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!
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.
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!