My question to you is...what in the world am I talking about? Our children’s vocabulary is very important, and if we use words such as “this” and “that,” we lose out on opportunities to teach our kids new words. I took a course recently that said that children between the ages of 4 and 5 demonstrate the most significant growth in vocabularies.

A child the age of 4 has a vocabulary of about 1,200 words, but a child the age of 5 has a vocabulary of 5,000 words. That is a HUGE growth in words.

Your child's vocabulary is so important. Think of each skill your child develops as building blocks. Starting from infancy, your child begins by cooing, which turns into babbling that then turns into words and eventually sentences. Research shows that children with higher vocabulary results in better decoding abilities. All that to say that their reading skills will benefit from having better vocabulary.

So what can I do to help my child?

1.Be specific when talking to your children. If I changed the story above to something more like this, it would all make sense…..

The other day I went on vacation. We went to South Padre Island. I enjoyed it because we went parasailing and fishing. My son caught a fish but his line got tangled with someone else’s. We couldn’t stop laughing, but eventually we helped him untangle the line and get it on the boat.

Now isn’t that so much better.

2. Try teaching your child new words or even different variations of the same word. For example: “The elephant is big” can turn into “The elephant is gigantic.” or even “The elephant is enormous.”

3. Use the same word in many different ways. Think about the word “run." The dog ran fast. I ran next to him, but I could not run as fast. My brother tried to run, but he fell down. After I ran, I was really tired. Running is fun.

4 .Make learning new words fun. Instead of doing flash cards (snooze), find something that is interesting to your child and think of words based on the activity. If your child likes playing with farm animals, think of several words you could teach your child involving farm animals. As you play, introduce those words you wrote down.

5. Read books to your child. Books offer so many new and wonderful opportunities for learning words. You don’t have to necessarily read all the words, just talk about the pictures. Try thinking of words you can use multiple times throughout the book.

Vocabulary development is critical for children. It helps with building sentences and it’s important for reading as well. Markus Zusak put it well when he said, “The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn’t be any of this."

Did you know the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) actually has an official stance encouraging pediatricians to talk with their families about the importance of daily, out-loud reading to your children (Literacy Promotion: An Essential Component of Pediatric Primary Care Practice).

Sometimes, when the AAP releases statements like this, that seem like common sense, I have to resist the urge to roll my eyes and tell myself, “Ok, thanks for stating the obvious.”

This one, while perhaps common sense, is very important. 

Why?

Despite the fact that I think most parents would agree with the importance of reading to your children, studies show that only about half of children are read to aloud every day. In addition, reading to children sets the stage for their speech development which helps them do better in school. So what are the reasons for not reading to your child?

1. I don’t have time.

We aren’t asking that you read “War and Peace” every night with your 6 month old. I’m hoping for about 5-10 minutes of reading (1-2 short books). Ultimately, if you don’t have that much time then just read for the amount of time that you can, any amount is better than none. Our kids really like to read during meal times as well, it tends to keep them eating and moving and keep their fighting about food to a minimum. If you routinely watch TV during meals, it’s a much better alternative.

2. If they don’t understand, it doesn’t matter.

Reading to your children even before they are speaking is an important part of teaching them language. Babies learn the sounds of language long before they know any words. The number of words a child hears before they start kindergarten is a strong predictor of how well they will do in school. This is why it’s not only important to read to them, you should also spend time talking with them all throughout the day.

3. It’s so boring.

This one I can really sympathize with. There are nights where I feel like I deserve an Oscar for my dramatic performances … but there are also nights where I drone on in monotone and doze off between pages. It’s important to really engage your children as best you can, based upon their age. Have them help you count objects, letters or words on the page. If it’s a book you’ve read 1,000 times, read the wrong word and let them correct you (“Ohhhh … daaaadd, you’re so silly!”). You can be selfish here. Do whatever it takes to make it interesting for you, it will make it easier for you to do it and it’s likely that your child will enjoy it more as well.

4. They don’t even seem to enjoy it.

Let’s face it … sometimes they don’t even seem like they care. Your 12 month old is crying because he or she is tired but doesn’t want to go to bed. My youngest would rather chew on a book than have you read it. My oldest child would often rather be reading his own book than listening to me. But, I press on. Reading is not only beneficial for the language development, but studies show that it helps to develop more nurturing parent-child relationships. Perhaps more importantly, is what it does for me. After a hard day at work, getting home to referee the boys fight for 2 hours, it’s nice to have some one-on-one time with each child to remember that I still like them.

5. No one ever told me it was important.

Well, you can’t use this one anymore can you? Just in case you missed the message, it’s important.

Start by making a plan to read to your child every day for the next month.

Get a calendar out and mark off the days. 

I promise it will benefit your child for years to come.

Resources For Families

• AAP Tips for Families for Early Reading and Literacy
• Is Your Child Ready to Read?
• 5 Ways Parents Can Improve Their Child's Vocabulary
• The Unique Challenges of Raising a Highly Gifted Child

Ok,so everyone who knows me already knew that I wasn't actually advocating home schooling in the traditional kinder-twelfth grade manner. I believe that parents should school their kids however they feel they works best for their family and their child. I know families who have chosen to home school some of their children while putting the others in public and/or private schools.  They chose what they thought was best based on their individual child and I applaud that.

One thing I would stress is to make sure you don't do anything out of social pressure. People who hang out with people who home school will get tremendous pressure to home school, but some parents simply aren't made in the mold of the home school teacher (especially me). People who hang out with people who do private school will insist that you can't get a good education anywhere else, and that's simply not true. So, weigh your options carefully and make a decision and go with it. Ok, soap box rant over...

However, it's important to remember that educating your child does not start with your decision of where they start kindergarten and it doesn't end when you make the decision and send them off to their first day of school.

You may have seen the following study or heard glimpses of it before, but I don't believe that there is a more powerful study regarding child development so I am going to go over it again:

Observing kids in a preschool, 2 researchers from the University of Kansas, Dr. Todd Risley and Dr. Betty Hart, noticed a difference in the development of vocabulary between the professors' kids and other children in the preschool.  They tried several strategies to get the other children talking, but nothing that they did at the day care enabled them to catch up to the professors' kids in increasing their vocabulary. Interestingly, they were able to get the children talking more, but not with a broader vocabulary. They realized that something must be happening before age 4 that was causing the difference between the two group.  So, they decided to do a study.

They enrolled children in the study by calling people out of the birth announcements in the Kansas City newspaper and then they "began recording what the people were saying to each other, to the child, (and) to each other in the child's presence." Once a month an observer would go to the home and audibly record, as well as make observations about what was going on in the home while they were there.  They followed the children from 9 months to 36 months.

There were 2 big discoveries:

1. The children who had bigger vocabularies had families who talked A LOT. There wasn't a lot of fancy teaching going on or flash cards, just talking. The difference was striking: 2100 words per hour in the professional families vs 600 words per hour in lower socioeconomic settings. This resulted in a 50 percent higher vocabulary and a higher IQ for those children at age 3.

2. Children who had bigger vocabularies had parents who used more "rich language" and not all "business talk." There is a certain amount of instruction that needs to happen with a toddler: "Sit down," "Eat your carrots," “Get your finger out of your nose” and "Don't hit your brother" are common phrases around our house. But it's not those words that lead to language development. The better phrases incorporate phrases like "what if," "shouldn't you" and "remember." These phrases came naturally as the number of words spoken increased because you get past the necessary business talk and into the rich language as your speech quantity increases.

The amazing things about the study is that they were looking to compare socioeconomic groups, but what they found is that if they stripped everything down the only remaining factor in predicting success in vocabulary was the quantity of words spoken and had nothing to do with the child's background.

There are so many interesting aspects of this study and you can read more about it here in an interview with Dr. Risley:

Where Vocabulary Growth Comes From 

Here's how you can use this research to start your child "home-schooling" early.

1. Talk to your baby/toddler.  It seems weird and awkward because early on you get nothing back, but they are soaking up every syllable into a construct in their brain that will likely come spilling back at you at some point when they are ready. Get in front of them and let them see you form the words with your mouth.  Use "parentease." Parentease is that higher pitched, sing-songy style of talking that anyone else listening would make fun of you for, but babies do understand and hear it better.

2. Talk with rich language. Explain things to them. Describe things. I've told this before, but my wife and I like to call our speech with our kids "narrating their world." When we can, everything they touch gets a noun label.  Then we will move on to adding an adjective or a verb when time allows and when they are becoming more developmentally advanced.

Here's an example of how that goes in our house:

"Hannah did you find a ball?"

"Ooohhh, look at that red ball.  And here's a blue ball too, Hannah."

"Hannah, are you going to throw that ball?  Yeahhh, you threw it."

We use our children's names all the time. In fact, we had to reconsider our list of baby names after our first because we realized what sounds cute once doesn’t always sound so cute the thousandth time you say it. It gets their attention in a way that isn't threatening in the way that, "Hey you, listen to me!!  (Sweet transition) Is that a red ball?" is.

3. Pretend they say stuff. It's OK. Using the above example, the first time Hannah said anything that even remotely sounded like ball, we got so excited. "That's right Hannah, it is a ball." I'm pretty sure she didn't even know what happened, but all the smiling and excitement was positive reinforcement and she was trying to say ball over and over again. Now, it's her favorite word.

Language development is such a critical component to the overall success of your child. There is nothing else that you can do that has a bigger impact on their future, so get to talking and talking and talking.

About the author

Justin Smith, M.D., is a Cook Children's pediatrician in Lewisville . He attended University of Texas, Southwestern Medical School and did his pediatric training at Baylor College of Medicine. He joins Cook Children's after practicing in his hometown of Abilene for four years. He has a particular interest in development, behavior and care for children struggling with obesity. In his spare time, he enjoys playing with his 3 young children, exercising, reading and writing about parenting and pediatric health issues.