What is the practice?
An infant’s interest in an adult and object or toy at the same time does (at least) two important things. First, it provides the infant the opportunity to share his or her interests with others. Second, it provides an adult the opportunity to describe and talk about what the child is doing. One of the benefits of shared attention activities is that a child learns to interact with and communicate with others using gestures and other social behaviors.
What does the practice look like?
Imagine an infant sitting on a parent’s lap playing with a favorite rattle or squeeze toy. The child shakes the toy and produces a fun sound. She looks up at her parent to see what the person “thinks about all of this.” The parent responds by saying, “You made that noise, didn’t you? Shake the rattle again!” The child gets so excited that the rattle drops to the floor. The parent picks it up, shakes it, and asks, “Do you want to do it again?” and hands the rattle to the child. The back-and-forth game is played many, many times.
How do you do the practice?
Joint attention is a back-and-forth type of play that involves an infant’s ability to follow what another person is doing and an infant’s ability to influence another person’s attention. The best joint-attention activities are ones that include both types of infant actions.
How do you know the practice worked?
- Does your child look at you while playing together?
- Does your child share objects or toys with you?
- Does your child vocalize to get you to give her a toy or an object?
- A child’s interest in people, objects, and events is extremely important for joint-attention activities to be successful. Start by identifying things that especially interest your child.
- Any object that she enjoys playing with is used to involve her in a joint-attention activity where you label and describe different parts of the activity (for example, pointing to a ball and saying, “Look! See the ball? Let’s play roll the ball.”).
- Your child will first become involved in joint- attention activities by you starting an activity (placing her in a sitting position, for example, and rolling a ball to your child and saying, “Catch”). This is followed by statements to get your child involved in the activity (such as saying, “Roll the ball back to me,” and by gesturing with your hands).
- The more joint-attention games you play with your young child, the more she will start to initiate play and attempt to include you in the play activity. Any attempt on the part of your child is an opportunity to describe and label the actions of the play.
Take a look at more ways to play together
Shape Up!
Ten-month-old Alec and his mother are sitting on the floor facing each other playing with a shape box. Mom opens the box and Alec reaches in and removes one of the shapes. Mom asks her son, “Can you get another one?” Alec looks at his mother while she asks the question and removes another shape. Mom points to one of the holes in the shape box and says, “Alec, put the shape in the hole.” Alec struggles to insert the shape, but after a short time he is successful. He looks up at his mother who says, “You did it! Alec put the shape in the hole.”
Sandbox Back ‘n’ Forth
Zara, who is 13 months old, her older brother, Todd, and their mother are at the park playing in a sandbox. Five or six toys are scattered about. Todd picks up a toy shovel and starts digging in the sand. He says to Zara, “Look at what I’m doing! Can you dig like me?” Mom hands a shovel to Zara who pokes at the sand with the shovel. Mom describes what Zara is doing (“Zara is digging a hole with the shovel. Can Mommy have a turn?”). Zara looks up at her mother who has her hand held palm up requesting that Zara give her the shovel. Mom shows her daughter another way to use the shovel (filling a bucket while describing what she is doing (“Mommy is putting the sand in the bucket. Now it’s Zara’s turn to fill the bucket.”) Mom holds the shovel out to Zara who reaches and takes the shovel, then tries to put sand in the bucket.
Focus of Attention
It really doesn’t matter much that 6-month-old Daniel has difficulties in engaging in joint attention with objects and other persons. Daniel’s mother has figured out some interesting ways to help her son play with toys and other objects while she encourages and supports Daniel’s interactions with her and the toys. Mom has learned to sit across from Daniel with toys placed between them. Mom places the toys between Daniel’s legs so that he can easily reach and play with the toys. Mom describes in simple sentences what Daniel is doing while pointing to whatever has caught her son’s attention. Mom occasionally asks a question or uses a gesture to request an object. This encourages Daniel to look up at Mom who then describes what he is doing with the toy.
