I’m amazed by this week’s This American Life (as always).
In Act 1, they tell the story of Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem Children’s Zone.
From the show…
Paul Tough reports on the Harlem Children’s Zone, and its CEO and president, Geoffrey Canada. Among the project’s many facets is Baby College, an 8-week program where young parents and parents-to-be learn how to help their children get the education they need to be successful. Tough’s just-published book about Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem’s Children Zone is called Whatever It Takes.
After he started raising his second son and saw all the science showing the best practices for raising and developing a child in their early years, Geoffrey decided to go big and make a huge impact on the streets of Harlem. As he learned the best practices, he went looking for people putting the ideas into practice in Harlem — and found none.
There was simply nothing available for teaching children from 0 to 3-years-old (or their parents). So he went to work to start reaching out to the thousands of parents and children in Harlem in the hopes that he could reach a tipping point — which would change the community forever.
And in the process he quickly realized that they had to “rethink everything.”
So that’s what they did.
According to research, the most effective time to intervene in the lives of a poor child (or any) is between the ages of 0 to 3. And so Geoffrey began training parents of young children through a 12-week baby college.
What’s really interesting is some of the science/studies that Geoffrey found to back up his training. (Granted I’ve never read a parenting book in my life — so this may be old hat to all of you — but either way Geoffrey found that it wasn’t old hat to the parents in Harlem.)
According to research, the best way to develop your child’s mental abilities is through singing songs, playing games, talking to them and reading to them.
“The more you introduce language to them, the more they grab it.”
And interestingly, research shows that the biggest difference between childhood development in families with “professional parents” vs. those with “welfare parents” was the number of words spoken to the child between the ages of 0 to 3.
Kids with professional parents hear approximately 20-million more words than those whose parents are on welfare. The biggest difference isn’t race, social-economic position, location or anything else — its the number of words the children hear.
“The extra words had stunning results in their development.”
Geoffrey and his team quickly realized that small interventions, early on, can have HUGE effects on the children. Things like just taking the time to read one book to a child each night could drastically alter their development.
But what’s also interesting is that the kind of language the children hear can have a HUGE impact as well.
In families with professional parents, the children typically hear 500,000 encouraging words between the ages of 0 and 3. And they only hear 80,000 discouraging words.
On the flip side, families with welfare parents, typically hear only 80,000 encouraging words and more than 200,000 discouraging words.
(That’s a lot of great advice for any relationship — regardless of age — but we’ll stick with the kids for now.)
It was also great to hear parents realize that their kids WILL learn from the habits of the parents. If the parents hit the kids (i.e. corporal punishment), the kids will in turn hit others when they don’t get their way.
The take home points
I’d recommend you listen to the story (its only 32 min long). But either way, here are a few of the big ideas to take with you.
Read to your kids.
“The only reason we thought it was so hard (to break the cycle of poverty and improve the lives of kids in poverty) for so long is because we were doing it all wrong.”
And the clincher…
“All it would take for things to change in Harlem is for us to decide we want to do for kids there — what we do for kids everywhere else.”
So there you have it. Now as I reflect on this — I imagine this taking place in so many other places. Imagine churches taking on this task. Focusing just as much on training the parents as they do in Sunday School. Imagine Laundry Love People bringing books for children and taking the time to also read and talk to the children they encounter.
Imagine….
