The following podcast is a dear media production.

Welcome to Raising Good Humans.

I'm Dr. Lisa Pressman and today's episode is lovingly brought to you by my friends at Healthy Nest.

Visit them at W.W. Healthy Nesting.com.

I'm very excited to talk with Dr. Kathy Hirsch Pasick,

who's a distinguished professor of psychology

at Temple University where she runs the infant language lab

and she's also a Brookings Fellow.

She's the recipient of dozens of awards in the field.

She's really extraordinary.

Two of my favorite parenting books are co-authored by Kathy.

One is Einstein never used flashcards and the other is becoming brilliant and I highly recommend them.

So today's topic is language development and while I think it's fascinating I understand that that can seem like a little bit of a

yonner of a topic, but not when you hear from Kathy and not when you think about the fact

that at birth, and even a little bit before birth babies are prime to learn language

and how you interact with them and what kinds of experiences you have and you engage in can make a difference in their language development by age three.

So we know from many studies that there is a massive word gap between advantaged and disadvantaged kids as early as age three.

Now we know that there is anywhere from a 4 million word gap

to as high as 30 million, which was the original study

that has since proven controversial

and there have been many changes,

but there is nevertheless a word gap.

...