In a recent article published in the Journal Pediatrics, Frederick Zimmerman (Zimmerman 2009) and his colleagues reported a study in which they interviewed two hundred and seventy five families selected so as to represent a cross section of the US population as a whole. The families had children between the ages of 2 and 4. The aim of the study was to assess the effects of adult language input, television viewing and parent child conversations on young children’s language acquisition. The measures used to assess these three variables were repeated after a year to evaluate their long term impact on children’s language ability.

The results were interesting because they reflect the complexities of the impact of the language environment for children.

The adult language input, measured by a word count of words used by parents, had a significant positive effect on language acquisition but was more effective when paired with parent child conversations. Television viewing had a negative effect upon language learning but the negative effect was minimized when combined with parent conversations. Parent conversations had the most positive effect and enhanced the impact of parent language usage, and reduced the negative effect of television viewing.

Parent-child conversations thus appear to be the most important single factor in nourishing a child’s linguistic development.

For parents this suggests that while reading to children is very important, two sided conversations are even more so. Such conversations need to begin by your really listening to what your child is saying. This can be facilitated if you bend down or kneel to the child’s level, and tilt your head to indicate that you are really listening. Repeating what your child said is another way to insure this. It is important, whenever possible to respond, to a child’s words. If you can’t it helps if you say, “I can’t talk now, I’m doing something I can’t stop, and we’ll talk in a few minutes, okay?”

Conversations can be of different types. Sometimes, you can put the child’s feelings into words when he or she is unable to do so. “You look like you are not happy about going to the baby sitter today.” Of course you have to use this tactic sparingly and avoid it when the child is very upset. In that situation you might simply aggravate the situation. If the incident involves an interaction with another child, or sibling, it is important for you not to take sides and to ask each child for their version of the event. This often has the added benefit of calming the situation down.

Watching television with your child can often provide openings for conversation, “Was that a nice thing for SpongeBob to do?” In asking questions it is important keep them simple and direct. Whenever possible use the child’s own words in response to the child’s input. Helping children identify and label their feelings is one of the most useful benefits of conversations with children. And the added benefit of such conversations is to, as this study demonstrated; offset some of the negative effects of television viewing for young children.

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Zimmerman, F. J. et. al. (2009). "Teaching by Listening: The Importance of Adult Child Conversations in language Development." Pediatrics 124 (1): 342-349.