More studies are showing that activities like reading stories to your children or consistently engaging them in conversation can have a huge impact on their IQs and academic success years down the line.
The number of words that a child hears early in life is key, but the problem is some children don’t hear as many spoken words as others, The Economist reports. By age 3, children born into poorer families have heard 30 million fewer words than those from wealthier ones. One reason for this “word gap” is that parents of higher socio-economic status tend to interact with their kids more.
The research is clear: The beginning of the achievement gap starts with language in the home – and the gap begins in children as young as 18 months.
“If we truly want to make a difference, preschool is too late. We need to go where it really begins, between the ages of 0-3, in the home, ” says Dana Suskind, director of the Thirty Million Words Initiative in Chicago. It is through the power of parent talk that true change can occur.
Original: The Economist
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