Talk to Your Kids

Talking to your kids like they are people and not Tarzan’s pets makes a huge difference. If you start out with “Is Baby hungry?” or the like, you are doing your kids a serious disservice. Speak to them like people, they can handle it. You don’t have to recite Shakespeare, but the baby talk thing has got to go.

In 2002, my division was downsized. I was an art director for a major multinational corporation and I was given a choice; either work in a place that was 90 minutes away from my home by train, or jump ship and take care of my kids.

My wife and I were lucky. Her salary was enough to let us get by. I didn’t want to work 15 hour days just to pay for child care and have someone else raise my children, so I stayed home, became Mr. Mom, and never looked back. I mention all of this to illustrate that I am not a teaching professional. Just a dad, and a proud one, at that.

I did it all… diapers, feeding and reading, reading, reading. I read The Hobbit to my wife’s belly when she was pregnant with our son. I read it again when she was carrying our daughter. When I was downsized, my kids were not yet old enough for pre school. My top priority became to make sure my kids understood their native language.  I knew that if I demystified the language for them, they would become kids who loved to read, they would be unafraid of writing, and they would be better prepared to stand and deliver in school.

My wife and I read to them both each night. When they were old enough, we read as a family. We’ve been through all of the Harry Potter books, all of the Narnia books, Septimus Heap, Artemus Fowl, you name it. Everything that they chose and some that I picked for them.

Some nights I didn’t feel like reading. Some nights I was too tired, or too cranky, or just not in the mood. Too bad. I did it anyway.

 Why?

So they could hear me speak to them.

Studies show that one of the main differences between success and failure in young children comes down to how familiar they are with their language. (Check out this article from the Santa Fe New Mexican ).

 I don’t mean just sight words, but how well they understand what is being said to them and what they are reading. Tone and inflection can be just as important as knowing the “i before e, except after c “ rule. This affects not only how well they write, but how they perceive authority and how well they respond to directions.

I didn’t know any of this back in 2002. I just knew that I loved to read as a kid, and I felt that if there was one thing that had turned me into a lifelong lover of learning, that was it. So, along with the obvious, (to me), benefits of reading, it turns out that the research supports the idea.  At least indirectly.

When I would read to my kids, they would inevitably ask questions. My answers grew as they grew. Soon, we were having full-blown conversations about the relative merits of why anyone would want to eat green eggs and ham in the rain, or on a train, or… well, you get the idea. 

The reading was great for bonding and exploring literature great and small, but it was the conversations that reading encouraged that really got them involved.  Through it all, my wife and I always made sure to speak to them, and listen to them, as if what they said and how they said it mattered.

Now that they are a bit older, they remain unafraid of words. That may sound strange, but many kids “hate English” as a subject or fall behind in a class that requires them to take notes on a lecture. Standardized tests are not exactly written for the kid who has only experienced two or three thousand words in their daily lives. The disparity starts to show up around the third grade when those tests start dividing kids into tiers based on performance. Being confident enough to pull meaning from context or figure out a root word can make all the difference.

Talking to kids doesn’t make them smarter. It can, however, help them do better in school, where the focus is more on testing and understanding what has been taught. This, in turn, raises their grades, helps them reach their goals of college or career and helps them to better prepare for a life full of learning.

Which really begins once they are out of school, anyway.