Talk to the Children

Cory Turner:

As a surgeon, Suskind performed cochlear implants at the University of Chicago. The implant is a remarkable marriage of medicine and technology that can help even profoundly deaf children hear. But Suskind noticed that her young patients went on to develop language skills at wildly different rates. Some reached or surpassed grade-level. Some didn’t. Why

In Suskind’s new book, Thirty Million Words: Building A Child’s Brain, she explains her personal journey toward the surprising answer: The kids who thrived generally lived in households where they heard lots of words. Millions and millions of words.

The kids who received cochlear implants but struggled to develop language often did so because their parents didn’t talk to them as much as their growing brains required. Suskind writes, “without that language environment, the ability to hear is a wasted gift.” And so the surgeon became an activist. For talk.