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Learn & Connect Articles

Help Your Child Reach the 40 Million Word Goal

Article | 4 min read

Dig Deeper

How To: Reach 40 Million Words

How many words does your child need to hear in the early years? Research tells us that children who hear at least 40 million words or more in the first four years of life develop early conversational skills, learn to read on time, do better in school, and have more communication opportunities in the future. Read how you can help your child with hearing loss meet the 40 million word goal!

Build That Brain!

Your child’s brain is one of the most powerful processors of information on the planet. Science shows that the first three years represent the most important window for brain growth and development. Your child’s brain is wired and ready to listen and learn language from you during the interactions and conversations you have with them every single day. Every word, phrase, song, and story you share with them becomes a permanent part of their brain’s ever growing network structure.

Hearing Technology Delivers Language to the Brain

Your child needs to hear all the language occurring around them. Today’s hearing technology makes it possible for their brain to have excellent access to all of the sounds of speech and language. Here are the most important steps to providing full access:

  • Make sure your child’s hearing technology is working at full capacity
  • Know the current status of your child’s hearing through daily listening checks
  • Keep your child’s hearing technology on 10+ hours per day

Your 40 Million Word Goal 

Hearing 40 million words by age four may seem like a lot of words. The good news is that you already have all of the skills to help your child reach this goal! You’ll easily reach your 40 million word goal by talking, reaching, and singing together every day. Your child’s brain actually seeks and recognizes patterns in speech, songs, phrases, and sentences. Every time you talk with them, you’re continuing to expand their existing and rapidly growing brain networks. Every word said is a seed with the potential to develop roots, branches, leaves, and flowers.  

Helpful Tips to Reach Your Goal

Make Listening Easier

Reduce noise makers around the house like the radio, TV, and loud appliances.

Use LSL Strategies and Techniques

The LSL strategies and techniques you learn in intervention will help your child learn spoken language. Make sure to use them in your everyday routines.

Speak in Phrases and Full Sentences

Single words are not enough. When you talk to your child using phrases and sentences, you’re not only providing more meaning, you’re using a natural conversational style that helps their brain map sentence structure and word order.

Get Silly and Sing

Sing a song your family has always enjoyed, or try making up your own songs, using words in a singsong way.

Read Books at Least 15 Minutes a Day

Set a goal to read aloud to your child for 15 minutes every day. You can read to them while they eat breakfast, before bedtime, in a doctor’s waiting room, or while in the car or on the bus.

Talk About the Five Senses (Touch, Smell, Sound, Sight, Taste)

Simply by describing and talking about the five senses pertaining to objects, you can explore a multitude of language opportunities!

Explore All the Details

A leaf can spark language about stems, tree branches, bark, roots, and soil! Think through all the endless connections and details from the objects in your day-to-day routine.

Let Your Child ‘Listen In’ When Talking to Other People

Your child learns much of their language by overhearing conversations around them. Make sure they have plenty of opportunities, in close range, to hear you talking with other people.

Use an FM or Remote Microphone

Talk to your audiologist about remote microphone technology that connects your — or their teacher’s, caregiver’s, or coach’s — voice directly to your child’s hearing devices.

Add New Vocabulary to Known Words and Concepts

Break out your trusty Thesaurus and start exploring all the synonyms for the common words you already use. Big can become large, huge, enormous, gigantic! 

Just remember you’re already on your way to the 40 million word goal! Keep the conversation going and your child will be using the very words, songs, phrases, and sentences they hear to reach spoken language success!

For encouragement to meet the 40 million word goal, join the Family Support Community and hear from other families who are growing their child’s brain to listen, talk and read on par with their hearing siblings and friends!

 

Additional Resources:
  • Thirty Million Words: Building a Child’s Brain - Dana Suskind
  • TMW: Center for Early Learning + Public Health
  • Video: The Early Language Gap is About More Than Words
  • The Early Catastrophe: The 30 Million Word Gap by Age 3
  • MIT Brain Study: Back-And-Forth Talk Key To Developing Kids' Verbal Skills

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