Alan Mendelsohn of New York's Bellevue Hospital Creates Program On How To Talk To Babies

When it comes to building your child's vocabulary, the answer may be in quantity, not quality.

NPR reports that University of Kansas graduate student Betty Hart and her professor, Todd Risley, wanted to figure out the cause of the education gap between the rich and poor. So, they targeted early education and headed a study that recorded the first three years of 40 infants' lives.

The conclusion? Rich families talk to their kids more than poor families.

"Children in professional families are talked to three times as much as the average child in a welfare family."

Because of this, privileged infants were getting more innate experience with the English language, while the disadvantaged were simply not hearing enough of it. This disparity widens once children attend school, where the experienced leap ahead and while the inexperienced fall behind.

Alan Mendelsohn, a pediatrician at Bellevue Hospital in New York, took their study to heart. He designed a program that coached poor families on how to talk to their infant children, encouraging more interaction.

In this month's edition of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, Mendelsohn published a study claiming his program to have measurable success.

LISTEN:

Comments

[been2there]

04:40 AM on 01/13/2011

So larger tax breaks for parents, which would enable them to spend time with children, and early childhood education would be both humane and effective, yeilding a positive return on investment. So why do so many people prefer to throw money down the prison drain?

[Pundit Commentator]

01:05 AM on 01/13/2011

Result seems sensible enough.

[MerryW]

07:52 PM on 01/12/2011

Certainly talking, reading, and playing with kids will increase their skills. Kids from skilled parents helps. Can we improve public education for kids now please. Can and will we offer more education to adults in educational deprived areas, Please.

[fem56]

07:02 PM on 01/12/2011

This study should be listen to. I am convinced there is a lot of truth here.

[David Boulton]

12:29 PM on 01/12/2011

The Hart & Risley work referred to here is discussed at length in our interview with Todd Risley (http://www.childrenofthecode.org/interviews/risley.htm) and the highlights of the study and its results in the following video: http://www.childrenofthecode.org/Tour/c3b/differences.htm

[rjaxone]

12:09 AM on 01/12/2011

"Listen" to your child, and talk "with" them moreso than "to" or "at" them...

[BruntLIVE]

08:25 PM on 01/11/2011

why did they have to show a black male baby?

[brittanyburnett]

04:29 PM on 01/11/2011

I disagree, because its basically like they're saying people who aren't very financially stable are dumb and thats not right. I believe every individual is smart in some sort of way. And its really about how you act and the mentality you have and most importantly your intelligence.

[inreasonsimage]

03:39 PM on 01/11/2011

I don't understand why there wasn't any mention of the disadvantages children face by being placed in daycare at a very young age. It disheartens me to know that our society has abandoned the idea that a child should be raised by a stay-at-home parent (mom or dad) during the first crucial years of his/her life. In some families both parents NEED to work in order to pay the bills. But, in many families both parents work not because they need to work but because they want more material "cr@p". They want to maintain a certain lifestyle.

[DeweyJ]

09:29 AM on 01/12/2011

This is kind of talk is a little like blaming folks who suffer serious financial catastrophe (wish is reputed to be about 80% of bankruptcies) for overspending.

A certain lifestyle might be just pay the bills. Daycare centers can be highly stimulating places and the parent who spends a good quality couple of hours per day of devoted time to their child is accomplishing what the top SES parents do.

When my first child was very young and I worked, I was completely devoted to him from the time I picked him up daily at about 5. We drove home, he sat in my lap and home and I read to him...we steadily interacted until his bedtime around 9. I did not have to sit him somewhere with a diversion. He made rapid progress in language and concept development and was identified as gifted when he went to school.

[1Woman4Obama]

05:33 PM on 01/12/2011

There is sometimes talk of this but there is also talk of the advantages of quality daycare. The problem with this type of study is that from what has recently come out, the only really important thing is the quality of care -- plent of stay at home parents are terrible at that "job" and the children would be much better off in a high quality daycare. There is also a movement to socialize children at a young age -- I'm not sure what the push is or where it is coming from but most toddlers in my community are in preschool/ nursery school at least a part of the week by the time they are 2.5 -3 regardless of whether a parent stays at home.

[jamesonburt]

01:46 PM on 01/11/2011

Parents still lazy: One parent can speak in one language, the other parent in another language.
I know Chinese parents who do this always.
Comparing American and Chinese/Korean/Japanese child rearing is like comparing
junior high school and NBA basketball players.
Call the Chinese when you really want to be a parent,
rather than having a child as conspicuous consumption.

[eva07]

04:18 PM on 01/11/2011

How would two American parents talk to the kids in different languages? And what does that has to do with being lazy?
I think the difference is the culture, Chinese etc parents expect the kids to work hard and study and we don't. I still have to see a movie, where the "nerd" is the positive example, in the best case they are laughable but good guys and who wants to be that.

[Godheard SentU]

01:11 AM on 01/12/2011

"Comparing American and Chinese/Ko­rean/Japan­ese child rearing is like comparing
junior high school and NBA basketball players."

Do you have children?
Seriously? I only saw ONE "guy standing in front of tank"
U.S.= you would see HUNDREDS of "people climbing on tank"

apples to apples, organes to oranges. plese

[Supernatoir]

01:40 PM on 01/11/2011

Poor people are to busy with important stuff like teach kids not to run if they see a dog. More like survival skills set then a long term skill set. If you have to worry about eating and not getting sh00t by police or gangsters that what u want your kids to avoid also

[Supernatoir]

01:39 PM on 01/11/2011

Poor people are to busy with important stuff like teach kids not to run if they see a dog. More like survival skills set then a long term skill set. If you have to worry about eating and not getting shoot by police or gangsters that what u want your kids to avoid also

[Supernatoir]

01:39 PM on 01/11/2011

Do you pending every comment ? that just sick i did not curse or anything

[banja]

01:20 PM on 01/11/2011

I disagree with the study, you are not doomed because your parents didn't talk to you as a 2 year old, wow. Einstein didn't speak until he was six. If you have a lousy school, lousy uninspired bored teachers with low expectations and all the rampant discrimination, you have no chance.

[eva07]

04:26 PM on 01/11/2011

Sadly Einstein now would be on drugs from the age of two and probably most of the great scientists and artists too.
The teachers I know are not lousy and certainly don't discriminate. I have a teacher friend who said sometimes all a kid would need is a hug, but she can't do it anymore because somebody might assume she has ulterior motives.

[fem56]

07:04 PM on 01/12/2011

Einstein may not have spoken(perhaps 2 years but not six!) but he had an extremely devoted mother who really believed in him. I will bet she spoke to him a lot.

[AverageJill]

06:10 PM on 02/05/2011

Einstein starting to talk at the age of 2 is correct. See link.

http://dyslexia.learninginfo.org/einstein.htm

[roguescr1be]

12:53 PM on 01/11/2011

Its not about rich families reading to kids. We already knew that.

The study was tasked to find a legit reason why the disparity was so lined up along socio-economic lines.

News to them was the fact that so many low-income families say almost nothing to their kids in those important years. Some of us have, admittedly, known this for decades...but studies like this are for the misinformed, not the people already plugged in.