Rowe, M. (2012). A longitudinal investigation of the role of quantity and quality of child-directed speech in vocabulary development. Child Development, 83, 1762-1774.
When my daughter was a about three and a half, I distinctly remember walking into a conversation between she and her father while they were playing Barbies. Sitting on the living room floor, he held one Barbie in his hand and said to her, “Girl, my hair is so dry, I need to get my hair done. Can you take me to the salon?” Her response was “What kind of hairstyle are you gonna get?” I wondered how she was to pick up those new words and phrases. I then recalled how often I would talk about having to go to the hair salon to get my highlights done. Moments like this remind parents that the way they talk with their children can shape what the children will say.
Child development experts state that exposing children to different types of words (e.g., adjectives, verbs, nouns, etc.) and rare, uncommon words during interaction helps to support vocabulary growth. Parents can expand children’s vocabulary by providing examples of their own language in conversations during their daily routines. For example, talking during mealtime, while shopping at a store, talking while driving him/her to toddler classes,taking a bath, or walking the dog will provide opportunities to talk together. As children get older, language used out of context (e.g., telling a story, giving explanations, and pretending) may be more beneficial. Although toddlers may struggle with difficult conversations, it may be a good opportunity for them to practice what they have learned (e.g., making mistakes, asking questions, making comments, role playing) and receive feedback in conversation. This trade-off is what language looks like in the real world.
Does it matter how J talk to my child? Researchconducted by Rowe (2012) suggeststhat children do benefit from parent’s words and at different stages in their lives. This study showed that at age two, children can benefit from the amount of words parents say to them. At age three, as the number of words increase, children can benefit from parental exposure to less common, rare words (e.g., sure, Why?, Listen). By the time children are four years old, they can benefit from parents storytelling and engaging them in fantasy play about fairies, and mermaids, batman and superheroes. This suggeststhat when parents expose their children to words, what and how they said it matters and that children’s increase in vocabu,lary knowledge is predictive of more advanced language abilities upon kindergarten entrance.
Considering the research, this offers parents encouragement they do not need to shy away from using more mature language filled with different types and variations of words. Engagingchildren in talk and building upon what they say gives them multiple opportunities and the confidence to share what they know about the world. There is power in parents words. For children, learning to talk becomes talking to learn.