What Do All Babies Need, Yet Aren’t Getting Equally?

To break the cycle of poverty, young children need something that’s as free and abundant as air. An extraordinary program is giving it to them.

Babies need a few basic things to get started: mother’s milk, or something like it; love, attention, and playtime; clean clothes; and a safe place to sleep. All over the world, high- or low-income, desert or forest, high-rise or countryside, doting parents give their babies these essentials. But educational researchers have uncovered something else babies need, and this they’re not getting equally up and down the income scale. The missing element is not an heirloom-quality cherrywood changing table, an all-leather car seat with cup holder, or an ergonomic Scandinavian stroller (none of which has been linked to positive life outcomes anyway). The missing element costs nothing and is as plentiful as air, yet the devastating lack of it hampers brain development.

Many low-income American children are suffering from a shortage of words—songs, nursery rhymes, storybooks, chitchat, everyday stuff. How can that be? All parents issue directives—“Time for your bath” or “Let’s put on your jammies.” In low-income families, where parents often have had less education and limited access to parenting guidance, that’s usually the end of it; while in wealthier families, directives are only a small part of an ongoing conversation. “Let’s put on your jammies. Your jammies are so soft! What color are these jammies? They’re yellow. And look at these little animals on your jammies. What are those? Those are ducks! ‘Quack, quack, quack,’ say the ducks!” All that babbling isn’t silliness; it’s mind- building. Words streaming from radio or television, or from parents or caregivers chatting on cell phones, are of no benefit, however—a finding that merits attention from all parents.

Today, it’s widely accepted that the best time to start engaging in verbal interaction—to share rhymes and songs and picture books—is at a child’s birth. The American Academy of Pediatrics recently stated that advocacy for early reading would become part of all well-baby checkups

Here’s a child on his first day of kindergarten,” Walzer says. “His teacher tells the class, ‘You can pick out a book from the shelf and take it back to your seat.’ But this child has never held a book before. He doesn’t know how to handle it, how to turn the pages. He doesn’t know how to get pleasure from it. He’s failing his first day of kindergarten.”

From there it gets worse. “The data show that a child who is behind in kindergarten will be behind in third grade, behind in sixth grade, and at high risk of not completing high school,” she says.

At the end of the two-year program, Walzer says, some parents grow anxious. A parent will say to a home visitor, “I don’t mind if you don’t bring any more books or puzzles, but can you please keep coming?” The visitor will say, “We still have some time left, but you need to know that you have done all of this, not me; you are the one who has been educating your child.”

“Pretty early on,” Walzer says, “usually within the first week or two, when the child comes out with a new word or completes a rhyme, a parent will say, ‘I had no idea my child could be so smart.’ That’s the moment that changes the whole trajectory because when parents have high expectations, their children tend to succeed. The parent starts saying, ‘You are so smart, you’re going to graduate from high school. You are going to college.’ ”