Tune in, Talk more & Take turns
My New Life
Kate Garlinge
4.7 • 654 Ratings
🗓️ 23 February 2022
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Parent-child interaction is crucial to brain development. An important part of that interaction is what is said while we’re engaging with our child — not just the words we use, but the frequency of those words and the way in which they are offered up.
Jessica Rolph welcomes Dr. Dana Suskind to today’s episode to talk about the reasons why a language-rich environment is so important and to best achieve one. Dr. Suskind is the author of Thirty Million Words: Building a Child's Brain and she is releasing a new book in April called Parent Nation: Unlocking Every Child's Potential, Fulfilling Society's Promise.
Key Takeaways:
[1:36] Dana talks about her path from surgeon to public health advocate.
[3:03] How nurturing words contribute to the development of an infant’s brain.
[4:15] An overview of the Thirty Million Words study, the impetus behind Dana’s first book.
[6:45] How can parents help develop a nurturing experience while talking to their infants? Dana and her team developed 3 Ts: Tune in, Talk more, and Take turns.
[9:05] How can parents prioritize language in the face of so much streaming?
[10:25] Cooing and goofy exchanges with your baby have a critical role to play as catalysts. Dana explains why.
[12:23] The distinction between overheard speech and speech directed to the child.
[13:16] Dana talks about Parent Nation, a book that pictures a society that puts children and families at the center, that values the important work that parents and caregivers do every day.
[16:08] Most of this country believes in the power of family, parents, and caregivers, but they don’t look at one another as allies or as a collective whole. Dana and her team want to change that.
Mentioned in this episode:
Brought to you by Lovevery.com
For practical tips on how to create a language-rich environment for your baby and toddler, tune into My New Life episodes:
Get your baby talking with The Speech Sisters
Baby talk: Learning your baby’s language with communication and play with Dr. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Parenthood is a time of so much change for you and your baby. |
| 0:13.8 | A little reliable information can go a long way towards making this new life a good life. |
| 0:20.1 | I'm Jessica Rolfe and this is my new life, |
| 0:24.1 | a love every podcast. While the science aligns on what's healthy for a baby's brain development, |
| 0:30.1 | when it comes to how to care for our babies, there's a seemingly endless supply of competing |
| 0:35.0 | perspectives. Parents are swimming in advice on sleep, feeding, |
| 0:39.7 | parenting philosophies. In this season of the podcast, we aim to provide a variety of curated |
| 0:46.2 | perspectives so you can make informed choices for your family. |
| 0:54.5 | Parent-child interaction is crucial to brain development. That much is clear, but an important |
| 1:00.1 | part of that interaction is what is said while we're engaging with our child. Not just the |
| 1:04.8 | words we use, but the frequency of those words and the way in which they are offered up. |
| 1:09.8 | Here to fill us in on why a language-rich |
| 1:12.0 | environment is so important and how we can best achieve one is the author of 30 million words. |
| 1:19.1 | She's releasing a new book in April called Parent Nation, Dr. Dana Susskind. Hello, Dana. |
| 1:25.5 | Thank you so much for having me. So your path from surgeon to public |
| 1:30.1 | health advocate is so interesting. Can you share that with our listeners? It sounds funny to say, |
| 1:35.5 | but the path began in the operating room. As you know, I'm a pediatric cochlear implant surgeon, |
| 1:41.5 | and a cochlear implant is this amazing piece of technology |
| 1:46.4 | that allows a child-born death the ability to hear, to talk, and most importantly, to mainstream, |
| 1:51.8 | both educationally and socially. I started our cochlear implant program probably about 12 or 13 years |
| 1:59.1 | ago. And I did that because I thought by giving children access to sound, it could change their lives. |
| 2:08.0 | And pretty soon after starting the implant program, though, I started seeing huge differences in outcomes |
... |
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