What Parents Need to Know About Early Speech Development | A Parent's Guide to Child Development

Are there myths or misconceptions about language development and listening that you wish every parent knew the truth about?

Yes.

That listening has to develop in order for language to develop and then speech to develop, so actual talking.

And here's the thing, when you look at the skills a child needs to go to school, right? Listening and language and speaking is supposed to happen at home.

We're supposed to send our kids to school with those skills.

so that they can understand the teaching that the teacher is teaching, and they can learn to read and write, which is supposed to happen at school.

And these are all language-based things.

Reading and writing are language-based.

But when the child is on screens, when the child is not being talked to, when the child is not developing those listening and language skills, and they go to school with under the amount that they need to understand the teaching, they're going to fall behind.

And once you're behind in language in school, it moves so quickly that it's very hard to catch up.

So I believe the myth, the misconception is that children are getting what they need from screens and that this couldn't be further from the truth.

And that when a child isn't getting that rich auditory environment that leads to language environment, you're not setting your child up for success in school.

Because the expectation of school is that the child is coming to school with a certain amount of words.

So I always, in my lectures, I always talk about what's the number of words a child has to understand in order to be successful socially and academically in kindergarten.

There is no right answer, right? Some children go with 3,000 words, understanding.

Some kids go with 5,000 words.

Some kids go with 10,000 words.

Some kids go with 30,000 words.

Which child is going to be more successful in kindergarten?

It's as

simple as that.