{"id":6178,"date":"2016-09-06T08:22:21","date_gmt":"2016-09-06T15:22:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/everhear.com\/?p=6178"},"modified":"2022-09-29T14:18:39","modified_gmt":"2022-09-29T21:18:39","slug":"child-development-tips-from-thirty-million-words-initiative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everhear.com\/child-development-tips-from-thirty-million-words-initiative\/","title":{"rendered":"Child Development Tips from Thirty Million Words Initiative"},"content":{"rendered":"

We at Evergreen Speech and Hearing Clinic are big fans of the Thirty\u00a0Million Words\u00ae Initiative<\/a>. It\u00a0is “an innovative parent-directed program designed to harness the power of parent language to build a child\u2019s brain and impact his or her future”.<\/p>\n

What is Thirty Million Words\u00ae?<\/h2>\n

The program is based on a world-famous 1995 study<\/a> by researchers Betty Hart and Todd Risley, who found that some children heard much less\u00a0words by 4th grade than others. This negatively impacted their vocabularies, reading skills and overall preparedness for school. Children who were exposed to more communication in their younger age, however, were found to be more successful. The bottom line is that children who started out ahead, stayed ahead even throughout their high school years. TMW call this disparity an achievement gap. The initiative’s main goal is to promote better communication between parents and kids, and help close this gap<\/span>.<\/p>\n