A child raised in a low-income household hears 1,537 fewer words per hour than one raised in a higher-income home, according to the landmark 1995 Hart and Risley study.
Conducted at the University of Kansas, the research revealed that the average child on welfare heard just 616 words per hour vs. 1,251 words per hour in the average working-class family and 2,153 words per hour in a home with parents with professional backgrounds. They also found that higher-income families provided children with far more words of praise than low-income families.
Newer research from Stanford University, in 2013, found that an intellectual processing gap appears in kids as early as 18 months and revealed that 2-year-old children of lower-income families may already be six months behind in language development.
Talega KinderCare in San Clemente is one program trying to mend this gap with activities such as beach day, during which the 4- and 5-year-old students have a lot to say during share time.
“My grandma made me this bag,” Ana says as she pulls shoes, towels and a bathing suit out of the beach bag.
Teacher Stephanie Collao responds by asking, “Does anyone else have a grandmother or a mother or a father who likes to sew?”
Next, Tatum shows classmates her new sunglasses. “They’re turquoise,” she says. Then Sloan shares the beach towel she brought, which has the letter S on it.
“Can anyone think of another word that starts with S, maybe a beach word?” prompts Collao.
The kids start to brainstorm: “Sun. Sunset. Sea shells.”
Words by income
What’s happening in this classroom is charming and fun, but it also offers a window into the kinds of interactions that educators say all parents need to have with their children to prepare them for school and beyond.
Researchers and policymakers have sounded the alarm in recent years about the so-called “word gap,” a phenomenon documented by researchers who found that, by age 3, children born into low-income families heard roughly 30 million fewer words than their more affluent peers.
Because what children hear has a direct effect on what they learn, the word gap has a big impact. Those who experience the word drought have vocabularies that are half the size of their peers’ before kindergarten.
Serve and return
At early childhood education centers like Talega KinderCare, teachers encourage children’s language development with what they call “serve and return,” said director Colleen Preszler. If a child does something like point to an object (the serve), the adult responds by naming the object (the return).
“You can see the importance of this as early as with the infants. When they cry, if you reply to them, and acknowledge them, they understand someone cares for them. If adults said, ‘Oh, I don’t have time for this,’ not only is it not helping them with their vocabulary, but also teaching them they aren’t important,” Preszler says. “It’s so important to engage back, to give them something.”
A designated area for imaginative play can provide children the opportunity to pretend play with one another, while ample art activities provide other ways for children to express their feelings and develop the fine-motor skills they will need to write the alphabet someday.
Collao, who has taught at Talega KinderCare for 13 years, said that one of the most important things parents can do to bridge any word gap is to engage their toddlers and preschoolers with open-ended questions and the conversations that follow.
“Ask them about their day during the car ride home,” she said. “During bath time, there’s a lot of opportunity to talk about what’s going on.”
Singing songs and playing games like Simon Says with children are important, as are trips to the public library for books. Parents should be chatting with infants as they change their diapers and looking at picture books with them before they start speaking.
On this beach day, Collao pulls out a beach ball to prompt conversation with her students. Each segment of the ball has a question written on it, and as they toss the ball to one another, they have to answer a question, such as “What is your favorite thing to do at the beach?
“If you were a hermit crab, where would you hide?” she asks Sloan, who pauses then points to a house on the playground.
“Over there,” she replies.
“OK, Jackson,” Collao says. “Your question says, if you were a sea turtle, what would your name be?”
“Jackson,” he answers.
Collao returns his giant smile. “Hi Jackson, the sea turtle.”
