Talk, Talk, Talk to Your Kids

[kpete]

Talk, Talk, Talk to Your Kids
—By Kevin Drum| Fri Oct. 17, 2014 1:01 AM EDT


I've long been sort of interested in the ongoing research that shows the importance of building vocabulary in children. This is famously summarized as the "30 million word gap," thanks to findings that high-income children have heard 30 million more words than low-income children by age 3. But apparently new research is modifying these findings somewhat. It turns out that quality may be more important than quantity:

A study presented on Thursday at a White House conference on “bridging the word gap” found that among 2-year-olds from low-income families, quality interactions involving words — the use of shared symbols (“Look, a dog!”); rituals (“Want a bottle after your bath?”); and conversational fluency (“Yes, that is a bus!”) — were a far better predictor of language skills at age 3 than any other factor, including the quantity of words a child heard.

....In a related finding, published in April, researchers who observed 11- and 14-month-old children in their homes found that the prevalence of one-on-one interactions and frequent use of parentese — the slow, high-pitched voice commonly used for talking to babies — were reliable predictors of language ability at age 2. The total number of words had no correlation with future ability.

In practice, talking more usually leads to talking better, so there's probably a little less here than meets the eye. Still, it's interesting stuff. Regardless of parental education level, it turns out that simply interacting with your newborn more frequently and more conversationally makes a big difference. So forget the baby Mozart, all you new parents. Instead, just chatter away with your kids. It's cheaper and it works better.'


http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/10/talk-talk-talk-your-kids

[HockeyMom]

1. I had nobody else to talk to

So I talked to my babies and explained everything I was doing. Let's wash the clothes! Put the soap in. See it go round and round and round. Chug, Chug. This is applesauce. Yummy! Things like that when they were very little.

My older daughter was talking in sentences before her first birthday. My younger daughter didn't talk at all and was classified speech delayed. When she DID start talking at 6 years old, she used vocabulary that amazed school staff. I suppose she had been listening all that time and when she wanted to talk, it all came out.

[Fumesucker]

2. Reading stories to kids works wonders

They love the repetitive nature of stories, after a few listenings they will correct you if you miss a word or otherwise change things.

[SheilaT]

3. These days I've noticed that just about everyone who

can afford it is buying some sort of tablet device for their very little kids. Then those kids spend hours and hours with the tablet, swiping and watching and doing whatever one does on a tablet. I think this is going to result in a noticeable reduction in vocabulary in precisely those middle class and affluent kids who used to have a huge advantage because someone was reading to them. Now, it's mainly a machine that's interacting with them.

Along those lines, my younger son has not been as much of a reader as I'd like him to be. I always read lots and lots to my kids when they were little, but because that son didn't make the switch to reading as much for himself a bit later, I noticed that in high school he simply didn't have the vocabulary that I thought he should have.