Babies need a few
basic things to get started: 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 is not an heirloom-quality cherrywood changing table, an
all-leather car seat with cup holder, or an ergonomic Scandinavian
stroller (none of which has been linked to positive life outcomes
anyway). 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. How
can that be? All parents issue directives—“Time for your bath” or “Let’s
put on your jammies.” In low-income families, where parents often have
had less education and limited access to parenting guidance, that’s
usually the end of it; while in wealthier families, directives are only a
small part of an ongoing conversation. “Let’s put on your jammies. Your
jammies are so soft! What color are these jammies? They’re yellow. And
look at these little animals on your jammies. What are those? Those are
ducks! ‘Quack, quack, quack,’ say the ducks!” All that babbling isn’t
silliness; it’s mind- building. Words streaming from radio or
television, or from parents or caregivers chatting on cell phones, are
of no benefit, however—a finding that merits attention from all parents.
In many low-income families, warm and loving parents may struggle
desperately to provide all the other basics, without a clue that their
relative silence—and the lack of bedtime stories, picture books, and
lullabies—hurts the babies.
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. Using interview techniques and
tracking devices including “word pedometers,” 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.
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