What's the deal with being poor?

A lot of the research cited in class refers to the detrimental effects of low socioeconomic status on children's literacy rates. It's almost as if poverty is a plague that, once caught, spreads to the whole family. What I'd like to know if what, precisely, is it about being poor that is so harmful? Is it the long  and inconvenient work hours kept by those with low-paying jobs? Is it the lack of household stability caused by such work schedules? Is it the raised parental stress level that accompanies the uncertainty about one's financial future? Is it simply a lack of education?

Despite public perceptions to the contrary, poverty effects a wide variety of people, particularly in the wake of the economic downturn. No longer does the word "poor" apply to just the uneducated. As college debt because the unifying problem of the rising generation, "poor" may soon be an applicable term for families with highly educated parents. If that's true, what does that affect what we know about childhood literacy? Will the exact nature of poverty finally be revealed, or will the change of demographics simply yield a new set of problems?

Dr. Ripley's Believe It or Not

Despite the fact that Dr. Ripley's Youtube video felt like an infomercial, the man had one point that stuck with me long after the cheesy testimonials faded from the screen. Like so many others, Dr. Ripley discussed how some children grew up without adequate talk from the adults in their lives, which leaves those children with a huge vocabulary gap by the time they reach school age. Also like others, he mentioned that the kind of talk children receive in what he termed "taciturn" families tends to be more imperative form - come here, stop that, put that down, get off the furniture, etc.

What set Dr. Ripley apart, however, was the extension he makes with these findings not just to literacy development, but the emotional development of a child raised in such circumstances. What talk that child receives in almost always corrective or punitive. It's easy to see how this would be damaging to that child's sense of self-worth and self-efficacy. I'm sure in many cases it would lead to a sense of inadequacy. Coupled with already being behind linguistically, many of these kids would not have the emotional wherewithal to bounce back and thrive in the face of such looming obstacles. It makes me wonder if there's any correlation between lack of sufficient talk in formative years and instances of learned helplessness in individuals.

The Question Everyone Asks

Raising a bilingual toddler is an interesting experiment linguistically. It's unendingly fascinating to see which words will come out in which language and then try to back track and find out why. One of my daughter's first Spanish words was "agua" or water. A year later, when we go out to restaurants and the waitress asks us what we want to drink, my exuberant child still places her order in Spanish, even though she knows and can say its English equivalent. Invariably, someone will ask if she speaks both English and Spanish and which one she uses most often. Kids, in particular, are fond of this question. I always tell them that my daughter uses whichever word she finds the easiest to say. Agua requires fewer labial gymnastics than water. The same is true of caca. Puppy, on the other hand, is easier than perrito with its rolling r's.

This tendency to go for the easier word matches the findings in Berk's Chapter 9 and is consistent with her continuing muscle control and memory. Recently, however, my daughter has switched to using languages based on context. Around her dad, she speaks as much Spanish as she is able. Around me and her English-only grandparents, English is the language of choice. When it's just me, my husband, and our daughter, her language choice depends on which parent she most associates the concept with. For example, going to the park is something she does with her dad, so it's always "parque." Similarly, she accompanies me on my daily jog, so "run" is always in English, even though a lot her verbs are in Spanish rather than English because they're grammatically more important in that language than they are in English.

When my husband and I first made the decision to raise our daughter bilingually, we worried that it would delay her language development. People were always telling us horror stories about how they tried to teach their kids two languages as infants and then the children didn't speak until they were four. Beck points out that there are many factors at play which dictate when a child begins to speak, one of which is personality. Considering my little girl's rather gregarious nature, it's no surprise that she spoke early and often, no matter what language her discourse was in.

What It Looks Like in Our Library

Reading the article about Colorado Public Libraries' Programs and Practices made me think a lot about what we offer at the library I currently work at. So far, we do one story time a week and are adding a story time for babies at the end of this month.  Our library is part of a larger library district, which offers an "ages and stages" training about child development and literacy. They also provide a form for planning the story times which includes a space for rationales about why certain stories or songs were chosen based on early literacy skills. However, to my knowledge, no formal early literacy curriculum has been adopted and the outreach and training we provide parents depends a lot on the training and initiative of the individual doing story time.

Reading the things that Colorado has done to promote early childhood literacy really fires me up about doing something similar in our area. Heaven knows that the parents and schools in our area need the help. However, the biggest problem we face is the lack of manpower and training. The person in charge of children's programming at our library has very little background in the subject, though he has been to the trainings provided by the district. Furthermore, the library is woefully understaffed, forcing our reference and programming people to spend most of their time helping out the circulation people. Even suggesting such an idea right now is enough to make my coworkers want to set me on fire.

Unlike my coworker, I have an extensive background in literacy instruction. I was an English teacher for six years and did graduate coursework for a Reading Endorsement, which focused on literacy development and intervention. As for language development, my best friend in college was a linguistics major who would frequently regale me with newfound facts about Chomsky's LAD and the importance of Broca's area. I went on to study the topic further on my own when my husband and I decided to raise our daughter bilingual. I wanted to know how our decision would affect her development, so read all the research I could get my hands on.

Early literacy and language development is a subject I'm passionate about, so it galls me that I can't do anything yet with my ever expanding knowledge. However, there was one suggestion in the article that I think I can talk my coworker into: putting up monthly displays about each of the pre reading skills such as phonemic awareness and print awareness. I previously volunteered to help my coworker put up some displays in the children's area. Perhaps this will be a case of killing two birds with one stone. Granted, it's not enough, but it's a start.

Talking about Talking

As the mother of a toddler, it's difficult for me to view the information learned in class on a purely professional level. Like all parents, I want my child to succeed and thrive more than anything in the world, so anything I can learn to give her a leg up in life is of profound interest to me.

One of the things emphasized in the readings over and over again is the importance of talk in developing language skills in children. While I knew this before, I didn't fully appreciate the almost abysmal achievement gap insufficient talk creates. This is particularly prevalent in children of poverty. Impoverished parents tend to focus their talk most on discipline and behavior correction, limiting the amount of vocabulary used in those interactions.

I was intrigued by discussion of narrative development in children. While I find charming the disjointed and sometimes fanciful stories my daughter tells me, it never occurred to me that her doing so was a developmental milestone, or that there was a documented pattern of progression for her stories. The ability to tell about past experiences in a linear fashion focusing on a main event and what happens after is crucial to creating meaning from storybooks and other narrative texts. As such, they are an important part of literacy development. Parents would be well served to ask their children about their day, following up with open-ended questions to elicit responses and help their children develop these skills. I know I've started doing it with my daughter more after learning about the research.

One final note I found important was the encouragement for parents to speak to their children in the language they know best. My husband and I are raising our daughter to be bilingual, since Spanish is my husband's first language and the only language most of his family speaks. When we first decided to go this route, he was very hesitant, and worried that it would negatively affect her school performance later. The readings this week as well as other research I've done on my own all indicate that any vocabulary gains a child makes in any language will ultimately benefit the child, regardless of what the "target" or "school" language is. The point is not to learn English or learn Spanish but to learn language and to foster the brain development that facilitates that. The library system I work at has a large amount of Spanish-speaking patrons. I've watched many parents struggling to speak to their children only in English so they don't "fall behind" when they get to school. Sharing this research with second language learners would be very beneficial, not only fostering the child's development, but also providing already struggling parents with increased peace of mind.