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Key points
- Talking to children is key for their language development, but how much conversation do they need?
- The more speech a child hears, the better, but the quality of the conversation is also important.
- Narrating the everyday, adding a word, and asking questions can prompt quality conversations with children.
Written By Anna Brown
The “risks” of smartphone use have been a topic of discussion for some time. A recent study highlighted that smartphone use may impact mothers’ communication with their children. Evidence suggests that phone use can cause a 16 percent drop in the words mothers speak per minute compared to when they aren’t on their phones. Shorter phone use of just 1 to 2 minutes saw a 26 percent word reduction.
Smartphones are integral to daily life as tools for navigation, payments, and connecting with our social networks. Parents are often reminded of their importance in helping their child learn language. Striking a balance between reducing smartphone use and engaging with your child can be challenging for parents. The new research above is likely to leave busy parents asking: If I speak 16 percent less, does that mean my child’s language development will be worse by 16 percent?
Researchers have investigated similar questions when studying the relationship between parents’ and children’s language. They found that parents’ speech significantly influences children’s language development. This finding then prompted researchers to examine whether the quantity or quality of parental speech is more crucial for children’s language development.
Quantity of Speech
Researchers define the quantity of speech as the amount of speech the child hears. More specifically, how much speech is directed at the child, overheard in conversation, or from television and other digital media.
One of the most famous studies on the quantity of parents’ speech was conducted by Betty Hart and Todd Risley in 1995. They observed 42 families and measured how much speech the families’ children heard. They found that by the age of 3 years, children from wealthier families had heard about 30 million more words than kids from less affluent backgrounds. This observation started important policy discussions and inspired interventions to increase how much parents speak to their children. The “30-million gap” was derived from counting words a child hears in an hour, which doesn’t accurately reflect their first three years, and the number is an overestimation.
Technology has advanced, and today, researchers can observe the quantity of speech that children hear much more accurately. An example of this technology is LENA (Language Environment Analysis). Children wear a digital audio-recording device in a t-shirt pocket that records all the speech they hear over 24 hours. The LENA tool can then extract how much speech children heard from adults, how much the children themselves talked, and even how much TV or digital noise they heard.
Using LENA, research has shown that the more words parents direct at their children, the greater their children’s vocabulary growth. Back-and-forth verbal exchanges between the child and adult are particularly powerful for strengthening children’s language skills. The study also found that overheard speech (e.g., adult-to-adult conversation or television speech) had a smaller impact on language development than direct parent-child interactions.
Quality of Speech
Quality of speech is more complex and diverse in meaning than quantity. Yet, quality of speech may be even more crucial for children’s language development than the number of words they hear.
Quality can refer to the quality of the interaction and the extent to which both parent and child are engaged in the conversation. The more involved the child and parent are, the better the child will listen and learn. Engaged interaction creates great opportunities for parents to expand on what the child says.
For example, when a child points and says, “Cat,” a parent can expand on this by replying, “Yes, a black cat. Where did you think it’s going?” Studies have found that responding to children’s utterances by expanding them led to children being able to understand and use more words.
Quality can also mean the quality of the vocabulary and grammar used within speech. Parents use varying vocabularies; some have a wide range of sophisticated words, while others have a smaller range and use the same words. As a child develops language, using a range of different words becomes more important than hearing the same words many times over.
What Is More Important, Quality or Quantity?
The short answer is that it’s complicated. There is no magic number for quantity, but more is always better. However, life as a parent can quickly become hectic, so having a small, engaged conversation with your child can be just as beneficial. Here are five easy tips to boost the quantity and quality of conversations with children.
1. Take their lead: Even if a child wants to read the same story on repeat, although it may seem tedious, take their lead and engage in activities they are interested in.
2. Narrate the everyday: Talk about everything you do, such as making dinner, bathtime, and food shopping. This is a great way to introduce new vocabulary to the child while completing everyday tasks.
3. Add one word: When children respond in conversation, you can expose them to more complex language by adding just one word. For example, if you hear, “Look, a cat,” reply, “Yes, a black cat.”
4. Model the answer: As children learn language, they may make mistakes that are tempting to correct. Instead of correcting them, model the correct response and keep the conversation flowing. If a child says, “I goed to the park,” instead of saying, “No, it’s ‘went,’ not ‘goed,’” you could model the correct verb by responding, “Oh, you went to the park! That sounds like fun.”
5. Ask questions: Asking children questions elicits responses, exposes them to different sentence structures, encourages turn-taking, and checks their understanding of vocabulary. For instance, if a child points out a cat, you might say, “Yes, a black cat. Where do you think it’s going?”
Overall, if, like many parents, you struggle to give up smartphone time, you can overcome the 16 percent drop in language by applying the tips above and focusing on quality instead. Your child will still be chatting away before you know it!
