The power of language
Dana Suskind is actually a surgeon, but America now knows the 45-year-old primarily as an activist - for baby talk. Suskind wants to encourage parents to communicate with their children as much as possible, from day one. Not by using hand signals, as the «dwarf language» propagated in parenting courses suggests, but by talking to babies and toddlers whenever the opportunity allows.
This, says the professor of medicine from Chicago, is food for the brain. Language, only language, ensures that our children's mental motor can develop its full potential one day and switch into high gear. «If a baby lacks breast milk, there are alternative products that will keep it alive and healthy,» says Suskind. «But its brain will only thrive if it has carers who talk to it as much and as sensitively as possible. There is no substitute for this kind of nourishment."
With her "Thirty Million Words Initiative», Suskind has made it her mission to anchor this scientific realisation in the minds of parents. The parent education programme is aimed at mothers and fathers from the social underclass. It aims to help them improve their communication skills - and give their children better prospects at school in the long term.
A lack of linguistic stimulation also has an impact on IQ and learning success.
So far, a few hundred families from Chicago have taken part, and a further two hundred have signed up for the next round. In five years' time, the first data will show whether the initiative is bearing fruit. At a time when the gap between rich and poor is widening, the results should also be of interest to education policymakers outside the USA.
The gap between rich and poor: 30 million words
Thirty million words, that is 30 million words, and in this case they quantify a gap in children's vocabulary.Children from underprivileged backgrounds hear around 30 million fewer words by the time they reach the age of three than their peers from comparatively stable backgrounds. US psychologists Betty Hart and Todd Risley were able to prove this over 20 years ago.
They had wired up family households from different social classes and then meticulously analysed how much parents talked to their babies and toddlers. They later tracked the school careers of these children up to third grade.
The research report «The early catastrophe» from 2003 summarises the results of the long-term study. According to the report, a lack of language stimulation in infancy and early childhood not only has an impact on children's vocabulary, but also on their later IQ and learning success at school. And vice versa: babies and toddlers with whom their parents talk a lot later have better school grades and a higher IQ than their peers from less talkative households. Surgeon Suskind would probably have had nothing to do with learning research of this kind if she had not been faced with a puzzling problem. The paediatric ENT doctor specialising in hearing problems heads the relevant department at the University Hospital of Chicago and is responsible for the surgical insertion of hearing implants in severely hearing-impaired or deaf children. The operation is usually performed sometime in the second year of life, or at the latest in the third year. Doctors recommend not exceeding this time frame: The longer we deprive the brain of acoustic stimuli, the more difficulty it will have in processing and categorising them later on.
Language ensures that the intellectual motor will one day develop its full potential.
Suskind had already helped countless small children to hear, but realised that the operation did not work for all patients. While most of them began to speak and caught up with their peers, some children were barely able to express themselves verbally even years later. Some of them communicated using sign language despite having hearing.
How the environment shapes our brain
Suskind was groping in the dark in her search for the reason for the puzzle until she realised something. The children who struggled to speak despite successful surgery had something in common: they came from socially or economically disadvantaged families. Suskind did some research, came across the work of Hart and Risley and continued her enquiry. Today she knows: «If we lack linguistic stimulation in early childhood, the ability to hear is a wasted gift.»
Unlike other organs, which are fully functional at birth, the human brain is still immature at this stage. «Whether it can develop its full potential one day depends on the environment in which we grow up,» says Suskind.
Humans are born with a good 100 billion neurones. These nerve cells are specialised in receiving, conducting and processing stimuli and signals. The neurons merely form the basic structure of our brain. In order for it to perform its miraculous feat, it needs synapses, the contact points between the nerve cells. They enable these cells to form connections with each other and therefore act as a control centre for all information transfer.
When we learn something new, be it a movement, a flavour or a word, nerve cells form new connections with each other, which become denser as we repeat what we have learned. This creates a neural network in our brain, the map of our learning experiences, so to speak. «This network expands and becomes denser the more impulses reach the brain,» says Suskind.
The way you talk to small children is also important.
«How do we provide stimulation? Exactly: through social interaction - in the early years, this means talking to the child as much as possible.» But parents don't have unlimited time for this, says Suskind: «85 per cent of brain growth is completed within the first three years of life. The foundation for later learning is laid during this time.»
The brain of a three-year-old child has twice as many synapses as that of an adult, which speaks for the enormous adaptability and learning ability of babies and toddlers. However, brain development is not just about creating these new contact points; an equally important part of the process later on is breaking down unused connections.
Unsuspecting parents
According to the «use it or lose it» principle, the brain eliminates synapses that are rarely used by the age of ten. «So ultimately our environment, what we learn, absorb and experience in it, largely determines the structure of our brain,» says Suskind. This is not good news for children from families with a low socio-economic status. They are at a disadvantage when it comes to learning success.
Social researchers cite various reasons for this. One important reason was provided by the extensive audio material from Hart and Risley: in such families, children are spoken to much less. Why is that? «Financial worries or family problems are a stress factor,» says Suskind. «Parents who are consumed by their worries are less likely to engage with their children.» But there is also a simple reason why parents no longer communicate with their children. «They simply have no idea that they could be influencing their child's brain development,» says Suskind. «That's where we come in.»
Mothers and fathers must be made pillars of support.
In the USA, over 32 million children live in low-income households. Every year, the government spends around one billion dollars on their educational and social support. The success of these measures leaves much to be desired, and the educational prospects of these children remain bleak. Suskind criticises the fact that the current support programmes start too late, namely when the children are already attending nursery or school: «We know from brain research that the most important learning phase is already over by then.»
She also criticises the fact that parents play a secondary role - if any - in the implementation of such programmes. In contrast, the Thirty Million Words Initiative (TMW) turns mothers and fathers into pillars of the mission. Suskind's team works on an interdisciplinary basis, with employees approaching parents in community centres in problem neighbourhoods, in paediatricians' surgeries or in the maternity wards of hospitals. The TMW team accompanies families who want to take part in the project for six months. Educational counsellors visit the family at home for an hour every week. «We translate the latest scientific findings into simple concepts that are suitable for everyday use,» says Suskind. «They show parents how they can help their children develop their mental potential.» In addition to personal discussions, a multimedia platform is a central element of the collaboration. Experts post their suggestions there with photos, illustrations and video sequences of everyday situations.
A small recorder with special software records how much is spoken in the family and with the toddler in question. Just the size of a USB stick, the child can carry it in their trouser pocket. «We discuss the analyses with the parents every week,» says Suskind, «this encourages them to achieve their personal communication goals."
After completing the programme, mothers and fathers continue to have free access to learning material via social media. "What I enjoy most,» says Suskind, «is the motivation these parents show. They show a lot of commitment, even though their personal situation remains tense.»
Parents have it in their hands
Children are not born smart, they are made smart, according to the credo of the Thirty Million Words Initiative. «Particularly in poorer families, the view still prevails that a child's intellectual potential is fixed at birth and therefore unchangeable,» says Suskind. Her interviews with mothers from corresponding social milieus have shown this impressively. «This attitude is understandable,» she says. «Anyone who gets the impression as a child that they are stuck in a hopeless situation will also assume as an adult that things are unchangeable.»
Instead of dictating everything, parents should try to offer their child options.
There is no doubt that genes play an important role in intelligence, Suskind admits, but they alone are not enough. «It's like a house,» she says, «if you use bad building materials, the best foundation is useless.» That's the good news: parents are not powerless. They can help to improve their children's educational opportunities. However, it's not just the number of words they say to their child that matters, but also the way they talk to them.
Not only are young children from lower-class families spoken to less, according to the long-term study by Hart and Risley, they are also six times more likely to hear negative content than their peers from stable backgrounds. These include commands and harsh reprimands, which, if spoken too often, can inhibit language acquisition, as Hart and Risley found. «We observed an overwhelmingly negative effect on the child's later development when their interactions with their parents were characterised by constant reprimands,» the researchers wrote.
Training for self-regulation
Stop it! Do this! Do this! Such commands are not only unpleasant for the recipient to hear, they also lack linguistic complexity, says Suskind. The learning content for the child? Zero. If you want to provide mental stimulation, encourage your child to think for themselves instead. «Instead of telling the child to put their toys away, we can ask them a question, for example,» says Suskind. «What are we going to do with the toys now that we've finished playing? That's right! We put them away, bravo.»
Instead of dictating everything, parents should try to offer their child options and ask for their own opinion. This could mean, for example, asking them which item of clothing they would prefer, alluding to the weather. «By having to consider and weigh things up against each other, the child is not only training their language skills,» says Suskind, «they are also practising self-regulation.»
How language strengthens social skills
In simple terms, self-regulation means the ability to control one's own impulses and needs in such a way that goal-orientated action is possible. For example, a schoolchild should be able to suppress their feelings of displeasure to such an extent that they do not disrupt lessons. They must learn to subordinate short-term needs (the desire to chew chewing gum right now) to longer-term goals (getting something out of the lesson). Ultimately, the ability to concentrate on a task without being distracted is crucial to a child's learning success. This can only be achieved through self-regulation. Researchers agree that if children lack this, their learning prospects are bleak.
No computer, no television and no cramming of words can replace a family culture of conversation.
Here, too, it is up to the parents to help their children - precisely through language. Back in the 1930s, the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky established that a child's language skills have a significant influence on their ability to self-regulate.
«Today's research supports his theory,» says Suskind. For example, children with delayed language development, whether due to hearing problems or an environment with little linguistic stimulation, are more likely to exhibit conspicuous social behaviour, which can be explained by underdeveloped self-regulation.
The opposite is also true: studies with young children have shown that language support measures not only improve their vocabulary, but also their social skills. «The effect was most pronounced in boys, who often struggle with self-control, and in children from poor families,» says Suskind.
In the brain, the ability to self-regulate is localised in the prefrontal cortex. «Therein lies the crux of the matter,» says Suskind. «From the moment we are born, this region is highly susceptible to feelings of fear and threat. We know from research that a family environment characterised by stress, emotional coldness and a negative culture of conversation inhibits the development of the prefrontal cortex.»
Nothing beats social interaction
Research also tells us that when it comes to brain development, no computer, no television, no word cramming can replace the culture of family dialogue. «Unlike a jug that keeps what you pour into it, the early childhood brain behaves like a sieve when interpersonal contact is missing,» says Suskind. «Direct social interaction between a baby and their carer is a key factor in successful language acquisition - and learning in general.»
This has been proven by renowned linguist Patricia Kuhl, among others. In her laboratory, she confronted nine-month-old babies from American families with the Mandarin language. While half of the babies were placed in front of video and audio recordings in which a woman spoke to them in a motherly, gentle tone, the others heard the same words from «real» tutors who spoke to them face-to-face.
After just twelve visits to the laboratory, these babies recognised the specific sounds of the Chinese language. Meanwhile, the babies who had only heard Mandarin via recording did not recognise anything.
This experiment, says Suskind, is one of her favourites. It impressively demonstrates what she wants to achieve with her mission. «Every word we say is a building block for our children's brains,» she says. «I want this message to seep into the groundwater one day.»
«Thirty Million Words» or the power of language
Chicago medical professor Dana Suskind wants to show parents how they can use language alone to promote their children's intellectual development and thus improve their future prospects. In 2009, the mother of three launched the Thirty Million Words Initiative (TMW), a parent education programme aimed at mothers and fathers from underprivileged families. Behind TMW is an interdisciplinary team of experts from the fields of medicine, linguistics, psychology and education, who translate research findings into practical suggestions for parents and carers. A pilot project on the initiative is currently underway in Chicago, which will one day provide information on whether Suskind's programme enables children from disadvantaged families to have better educational prospects in the long term.
