Prepping for Preschool

This week’s article summary is The Talking Cure from The New Yorker.

Last week I referenced the NPR report that the three most important variables in a child’s success in school are 1) IQ, 2) self-control/self-discipline, and 3) parents’ socioeconomic status.

This week's article covers the research that has been done re: parent socioeconomic status, a young child’s exposure to vocabulary and sentence syntax, and their impact on success in school.

Certainly there are larger sociological issues at play here, yet the article is interesting in that our students entering preschool at Trinity have more than likely had a myriad of experiences and opportunities which set them up favorably for success in school.

Joe

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Research has shown that the poorer parents are, the less they talk to their children, and this disparity affects children when they begin school.

The original studies were done in the 1980s, when the University of Kansas analyzed verbal interactions in professional, middle-class, and low-income families with children who were just learning language.

There were many similarities among the families. Parents all showed affection, disciplined their children, and tried to teach them good manners, but the social-class differences in the number of words children heard each hour were dramatic: 2,150 in professional families, 1,250 in middle-class families, and 620 in poor families.

With few exceptions, the more parents talked to their children, the faster the children’s vocabularies grew and the higher the children’s I.Q. test scores were at age 3 and later.

More-affluent parents used a wider range of nouns, modifiers, and past-tense verbs, and more of the conversations were initiated by children.

Families that talk a lot also talk about more different things. They use more grammatical variety in their sentences and more sophisticated vocabulary and produce more utterances in connected chains.

These parents ask their children a lot of questions and have fun answering children’s “Why?” questions.

There’s also a difference in the ratio of statements from parents that are affirming and positive (Yes, it is a bunny!) versus corrective and critical (Stop that!): 32 to 5 per hour in professional homes, 12 to 7 in working-class homes, 5 to 11 in low-income homes.

Poor nutrition, chaotic living conditions, no preschool also influence poor students’ literacy deficits.

There is also variation within each social-class group, for example, some wealthy families have low word counts.

The quality of spoken words is as important as quantity. It’s important that parent and child are both paying attention to and talking about the same thing – a cement mixer on the street, a picture in a book – and the ensuing conversation and gestures are fluid and continue over time.

Though cultural factors may well explain why some low-income parents talk relatively little with their toddlers, the most obvious explanation is poverty itself. When daily life is stressful and uncertain and dispiriting, it can be difficult to summon up the patience and the playfulness for an open-ended conversation with a small, persistent, possibly whiny child.

In addition, poorer families may be unconsciously preparing their children for jobs and lives in which they won’t have much power and autonomy – hence the high value on discipline and respect for parental authority.

The 2003 study Unequal Childhoods found that middle-class families mostly practiced “concerted cultivation” – adults engaging children in lots of back-and-forth conversation, with the verbal jousting giving kids intellectual confidence.

Working-class and poor families, on the other hand, tend to take an “accomplishment of natural growth” approach – children’s lives are less customized, discipline consists of directives and sometimes threats of physical punishment, and there is less talk and less drawing out of children’s opinions.

The middle-class approach takes a lot of parents’ time, and some sibling interactions are mean-spirited. The study found that poor and working-class children were more polite to adults, less whiny, more competent, and more independent. Still, middle-class families’ approach prepared their children better for success in school and professional careers. It taught children to debate, extemporize, and advocate for themselves, and it helped them develop the vocabulary that tends to reap academic rewards.

Another variable is parents’ educational background. Asking dinner-table questions like, “Hey, did you hear the blue whales are making a comeback off California?” or “Oh, they just discovered a new dinosaur” spring from more years in school and college, but also from a different mode of inquiry that’s more in synch with the way teachers talk – more abstract, better informed, more inquisitive. Education helps you learn how to make yourself clear to people who are outside your point of view.