Word up

Okay, I need a blog break from the relentless political/shutdown blogging.  Here’s a good one.

By now the famous study that middle-class parents speak literally tens of millions more words to their young children than do lower-class parents is so well known, that probably almost everybody reading this has heard about it already.  Still, it’s fascinating.  And important.  Really interesting Slate piece looking at attempts to redress this difference through programs that work with lower class parents:

So Suskind, a half-dozen staff members, and a rotating cast of student research assistants are developing strategies to get parents to engage their children in rich, meaningful conversation from the moment they’re born.

They’ve completed the first trial of their Thirty Million Words Project, in which Suskind’s staff visited the homes of low-income mothers on the South Side and trained them in a parent-talk curriculum they developed. Every week, a young child in a participating family would spend a day wearing a small electronic device in a shirt pocket to record the number of words heard and spoken, plus the number of “turns” in a conversation—the amount of back-and-forth between parent and child. Words heard on television did not count. The full results haven’t been published yet, but individual participants’ data show dramatic increases in parent-child interaction…

The Thirty Million Words trial took a bigger intervention to a low-income population, following 25 mothers through eight weeks of home visits and recordings. In low-income households, parents commonly speak to their children in simple commands, and participant Aneisha Newell said the week on directives was particularly significant to her. “Instead of saying, ‘go put on your shoes,’ I can say, ‘All right, it’s time to go. What else do you need? … That gives my child the chance to respond, and say, ‘shoes,’ ” said Newell, 25, who has a 4-year-old daughter and a 10-month-old son and works for a company providing recess supervision and after-school activities in Chicago Public Schools.

Newell said many of her friends and relatives think she’s crazy for talking to her daughter as if she’s an adult. “I can quote this: ‘Neisha, no one wants to sit and talk to the kids like they understand’ That’s basically the response I get.” During her time being recorded by Thirty Million Words, Newell became competitive with herself. One day, she spoke an average 2,736 words per hour to her daughter, Alona Sharp, compared with a normal rate of 1,023.

Lots of interesting stuff about related research on formerly deaf children with cochlear implants and interesting anecdotes from parents in the program.  Two things…

1) I still want a better answer for why it is lower class parents talk to their kids so much less.  Why is that?  Is this universal across countries and cultures?  Can we break this cultural difference in some large-scale way that does not rely on home interventions.  Sort of a “back to sleep” campaign for talking to your baby/toddler?  (Of course, this coming from a guy who let his strong-necked babies sleep on their stomachs).

2) I have to admit, that although I suspect the Greene kids get lots of words and conversation from their parents, I have been pausing and interacting a little more this week when I’ve been reading books to Sarah.  Her current favorite’s, if you are curious, Clarabella’s Teeth, and David Goes to School (which all the kids except David love listening to).