KiddiesGames.com is proud to present its fun new online computer games for infants, that just happen to feature happy breastfeeding babies and Mothers.
Let's celebrate breastfeeding! Let's expose ourselves to lovely images of breastfeeding. When we think of babies, instead of thinking of the standard bottles and pacifiers and diaper pins, let's think of babies in their most natural situation - at the breast. Let our children learn and see that breastfeeding is a normal, natural, uneventful part of life.
KiddiesGames.com is delighted to present its latest free online computer games for infants, that teach age-appropriate concepts to small children, set to a decor of happy, beautiful breastfeeding babies and Mothers.
As fans of KiddiesGames have come to expect, these latest games also feature bright multicultural children and appealing children's voices. These latest games adhere to the special quality rules of all KiddiesGames, with full-screen colorful graphics, very simple operations and responsive reactions that lend themselves to open-ended exploration, even when played by babies who just bang the keyboard. The feedback provided by the games is always positive, encouraging and subtly informative, even when the infant doesn't click on the "correct" answer. Instead of copying the standard game design used in industry, KiddiesGames developed these design guidelines specifically for infant games, to make our games not only the most fun to play from the point of view of infants and the caregivers whose laps they are sitting in, but also the most developmentally appropriate for that young age.
These latest breastfeeding games teach and practise the concept of left and right, and the names of colors. Older preschool children who mostly already know the names of colors will enjoy dressing the baby on the screen in different colors.
So why do these new KiddiesGames games have a backdrop of breastfeeding?
The idea came from a breastfeeding Mother who was surprised at the number of babies around her who were not being breastfed. This is in spite of the mountain of research results and dissemination of information about the immensely superior health benefits of breastfeeding to the child and Mother. It is also in spite of the cost and convenience benefits of breastfeeding. In the United States, 65% of babies are being breastfed at birth, and by 6 months only 30% are still being breastfed. In Great Britain, 68% of babies are breastfed at birth and 21% are still breastfed at 6 months. While these statistics are a great improvement compared to 30 years ago, it shows that there are still a lot of new babies and Mothers who are not reaping the wonderful benefits of breastfeeding.
Why are breastfeeding statistics still so far from a natural 100%?
One of the reasons is that people still don't quite feel that this beautiful, natural and life-giving activity is quite appropriate! A recent 2002 court case in Montreal Canada involved a woman who had been ordered to stop breastfeeding in a municipal court. In 2003, the Australian Member of Parliament Kirstie Marshall was ordered to leave parliament because she was breastfeeding her little baby. The uproar caused by this shows that there are still many people in our societies that find that breastfeeding is not an activity to be encouraged. And looking at those breastfeeding statistics, one has to conclude that unfortunately, many Mothers and families still share this view.
So KiddiesGames has decided to do it's tiny share in promoting breastfeeding as being a normal part of our lives. In addition, it's refreshing and fun to find that the backdrop of the educational material that you are dutifully sharing with your young child is not showing the usual cartoon animals, and is instead showing contented breastfeeding babies and Mothers.
These new free Breastfeeding games are available in English, Spanish and French at the following links :
Dialogue launches language, the mind, but once it is launched we develop a new power, "inner speech," and it is this that is indispensable for our further development, our thinking. "Inner speech," says Vygotsky, "is speech almost without words...it is not the interior aspect of external speech, it is a function in itself. ...While in external speech thought is embodied in words, in inner speech words die as they bring forth thought. Inner speech is to a large extent thinking in pure meanings." We start with dialogue, with language that is external and social, but then to think, to become ourselves, we have to move to a monologue, to inner speech. Inner speech is essentially solitary, and it is profoundly mysterious, as unknown to science, Vygotsky writes, as "the other side of the moon." "We are our language," it is often said; but our real language, our real identity, lies in inner speech, in that ceaseless stream and generation of meaning that constitutes the individual mind. It is through inner speech that the child develops his own concepts and meanings; it is through inner speech that he achieves his own identity; it is through inner speech, finally, that he constructs his own world.
It is certain that we are not "given" reality, but have to construct it for ourselves, in our own way, and that in doing so we are conditioned by the cultures and worlds we live in..
quoted from L. S. Vygotsky in "Thought and Language", quoted by Oliver Sacks, and Oliver Sacks in "Seeing Voices: A Journey into the World of the Deaf" by Oliver Sacks, pages 72-73
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to ensure no accidents occur that could hurt the child and that no equipment gets broken.