All toddlers love to tell you about events that have happened to them, like a zoo outing or a trip to a museum. But they’re not always the best conversationalists as their vocabulary and speech isn’t fully developed. Sometimes, their details are all over the place or not quite right or sometimes, they focus on the small details that seem insignificant to the story. And sometimes conversations just peter out and they walk away mid-story!
But the way parents react to these memories can actually have an effect on everything from memory to mood, even years later.
Elaine Reese, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, and author of Tell Me a Story: Sharing Stories to Enrich Your Child’s World taught a group of mothers of toddlers how to do what she calls “elaborative reminiscing.” They engaged their kids in deeper conversations about the past using techniques like validating their memories, asking open-ended questions and slipping in bits of additional information.
“Some of these mothers naturally do this, asking open-ended questions like, ‘Who did we see at the museum? Who did we go to the museum with?’” she says, adding that her work was done with mothers, but fathers, grandparents and other caregivers can use the same techniques.
After conducting the study, Dr. Reese found that reminiscing this way certainly did have an effect, helping improve both memory and language in the toddlers.
“Compared to those in the control group, the children in the elaborative reminiscing group were remembered more,” she says. “They were telling better stories.”
In fact, the research suggested that talking to toddlers about their memories may make them less depressed as teens
