and when these connections in our brains are being connected. So these connections are crucial for all future learning and thinking. So let me give you an example. Early interactions like talking and singing to your baby helps them learn language. This early language development is important because it makes it easier for them to learn and read and write when they’re in school. So encouraging a child’s curiosity by exploring new things together, helping them helps also develop a love for learning. So you’re supporting this curiosity. And so this curiosity then drives them to explore and learn more as they grow. So it becomes this snowball effect. So one last analogy, promise. So in short, the early years are like planting seeds in a garden. And with the right care and nurturing, these seeds grow into strong, healthy plants. Just similarly, early cognitive development helps children grow into confident, capable learners and individuals.

Robin (25:26)
Totally makes sense. I love that analogy. You know, as parents, we’re inundated with information on all kinds of things when it comes to our children’s development. One thing that I hear parents talking a lot about these days is screen time. And the information we get comes from all kinds of sources. Some are researched based, some are not. Can you talk a little bit about what the potential benefits and risks of screen time are for children this young and how we could find a healthy balance in the early years.

Dr. Kimberly (25:58)
So yes, this is another fantastic question. And I do want to make a big provision before I respond. I want to empower families to make choices that best help their families. Each family is different. And while I can give some general guidance, no one knows their family better than their own family. So with that said, research does suggest it is best to avoid screen time for infants, except for maybe video chatting with family and friends, because we know babies learn best through direct interactions with caregivers and their environment. Trust me, I have a little nephew who’s 15 months old and there is nothing cuter to me than right now FaceTiming with him in Arkansas and seeing him smile and wave at the video chat when he knows I’m there. So that’s really cool to me that infants actually perceive a person on the other side of the screen. That’s an amazing skill. So video chatting, great option, but we wanna make sure we are focused on social interactions and not passive screen time. Got it. So in addition, when children get a little bit older, there are some guidelines when they start to move into toddlerhood. So it does transition. So if you decide, and again, if you as a family decides to introduce screen time, try to watch it with your child to help them understand what they’re seeing and make it a shared experience. They are gonna look to you for how to interpret that. So being there while they’re experiencing it, when they’re this young is really important. So the goal here is to make screen time a positive learning experience while ensuring that it doesn’t interfere with things like sleep, playing inside and outside, reading and other family routines. So it can be really helpful to be planful with screen time if you are going to introduce it and make it a thoughtful part of your larger routine. Because we know that routines for screen time are just as important as routines we have in any other part of our lives. Kids are striving and thrive when we have consistency and know what to expect. They want to feel safe and secure. And this is true also so the same need for routine and expectations is true with screen time. Just make it a planful part of your day if you choose to introduce it.

Robin (28:06)
That’s great. Thank you. I love that you emphasize that families know what works best for their children. I think it’s sometimes hard for parents and caregivers to remember that when we’re in the weeds of everyday life. I know that you do a lot of work with schools and communities and families in New Hampshire. What do families ask you about cognitive development most often?

Dr. Kimberly (28:27)
It never ceases to amaze me how much families do every day for their children.
This includes wanting to know that they are setting their child up for lifelong success. And there’s lots of questions, right, about am I doing things right? That is gonna haunt us until our very last day because we want what’s best for our children. And so families will often compare their child’s development to the typical milestones and may actually start to worry that their child isn’t meeting these milestones on time. And this can, so I will hear from families, this is such things as including if their child isn’t talking as much as they are their children at their age, or if they have trouble being understood by others or even understanding the directions of other, in their environments. They may be concerned that their child is having difficulty paying attention or staying focused on task. This one becomes especially a concern that I hear from families when the school year is approached. They may be concerned that their child is having difficulties with interacting with peers, understanding these social cues or playing cooperatively. I cannot reinforce enough that each of these areas of cognitive development develops at its own pace and it can vary from child to child. So while these milestones we tend to hold up can be helpful, they’re not gonna be the same for every child. So if you’re not hitting that milestone and that exact day hits, that’s not necessarily something to be concerned about. But if you are concerned and you know your, again, families know their families the best. If you do have an intuition that something might be off, then, utilize these resources that are freely available and talk to other people. So I know your website has some wonderful resources for families. So there are really good resources available to know these milestones about when children should start these milestones of children’s learning, speaking, acting and movements. One that I always refer people to is the CDC’s developmental milestone resources and they have a free tracker. And these are wonderful and free and can also be found on the NHFV’s website by going to nhfv.org and then go to navigating to their website’s early childhood section. So use these tools, they can give you insights on what to expect. But most importantly, families need to know that and I will tell any family that if they have concerns about their child development to trust their instincts. There are helps and services and supports available to them. So you can do this by even just starting to talk to your child’s pediatrician about the things that you’re seeing. There are other resources outside of your pediatrician though that I do want families to be aware of. If a child is under age three, there are local family centered early supports and services groups all across their state, and you do not need a doctor’s referral to actually start to tap into those resources. These are these family centered early supports and services groups are a free resource to you. And I know NHFV has lots of information about them on their website, but this is a place you can go to get a developmental screening and they can help you understand is this within the expected rate of development? It might be a little bit slower than their brother was or their sister was, but still within a normal expected range. Or if this is something that you might want to follow up with additional testing and screening and get services for. So that’s if your child is under the age of three, these family centered early supports and services groups are helpful. If your child is older to three, then I would encourage people to contact their local school district about developmental screening. And as I already said, New Hampshire Family Voices is the central access point for developmental screening in New Hampshire and families can reach out to them, either through their website. I’m assuming if you’re listening to this podcast, you probably access their website, but you can also just call them at 603-271-4525. That’s 603-271-4525 to find out the most convenient location in your area to get a screening for your child.

Robin (32:27)
That’s great, thanks for that. And we’ll put that information in our show notes as well. That’s very helpful. And like I said, we have so much information coming at us as parents and caregivers, helping us sift through this stuff is really huge. Thanks, Kim. That was so helpful. Like I said, we have so much information coming at us as parents and caregivers. Helping us sift through this is really a big help. I wonder if you are not an expert in cognitive development and early childhood, what else do you think you might want to know about this topic as a parent or a caregiver?

Dr. Kimberly (33:01)
Yeah, I think the most important thing I would have wanted to know or would want to know is that for anyone who ever has the privilege of interacting with young children, I want them to know how important the everyday moments of our lives are for supporting their child’s cognitive development. Children, like I said before, are little sponges just trying to make sense of the world around them. And we just need to give them that world. This doesn’t mean having to buy the fanciest toys or electronics. Look for items that kids are interested in, items that encourage exploration and learning through play. Most importantly, I’d want them to know that it isn’t as much about the things that I give my child, but how I interact with my child with those things. So I touched about this a little bit before when we talking about screen time, but I just would want to reiterate that other humans are really the best toys and tools to learn about the world. So simply I would say talk and play together, engage in conversations with children where you ask questions and listen to their responses. Books are great conversation starters. As you read, don’t hesitate to stop and ask questions about the story. Play with your children and give them opportunities to take the lead. Offer them choices and encourage them to decide what we should do next. Most importantly, please know that every child develops again at their own pace. So it’s important to be patient and supportive of them. Celebrate your child’s effort and progress, no matter how small. Your reinforcements boost their confidence and encourages them to love, to learn, and to want to grow.

Robin (34:35)
I love that you mentioned this because it is that time of year when parents and caregivers get marketed to about all kinds of toys and equipment we need to support our child’s growth and development. So knowing that we already have what it takes as parents and caregivers is a big relief. more about that intentional time and interaction with your kiddos, like you said. One tool that’s designed with this same philosophy in mind as the Vroom app. It’s a free app and it’s developed by a cross-disciplinary team of early childhood experts to show families activities or interactions they can have while they’re in the car or at the store during a diaper change. Have you heard about Vroom? Do you have any thoughts on that as a tool?

Dr. Kimberly (35:19)
I have heard about Vroom. It’s a great tool and it’s a great one to have in our toolbox and literally in our pockets as an app on our phone. I love that it’s free and can provide us lots of wonderful ideas of ways we can use these everyday moments to support children’s learning, growth and development. You are correct. There is so much information out there and it can be difficult to find the thing that really helps your family flourish in these everyday moments. Vroom. is a great one, but I also wanna acknowledge some other great websites that I like to tell families about. One is PBS Kids for Parents. The National Institutes for Health, surprisingly, our federal government has a website called Kids Environment, Kids Health that I find really helpful. They have lots of great songs. I would never have thought about going to the National Institutes for Health to learn great songs that I could sing to my kid. It’s a wonderful resource. And another one I would want to mention is the LEGO Foundation has this Learning Through Play resource. It’s a free website as well. And they’ve got lots of great activities that are low cost, free things that you can do in your home to help encourage playful interactions with you and your children. Now that last one for transparency, I do want to mention that I am fortunate to have funding from the LEGO Foundation to support my active playful learning work, which is trying to take what I’m telling you to do with our youngest children and incorporate that into our kindergarten through grade four classrooms as well.

Robin (36:41)
That’s interesting. Okay, so I’m gonna put those resources in our show notes as well. We’ll publish those links. But speaking of playful learning, can you tell us a little bit more about your playful learning work and how that relates to your cognitive development work?

Dr. Kimberly  (36:56)
Yeah. So you have now hit my most favorite topic, which is to talk about play. And play is really, I think, something that we kind of underestimate its importance. So it is actually the concept that is the outcome and the vehicle that I’ve been really focusing a lot of my efforts on. Because I want to know things like how play supports children’s cognitive development. And I also want to know how we can make learning more playful. So I’m fortunate to work with amazing folks in New Hampshire to support the play-based learning legislation in our kindergartens. So there’s actually a mandate in our state that kindergarten be play based in nature. So I have been so fortunate to work with kindergarten teachers all over our state, to work with members in our Department of Education to think about how to make learning more playful. Similarly, I have been now working across our country with another group. This is that Lego Foundation work to bring playful learning to these elementary grades. So all of this work is based on a very simple premise. The one that I just kind of was talking to you about all throughout this conversation so far. And this is the basic simple premise is that play is how children learn best. They learn best when and because play is active. doing something. I’m not just passively watching that screen. I’m engaging with you as we’re watching, engaging in screen is social. So there is that part that it is all about us as the best tool that a kid has to navigate the world. And it’s also meaningful. So as such, play makes learning joyful and engaging. And when we enjoy what we’re doing, well, we’re more likely to stay with it and focus and learn. So play also for kids provides a safe space for children to take risks, to navigate social relationships and develop resiliency and agency. Children play to learn about how the world works around them. So I keep on hitting on that term that cognitive development is all about understanding how the world works and play is the best vehicle for them to understand how this world works. So children and really adults alike learn better when our experiences are engaging, social, meaningful, and joyful. Play includes any activity that we find to be engaging and enjoyable. So that’s a hard, it tends to be a hard thing to define play, but if you’re thinking about, am I playing? Well, ask yourself, I engaged in this task and is it enjoyable? And if you can say those things, then you’re really engaging in play with your kids. This can involve games, this could be supports, and this can be creative activities where we use our imaginations to construct a new world around us. As I mentioned earlier, it’s not about what we give our kids, but how we interact with them. If we want to help children make sense of the world, then we really need to let them have some control over it, and play allows them to provide that control. We need to take their lead. We need to play and enjoy, just like they are the wonder of life.

Robin (39:54)
That is amazing. Thank you. It’s really been an absolute pleasure to talk with you today. We’re so grateful for your time and for this work that you’re doing. It’s really meaningful to me as a parent of older kids and looking back at how important the focus on play really is and the work that you do really to improve early childhood learning for all children. Just can’t thank you enough.

Dr. Kimberly (40:16)
Well, it’s a pleasure to be able to study something and to work people that are every day like New Hampshire Family Voices that are taking these things and putting them in action so that families can live the life that they all are should be empowered to live. So thank you for having me and thank you to the families for listening and doing what they do every day to help their children learn and play. So. It’s been a true pleasure of mine.