You must have read or heard many times that parents’ talking has the most obvious influence over children’s language development. Ever wondered how? Let’s explore this in our today’s segment.
1. Children whose parents addressed or responded to them more in early life had larger, faster growing vocabularies and scored higher on IQ tests than children whose parents spoke fewer words to them overall.
2. Parents who talk more inevitably expose their children to great variety of words and sentences – number of different nouns, adjectives, length of their phrases and sentences, all adding and enriching their children’s linguistic progress.
3. Another major aspect of parental language having a deep impact on children’s language is the amount of positive versus negative feedback children hear. Toddlers or preschoolers who heard large proportion of no, don’t, stop it and similar prohibitions had poorer language skills. Of course, parents of toddlers cannot avoid all prohibitions, but those who kept their negative response to a minimum, instead emphasising more on positive responses, affirmations, fostered better language development.
4. Last but not least, children whose parents spoke more to them during the first three years continue to excel at various language skills including, reading, spellings, speaking and listening abilities.
So even after children enter school when their parents cease to be the sole influence over their cognitive development, their early language exposure has its impact on their language achievement.
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