Babies need a few basic things to get started: a mother's milk, or something like it; love, attention, and playtime; clean clothes; and a safe place to sleep. All over the world, high- or low-income, desert or forest, high-rise or countryside, doting parents give their babies these essentials. But educational researchers have uncovered something else babies need, and this they're not getting equally up and down the income scale. The missing element costs nothing and is as plentiful as air, yet the devastating lack of it hampers brain development. Many low-income American children are suffering from a shortage of words--songs, nursery rhymes, storybooks, chitchat, everyday stuff. Beginning in the 1990s, researchers at Rice and Columbia Universities reported eye-opening findings about how many more words middle-class and affluent kids hear day in and out. They've determined that well-off children hear 30 million more words in the first three years of life. The deficit has astounding and bitter consequences. More than any other strand in the lives of poor children, the 30-million -word gap has been linked to poor school performance, a failure to learn to read, a failure to graduate from high school, and an inability to prepare for and to enjoy career success.
Word Power for Babies, Melissa Fay Greene, Reader's Digest, October 2014
So why do poor children sometimes hear less words? Is it that their parents are desperately trying to provide all of the other basics and don't have to time for "small" or extra talk? I don't know.
Words are free. It seems an easy thing to do, to talk to and with your children, no matter your financial situation.
My advice to mothers with young children--talk to your children. Talk them through what you are doing each day. Talk to them about animals, colors, shapes, patterns, places, food, church, and whatever else you can think to talk about. Explain things and ask questions. Read books to them. Make reading an enjoyable thing that you do each day. Buy books to have in your home and go to the library often. Sing songs with your children. Sing at home and while in the car. Express love to your children. All of this talking, reading, and singing makes a difference!
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