New Parents, Are You Talking Enough To Your Babies?

Seriously. What do you do around your babies and toddlers? Are you fully engaged in conversation with them, even at this young age? Or do you have your head buried in your phone? Distracted by a TV or book? Not even talking to your partner? Partner not even there?

In the book Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children by Betty Hart and Todd Risley, researchers found that “the more parents talked to their children, the faster the children’s vocabularies were growing and the higher the children’s IQ test scores at age 3 and later.”

All by simply TALKING MORE to their babies and toddlers, especially up to age 3!

Every now and then, clients will come to session with parenting issues. We talk a lot about behavior and how to raise their kids. How their behavior models for those of their children. What they want for their children and how they might best get there.

However, we have never coached on HOW MUCH TO TALK around and to their kids.

What an interesting and potentially game changing parenting tactic…! Simply TALK MORE with your kids and get larger vocabularies, talking skills, and even higher IQs.In fact the researchers advocate not for more programs on talking differently to kids or parenting styles, but more programs to teach parents HOW TO TALK MORE to their children.

How prevalent is this in your household? And especially with all the devices at our fingertips…or dinner tables? Or working from home where work never leaves you? Perhaps it’s yet another good reason to put down your devices and INTERACT with other humans, especially the little humans in your own family…?