The article, The Talking Cure, took the study Providence Talk and explained how high income and low-income families differed in the amount of time they spent talking to their children. It emphasized the importance of these conversations and the "serve and return" for children to develop a vocabulary from a young age. Something that stood out to me was the focus on cultural differences that may contribute to this difference. In some low-income houses this means that parents are the authority and talking back can be seen as a negative as well as being in adult conversation, while for families of higher income younger children could be more welcomed into this conversation. They also discussed how the study was challenging because it in some ways takes the approach of "blaming the victim" in that parents are blamed for their lack of interactions. I enjoyed the part where the authors stated maybe what we should do is come do the parents laundry and cook them dinner. Lack of time and energy can cause a lack of ability to join in these conversations.
There was a training this last year I took part in with a professor at Villanova University discussing the ways in which shelter staff training can encourage interactions in babies and parents. The training taught residential assistants, case managers and other staff how to work with families or model these interactions. This article made me wonder if there are more ways we can be utilizing community members to model these kinds of interactions or act as teachers in low income communities. How much of this is about knowledge of child development and how much of it is about socioeconomic factors individuals face that cause gaps in this kind of learning?
https://joewillard.substack.com/p/supporting-resilience-of-young-children?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2