"The Power of Talking to Your Children"

In the blog post "The Power of Talking to Your Baby," Tina Rosenburg writes about the disparity between the number of words spoken at home to children from "poor" vs. "professional" families. She writes:

By the time a poor child is 1 year old, she has most likely already fallen behind middle-class children in her ability to talk, understand and learn. The gap between poor children and wealthier ones widens each year, and by high school it has become a chasm. 

It turns out, evidence is showing, that the much-ridiculed stream of parent-to-child baby talk — Feel Teddy’s nose! It’s so soft! Cars make noise — look, there’s a yellow one! Baby feels hungry? Now Mommy is opening the refrigerator! — is very, very important. 

All parents gave their children directives like “Put away your toy!” or “Don’t eat that!” But interaction was more likely to stop there for parents on welfare, while as a family’s income and educational levels rose, those interactions were more likely to be just the beginning. 

The disparity was staggering. Children whose families were on welfare heard about 600 words per hour. Working-class children heard 1,200 words per hour, and children from professional families heard 2,100 words. By age 3, a poor child would have heard 30 million fewer words in his home environment than a child from a professional family. And the disparity mattered: the greater the number of words children heard from their parents or caregivers before they were 3, the higher their IQ and the better they did in school.

Her observations are drawn from the work Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley at the University of Kansas, did, including their 1995 book Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children (summary here).

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I have certainly found this to be true in regards to Ezra's speech as well as understanding. People (us, his grandparents and aunts and uncles, my piano students) have always talked to him, explaining their actions or making observations of their surroundings, or explaining traditions and histories to him, reading to him, etc. And his language skills and understanding definitely attest to the almost two years + nine months he has experienced a constant stream of language.

Now I'm (overly) concerned that Isaac won't get the same stimulation, largely because he won't exist in the "world of grownups" that Ezra has. I want to prioritize speaking to Isaac in the same way I've spoken to Ezra.

[http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/the-power-of-talking-to-your-baby/]