Talking to kids good, but mind your words

Language experts say that most children build the foundation for their vocabularies between birth and age 3, as a result of parents talking to and with them.

So the advice, talk to your kids, should be a given. And some parents -- like one mom with two young children I encountered on the Metrorail train earlier this week -- get it.

The kids, obviously headed to school, carried backpacks. Mom carried a weary look.

But for 12 consecutive minutes after they boarded the train that trio had a conversation -- about school, about toys, about how the train works, about nothing at all.

Usually, I love hearing kids and parents chat. It makes sense of the boatload of money Art Linkletter and Bill Cosby made back in the day hosting Kids Say the Darndest Things.

But some parents -- like the other mom who boarded with her two kids at the very next station stop -- don't get it, and demonstrate their lack of understanding words by behaving as though any old talk will do.

NOTHING OF VALUE

They forget -- or maybe they never knew -- that words are like cash: If you use them the wrong way you'll have nothing, or at least nothing of value, to show for 'em.

Unfortunately, mom number two misspent her words, and answered her curious kids' queries with ``shut the f--- up,'' ``quit askin' me so many damned questions,'' and ``don't make me smack the s--- out of you.''

An elderly woman sitting next to me gave my arm a friendly squeeze and whispered dismissively that the second mom was ``just ghetto.'' Extended translation: Mister, that family is poor. What do you expect?

Easy to accept, right? Think about it. If you don't speak well, that's understandable: You're poor. It's an explanation that goes hand in hand with the 30-second out-of-context snippets of poverty and poor grammar we see too often on evening newscasts.

FALSE STEREOTYPE

But in addition to being too easy an explanation, it's also a false stereotype that thrives on low expectations for all but the rich.

Both families I encountered on the Metrorail wore threadbare clothes and boarded in low-income neighborhoods.

One engaged in smart conversation. One traded questions for cursing. So what was the difference?

In a landmark 1995 vocabulary study at the University of Kansas, parents and children at income levels ranging from below poverty to wealthy were observed. After a couple of years one group of kids had doubled the vocabulary of the other.

The single, determining factor of success and failure in the study was not income level or quality of life, but rather quality conversation and lots of it.

``Yes, some of the parents were better educated than others,'' says Maria Carlo, a University of Miami education professor and psychologist, whose own research agrees with the Kansas study. ``But in reality, what made some of the parents more successful in building their children's vocabulary was they simply exposed their children to more words. And even when they weren't talking to their children, they talked for them, describing aloud their different activities.''

So if you're the parent of a young child, whom you don't want to grow some day into a 30-year-old who can only afford to live in your basement because the clearest sentence he knows is ``Would you like fries with that?'' then talk to your kid now.

But speak wisely. Words may be free, but they're not cheap.