Talking to Baby

For John, BLUF:  Talk to your Grandchildren.  Use adult words.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

At The New York Times, we have Tina Rosenberg talking about The Power of Talking to Your Baby.  Here is the lede and subsequent paragraph:

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.  American attempts to close this gap in schools have largely failed, and a consensus is starting to build that these attempts must start long before school — before preschool, perhaps even before birth.

There is no consensus, however, about what form these attempts should take, because there is no consensus about the problem itself.  What is it about poverty that limits a child’s ability to learn?  Researchers have answered the question in different ways:  Is it exposure to lead?  Character issues like a lack of self-control or failure to think of future consequences?  The effects of high levels of stress hormones?  The lack of a culture of reading?

Here is the payoff paragraph, the one quoted by Law Professor Ann Althouse in her shorter blog post on this issue:

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.  TV talk not only didn’t help, it was detrimental.

Yes, contrary to the ideas of people like Ms Melissa Harris-Perry, parents matter and they matter a great deal.

Babies are not just lumps of flesh, eating and pooping, but are human beings and the parents' interactions with them makes them smarter.

That said, I agree with Professor Althouse on the need to ensure we are not confusing correlation and causation.  For the sake of the children, I would lean strongly to the side of causation.

Hat tip to Ann Althouse.

Regards  —  Cliff