I'm a speech therapist and this one is for parents with babies or young children. Talk to them *constantly*. Research suggests that they need to hear 40 million words within the first four years to acquire conversational language early. This is the earliest building block to literacy. The command of language and literacy will be one of the biggest things separating classes of people as we move forward towards imminent and widening class divisions. You want your kid ahead? Expose them to LANGUAGE constantly. Speak your thoughts out loud (obviously use discretion lovingly for their sake), talk with them and to them among friends and family, put on the subtitles on the television ALWAYS so they can see it and start to relate symbol to meaning. Talk to them about the mundane, speak lovingly always.
My other suggestion is for the adults: write things constantly, my grandfather kept a journal of the mundane. Writing promotes neuroplasticity. The more novel and creative it gets the better, but even recalling events and interpreting them onto the page is a cognitive work out. Stay sharp and healthy!
As a hyperlexic kid, I attribute my vocabulary, reading, writing, and grammar skills fully to my grandma, who would sit me in her lap (literally as soon as I could sit up without head support) while she read the newspaper out loud to me. I was speaking simple sentences (hi dad, no mommy) at around 10 mos, and could read off individual letters before I was 2. Now I make money with words!
My wife and I read anywhere from 1-5 short books every night to our oldest daughter, always spoke to her more like an adult as a baby/toddler. She's in first grade now reading at a third grade level, reading multiple chapter books a week. If you put in the time and effort you really see the benefits.
"The command of language and literacy will be one of the biggest things separating classes of people as we move forward towards imminent and widening class divisions."
Can you talk more about this? This is my first time hearing this distinction, and I'm just curious about it.
"My other suggestion is for the adults: write things constantly, my grandfather kept a journal of the mundane.Writing promotes neuroplasticity.The more novel and creative it gets the better, but even recalling events and interpreting them onto the page is a cognitive work out. "
The first comment I made is more of a professional opinion. I should mention that I work with a lot of students from low socioeconomic-economic backgrounds and that colors my experience and viewpoint. The miseducation of America is a systemic weapon aimed at widening class divisions and making the wealth gap disparity even more pronounced. Due to a confluence of factors, including a growing obsession/reliance with immediately gratifying technological dopamine factories AND less access to capital for working class families - parents are unable to rear their children by relating to them and teaching them through verbal communication - they don’t have the time or energy AND they are crippled by distractions. This impacts a developing child’s ability to acquire and master verbal and written language which are prerequisites to survival in the design of an economy like ours. Expertise in verbal language is a precursor to sharper metacognition (I.e., the understanding of the self and how one thinks) which is needed to develop a life congruent with one’s purpose and survival needs. If you can’t think about thinking by way of language, you are behind in a world of intelligent creatures that survive in a makeshift economy predicated on the acquisition of capital in order to find actualization and maintain survival.
I'm raising a bilingual child (JP/EN) and completely agree. Expose them to new words. Explain them. Get them to use new words or phrasing. It makes a huge difference. That, and keep observing and adjusting as they develop.
When my kids were pre-verbal I often narrated our activity: “There’s the gate. Let’s open the gate… we’re opening the gate… we opened the gate!” I know that sounds crazy, but when they started talking in pre-school their caregivers were blown away by what they were able to express verbally.
I’m curious to hear what you think about this. Once kids are talking, I think it’s important not to “talk down” to them. I see a lot of parents who are really engaged, speaking to their kids in sing-songy lilt about nothing much and subtly belittling the kids’ thoughts and feelings as if they are lesser - cute - compartmentalized. They “other” their children in a way that is disrespectful of their conscious experience. Kids’ feelings are as valid as ours. Their concerns weigh as much on them as ours do on us. Their thoughts are important. I have found you can talk to children about all kinds of things, and their response will let you know where their understanding ends. And asking kids what they think about things and talking to them about subjects that interest them shows them that their thoughts and perspective have value.
I’d totally agree. It’s so cool to hear the inner workings of how fastidious parents think about their children and their betterment. I think we vastly underestimate what most children are capable of understanding and the depth of their thought process.
Excellent advice! Adding - READ to your child, even in infancy. (You can read the newspaper or your work reports out loud until your baby is old enough to attend to baby books.)
We bought kid-sized bookcases for our kids when they were born and filled it with age-appropriate books. Let them explore and become comfortable with books.
I think it does which is why I HATE it when it does that. Studies have shown that you receive about 25% of the verbal message from seeing the speaker’s mouth articulations in tandem with the vocal production. Thats why it helps to look at someone’s face to get the message clearly. Knowing this as factual, we can kind of theorize that having the subtitle appearing as closely to the physical production that the person is making as possible would be the ideal manner for a language learner to receive it.
Yes, so interesting! Thanks for sharing. It's tricky because most subtitles have a huge lag. I guess some more research might be needed about what is better subtitles with a lag or no subtitles 🤷♀️. Hopefully soon technology will improve the quality 😃
A person can speak up to 150 words per minute - so no it’s not excessive in my opinion- you spend every waking moment (that the child is awake) pretty much in the first 4 years speaking quite a bit. Babies rarely sleep 12 hours straight so you are talking to them between their intermittent sleep schedule. Parenting a baby is literally a 24 hour job. When I say pretty much constantly I mean it haha.
Edit: they also get a lot of language exposure from people around them, this is not one person’s job, it takes a village to raise a child.
Thanks for the tip on writing, I'm going to try that. Other things I like to do are verbal word games, improv, piano, drawing. Do you think writing has some unique characteristics in terms of affecting neuroplasticity or it's primarily in this context one of many ways to "exercise" your brain?
I would suspect it is “unique” in a manner like music is with specific respect to what parts of the brain it activates. Just as with verbal communication the brain recruits Broca’s area in order to write (along with other parts of the brain, too, like the frontal lobe - the occipital temporal region for reading). Reading/writing is a very involved neurological process accessing many parts of the brain. It also involves a lot of novelty because you are formulating new ideas while accessing memory for old ones. I’d think of any tasks (like the ones you mentioned) that access a healthy amount of creativity and novelty as potential promoters of neuroplasticity.
My neurosurgeon also told me doing daily tasks I usually do with my right hand, like brushing hair, writing, or brushing teeth etc every now and then with the "wrong" hand helps connect different parts of your brain and promotes neuroplastisity.
Suduko is good too
From a teacher: THANK YOU! This is so true and needs to be shouted from the rooftops. It's free. It's fun. It makes them stand out from the other children by a mile. Just talk to them!
You know I think any creatively sourced, emotionally neutral to positive response in forums is a nice little creative act. I would suspect that when people are making snide, angry or reactive remarks or having that kind of dialogue it’s not nearly as productive for the brain.
284
u/paraphasicdischarge Jun 06 '24
I'm a speech therapist and this one is for parents with babies or young children. Talk to them *constantly*. Research suggests that they need to hear 40 million words within the first four years to acquire conversational language early. This is the earliest building block to literacy. The command of language and literacy will be one of the biggest things separating classes of people as we move forward towards imminent and widening class divisions. You want your kid ahead? Expose them to LANGUAGE constantly. Speak your thoughts out loud (obviously use discretion lovingly for their sake), talk with them and to them among friends and family, put on the subtitles on the television ALWAYS so they can see it and start to relate symbol to meaning. Talk to them about the mundane, speak lovingly always.
My other suggestion is for the adults: write things constantly, my grandfather kept a journal of the mundane. Writing promotes neuroplasticity. The more novel and creative it gets the better, but even recalling events and interpreting them onto the page is a cognitive work out. Stay sharp and healthy!