Want to stress out an infant?

Have a mother look at her baby with a “still face,” no expression, interaction or words.  Before long, the child will do everything they know to engage and connect with their parent.  If the parent doesn’t respond, the baby can experience acute stress and anxiety.

Want to see what I mean?  Take a minute and check out the Still Face Experiment, in which a mother tests this theory, with dramatic results.

Watching this video, I can’t help but think of the many parents I’ve seen in public spaces who seem to take good physical care of their children, who are typically well-groomed and neatly dressed), but who appear to be very disengaged from their babies.  Often, these parents are teens plugged into their phones and/or iPods.  I’ve seen some of these infants and toddlers do everything they can—just like the baby in the video—to get their parents’ attention.

Frequently, the child resorts to improper behavior, which does get the parent’s attention, but in a negative way.  The parent often scolds their child with a mean mug on their face, sometimes curses or even hits the child for interrupting them.  Ultimately, the only “reward” they receive from exercising their natural instinct and need for their parent to interact with them is the message that what they want is bad and wrong and will result in punishment.

Decades ago, experts weren’t aware of the importance of high levels of engagement with babies, even newborns.  Today, we know that the more positive, loving, nurturing and attentive interaction a child has with their mother/parent/caregiver, the stronger, healthier and happier that child will grow up to be.  They are more likely to succeed in school and in life if they have received the proper attention when they need it most.

Speaking of school, there might be a link between the “minority” achievement gap that is epidemic throughout public education in our country today, and the fact that low-income children are said to suffer from a 30 million word gap that causes them to start school behind their wealthier peers.

In this groundbreaking study, Betty Hart and Todd Risley entered the homes of 42 families from various socio-economic backgrounds to assess the ways in which daily exchanges between a parent and child shape language and vocabulary development. Their findings were unprecedented, with extraordinary disparities between the sheer number of words spoken as well as the types of messages conveyed. After four years these differences in parent-child interactions produced significant discrepancies in not only children’s knowledge, but also their skills and experiences with children from high-income families being exposed to 30 million more words than children from families on welfare. Follow-up studies showed that these differences in language and interaction experiences have lasting effects on a child’s performance later in life.

Results:

The results of the study were far more severe than anyone could have anticipated. Observers found that 86% to 98% of the words used by each child by the age of three were derived from their parents’ vocabularies. Furthermore, not only were the words they used nearly identical, but also the average number of words utilized, the duration of their conversations, and the speech patterns were all strikingly similar to those of their caregivers. 

[The researchers] found that the sheer number of words heard varied greatly along socio-economic lines. On average, children from families on welfare were provided half as much experience as children from working class families, and less than a third of the experience given to children from high-income families. In other words, children from families on welfare heard about 616 words per hour, while those from working class families heard around 1,251 words per hour, and those from professional families heard roughly 2,153 words per hour. Thus, children from better financial circumstances had far more language exposure to draw from. 

… the researchers also looked at what was being said within these conversations. What they found was that higher-income families provided their children with far more words of praise compared to children from low-income families. Conversely, children from low-income families were found to endure far more instances of negative reinforcement compared to their peers from higher-income families.  Children from families with professional backgrounds experienced a ratio of six encouragements for every discouragement. For children from working-class families this ratio was two encouragements to one discouragement. Finally, children from families on welfare received on average two discouragements for every encouragement.

To ensure that these findings had long-term implications, 29 of the 42 families were recruited for a follow-up study when the children were in third grade. Researchers found that measures of accomplishment at age three were highly indicative of performance at the ages of nine and ten on various vocabulary, language development, and reading comprehension measures. Thus, the foundation built at age three had a great bearing on their progress many years to come. 

Within a child’s early life the caregiver is responsible for most, if not all, social simulation and consequently language and communication development. As a result, how parents interact with their children is of great consequence given it lays a critical foundation impacting the way the children process future information many years down the road.

The finding that children living in poverty hear fewer than a third of the words heard by children from higher-income families has significant implications in the long run. When extrapolated to the words heard by a child within the first four years of their life these results reveal a 30 million word difference. That is, a child from a high-income family will experience 30 million more words within the first four years of life than a child from a low-income family. This gap does nothing but grow as the years progress, ensuring slow growth for children who are economically disadvantaged and accelerated growth for those from more privileged backgrounds.

All that to say: talk to your babies, to your children, as much as you can, and then some.  Interact with them.  It’s easy to make fun of or feel self-conscious about the exaggerated facial expressions and high-pitched voices we associate with baby talk, but the fact is that we are biologically hard-wired to give the babies and children what they need most: our undivided attention, our voices, our faces, and our love. Without those ingredients, they are not likely to thrive.