Back-and-forth exchanges boost children’s brain response to language

So, she would see a balloon up a tree, and she's ask how it got there, and I would say "I guess it was carried up there by a giant eagle" and she'd say "no a man with a crane" and we would just keep spinning increasing outrageous hypotheses.

It became a quite common game for us. She also liked 'guess my animal' type games.

One of the things we focus on is taking turns, giving other people the opportunity to talk, and not interrupting each other. I thinks it's easier with multiples because they tend to regulate this among themselves. Like our two will object if they're interrupted, especially the littler one.

Then one day, as I'm watching him trying to climb a fence at a playground, it occurs to me he was comparably better at intellectual, grown-up activities than actual kid-like activities like getting dirty, climbing dangerous stuff, balancing on rocks, ignoring grown-ups, playing with other kids, etc.

From that point, I tried to back off a little with the grown-up chatter.

I'm happy to say that our following children, although perhaps a little later with the speaking, have been better at the kid stuff. Our first-born did get after it, too. We put him in a Waldorf kindergarten.

So although well-intended, I don't think I had my priorities straight. If you do try to influence your children, you'd better make damn sure your influence is for the better.

Today I would never enroll in a 1000 books before 5 programme. The Waldorf kindergarten was helpful here - they've been thinking about these things for many years, and don't seem to fall as easily for the pseudo-scientific stuff where someone spends a year or two studying whether children respond to specific training (e.g. language), and surprise! yes, they do! Without considering what those children were missing when they had to attend those training sessions, and could have been digging up worms in the garden.

(And yes, I do read with my children, and we probably have more than a hundred books we've bought used over the years, but I consider reading inferior to playing or doing a meaningful activity, like peeling carrots and talking about that.)

I had the opposite experience, but maybe that's because I have decades of experience of talking to pets as if they're human adults...

The 1000 by 5 program seems very ... unambitious, that isn't even one book a day. We've read at least 3 books a day before bed to our child since the day he was born, so we're well over 2000 books before age 2, and that doesn't count his other readings. He's way ahead in other areas, but his speech is not advanced. He watches very little TV, especially compared to his peers, and I often wonder if that has had an effect. I'm not really concerned enough to think that he should be watching more TV, but it seems like hearing that many extra words per day could be a brighter side of a darker habit.

She was an exceptionally loud baby, just constant stream of (non-crying, mostly happy chatter) noise coming from her mouth and we encouraged it by talking to her like a normal adult, and eventually those sounds turned into syllables, words, then sentences, and she's entering teenhood now, and she literally has not shut up except to sleep.

I'm an extrovert myself so she probably inherited it from me, and maybe our engagement with her from infancy is only partially responsible, but spending an entire day with her is mentally exhausting.

It's easier than you might expect - the books are all short picture books at that age, so it's easy to just sit and read 5 at a time. Also if you read the same book 40 times, then it counts 40 times - so it's not 1,000 unique books (although we probably have read 1,000 unique books by now too). We also read 2 or 3 books every night before bedtime, so that adds up quickly.

Our library doesn't have any checkout limit, so we just get 30 at a time and go back once every week or two.

While that may sound awesome, I'm not so sure it's better in the long term. Your daughter would've learned the English names of colors and the alphabet eventually anyway. OTOH using phones and pads changes our brains, making us worse and worse at keeping our focus. We become addicted to that something is always changing or moving until reading a book becomes hard. I'd rather start from the other side, reading a lot of books for the kids, letting them learn at a slower rate but with retained ability to focus.

A child also can't understand when their impulse to follow impulse is harmful. Someone should be interrupting with what you call a poor attitude.

I get this a lot too. My 8 yr old daughter frequently tells me she just wants the answer.

>talk to them like people

Except that most adult/social conversations are restrictive.

I'll use English as an example because I happen to know lots of trivia about it. I think it is similar for other languages. The average educated adult native English speaker knows about 20,000 "word families" of vocabulary. A "word family" is similar to a word, but the word family includes all conjugations of the word and all compound words (so the "police" in "police station" or "police state" is part of the same word family).

The average 3 year old knows about 1500 word families. By age 5 they know about 5000 word families and improve their vocabulary about 1000 word families per year (about 3 per day) until the age of 20. Some people have vocabularies up to around 60,000 word families (for example if they have a very technical job).

When people study in school, they tend to study lists of vocabulary up to 1000-3000 words (not word families). These lists often include ridiculous words like "unemployment". Anyone studying a foreign language should look at their word lists. If you have 5000 words, you should be asking yourself, "Would a 5 year old know and use this word?" And then you should be asking yourself, "If this list has this word and a 5 year old would not use it, what word is not on this list that the average 5 year old would know?" Then you should learn that word :-) (bodily functions are usually included in that list and I have to say it is extremely important if you ever need to go to the doctor!)

There are only about 1500 grammar structures in basic English (although there are lots more set phrases that can be used in grammatical situations) Basic fluency starts with simply being able to use the language in a variety of situations. One of the problems with many language courses is that they start the student memorising grammatical structures (mainly because it is really easy to test and makes it appear as if the student has made progress).

However, I recommend finding a 3 year old to talk to. Take note of the grammar that they can use (it's not much!). Take note of the vocabulary that they can use. When second language learners are at the 1500 word vocabulary level, this is what they should be realistically aiming for. Between the years of 3 and 5, children acquire most of the common conversational grammar. They can do it quite naturally because they can speak easily from about 3 years of age on. Children of that age do not require specialised instruction on language -- their parents are more than sufficient.

Finally, a couple of important notes. It takes children about 12 years before they are able to have adult level conversations. Before that, they are unlikely to understand the news, or even movies that are not aimed at children. Even then, it takes until they are in their teens before they start speaking and listening like an adult. We tend to think of children as having underdeveloped brains, but in reality I think they simply lack the language skills. Children that have exceptional language skills at a young age are often thought to be exceptionally bright and often it is not the case.

Even if you learn as fast as a native child, it will take you 15 years to be able to learn adult level conversation and reading skills. Luckily, second language learners can actually learn a language faster than children, but most learners have completely unrealistic expectations (by an order of magnitude).

Finally, there is a period in language acquisition (known as the "closed period") where you can generally understand what's going on, but you can't speak. Virtually everybody goes through this phase in their first language and most second language speakers also go through this phase. Some polyglots have found mechanisms for bootstrapping through the closed period, but in my experience it takes a considerable experience with language learning to figure out how to do that.

In general, sink or swim works fine if you are past the closed period and is absolutely dreadful if you are not. There is a reason why children are tired and cranky and prone to emotional outbursts. It's incredibly tiring and frustrating not to be able to communicate. (OK, there are other reasons too ;-) ). It is super important to accommodate the closed period (which will be different for each student -- and can last years).

My personal technique is to teach fluency without worrying about specific vocabulary or grammar. I don't use lists, but rather use simple conversations as the guide for what to talk about. I use grammar as a tool to help explain language, not as a subject in itself (although learning grammar taught completely in the target language is a super fun way to learn the language if you happen to enjoy grammar, as I do). My main goal for beginners is to get them past the closed period. After that, you just need to grind (whether that's watching children's TV shows, or reading books, or having conversations with accommodating people). One famous comic/talent in Japan (Pa-kun) came from the US and learned Japanese to practically native level by simply going to the bar every day and talking to the regulars there. It's a great technique IMHO.

Class size can be much larger that 3 because the students can ideally talk to each other. In fact, students should be jabbering away all the time. Teachers need to model the language, but they shouldn't be the ones speaking all the time. For me, an ideal class size is between 8 and 12 (depending on the students). Very small class sizes have he downside that it sometimes puts unreasonable pressure on individuals, which lengthens their closed period. I have specialised techniques to deal with up to about 20. Past that, I never found a mechanism that works (but I only did it for 5 years, so there may be someone who knows of a way that works).