Read this article published in Parents magazine.

Your child’s material and human environment influences his or her language development. Certain elements can even slow it down to the point of delay. Here’s how.

Louis, aged 3 and a half, stares at the images scrolling across his small screen. On the menu: an educational program designed to enrich his vocabulary. Tonight, the focus is on farm animals. Every 7 seconds on average, an animal appears, while a cheerful child’s voice introduces it: « La vache, meuuuuuh », « Le canard, coin coin », « le mouton, bêêêêêê »… This little boy is no stranger to television. Since birth, he has devoted a lot of his time and attention to it, averaging 4 to 5 hours a day. And when he’s not exposed to it, he’s fiddling with his mom’s phone and juggling all the (mostly educational) electronic toys that litter his bedroom floor. Unfortunately, despite the sheer volume of educational programs he has consumed, this little boy still doesn’t speak. On the contrary, his language level is well below that of children his age. But Louis is not an isolated case.

Profiles like hers are increasingly common in CMPs (Centre Médico-Psychologique) and speech therapists. Why such a craze for educational programs? We don’t really know what to do with him, what to suggest, » say his parents. We don’t have enough time. And if the channels offer these kinds of programs, it’s because they’re good for kids! Contrary to popular belief, no single educational program is capable of developing language skills in young children. Interaction with adults is essential.

There’s a popular belief that learning to talk is as natural for a child as learning to walk or potty train. As if the little human being were equipped to talk, whatever the environment. In reality, however, if no adult takes the time to talk to the child, he or she will have great difficulty speaking for him- or herself.

 

Television makes children passive

Among the technologies blamed for hindering toddlers’ language development, television is at the head of the pack. The scientific literature is unanimous: too early and too prolonged exposure to the small screen is detrimental to children’s language development, and impoverishes their lexicon. For a child aged between 8 and 16 months, one hour a day of so-called « toddler-friendly » TV is responsible for impoverishing the lexicon by up to 10%. For older children, aged 2 to 4, two hours of television a day increases the probability of language delays by a factor of three. The probability is multiplied by six in the case of children under one year of age exposed to the small screen every day, even for a short time.

 

Time « stolen » from real conversations

How can such results be explained? Time spent in front of the TV screen is time « stolen » from real-life interactions, which provide much richer human stimuli that are beneficial to language development. In fact, some studies have even shown that the sound of television alone can be deleterious. A television left on in the home reduces the frequency and quality of family exchanges. Engrossed by the flow of auditory and visual information on the small screen, parents are less inclined to engage their children. Children tend to hear and produce fewer words.

Electronic toys impoverish exchanges and play « false ».

They blink, read stories, count to 10, play songs, recite the alphabet, speak French, English, Chinese, German, Arabic… Despite their apparent versatility, electronic toys are no more beneficial to a child’s language development. A study published at the end of 2015 in the scientific journal JAMA Pediatrics analyzed 26 moments of play between a parent and their baby aged between 10 and 16 months. Three types of toys were compared: electronic toys, traditional toys (a puzzle and a construction set) and books. Their verdict? In the presence of an electronic toy, exchanges between child and adult were less frequent and more lexically impoverished than in the presence of a traditional toy or book. Children themselves tend to express themselves less and remain more passive. What’s more, in addition to bombarding the child with stimuli, these toys offer a poor auditory spectrum and may even present a risk to the hearing health of the youngest children. Most of these modern toys play loudly, « falsely », and emit sounds that are compressed and undifferentiated from real sounds. It was during the tenth Semaine du Son, in 2013, that specialists denounced their harmful effects.

Background music interferes with word comprehension

Listening to melodies and nursery rhymes can be particularly beneficial to a toddler’s language development, as long as the music is of good quality and only occasionally heard (avoid electronic voices). However, when background music fills the sound space in the child’s living environment, the effect becomes counterproductive. Very young children are not very good at filtering the different sounds they hear. All are treated in the same way: the words spoken to him by his parents, the whirring of the extractor hood, the nursery rhyme « Little fish in the water, swim, swim, swim… ». In this way, background music (even at low volume) interferes with the child’s understanding of the adult’s words, leading to sensory overload and auditory fatigue, to the point of making him irritable and reducing his desire to communicate.

 

Interactive » tablets don’t offer real interaction

A toddler won’t become bilingual in the company of the chatty English-speaking rabbit on the touchpad. It’s through interaction with a human being that a toddler really learns new words, which he’ll then be able to put into the right context. During an exchange with a child, an adult spontaneously adapts his choice of vocabulary, modulates his tone of voice, rephrases what he says and doesn’t hesitate to repeat if he realizes that his little interlocutor hasn’t understood. No machine, however highly developed, can offer this kind of tuning. And yet, such tuning is invaluable, indeed indispensable, to the proper development of language.

 

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How do you preserve your language?

Talk to your child face-to-face for at least 10 minutes a day, in a calm environment.

-Choose games that encourage verbal exchanges, such as books or puzzles.

-Turn off the music as soon as your child stops paying attention.

-Limit daily television exposure as much as possible

-Turn off the TV during mealtimes, a key time of the day when interaction with the child can be particularly rich.

-Don’t leave the television on in the background

-Avoid exposing your child to television before the age of 2 or 3.