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Hear no, see no, speak no...

1 Mar 2004

First I heard a thud, closely followed by a wail. Dashing towards the sound of distress, I was met by my two-year-old son who reported, "Me had a collapsident." I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Who else but a toddler can mangle words so magically and in an instant make you see the world anew? His meaning was clear: he'd accidentally fallen and hurt himself. He had obviously picked up the word 'collapse' from our play with bricks and 'accident' from the many calamities that are part-and-parcel of a toddler reaching one of their many milestones.

Quite simply and logically - and wondrously - he had put meanings to actions. His developing brain had computed that when a tower of bricks fall they are said to have "collapsed" and when something falls unintentionally it is said to be an "accident." Hence, his rather clever conclusion that he had had a "collapsident."

Awesome. My "linkey" (his way of currently saying "little monkey") is becoming a little man as moments like these signify the great primordial leap for mankind. If , as is said, the eyes are the windows on the soul, then the ears are the gateway to humanity.

Geneticists at Cornell University recently announced that our ability to listen closely is what differentiates us from chimps and is the trigger for the evolution of language. This might sound like stating the obvious, but the conundrum has always been that, as humans and chimps share 99 percent of their genes, what was the one percent that made us into the creatures we are now? For over a decade, research focused on language as being the key difference, but repeated studies concluded that the region of the brain that controlled language seemed to be identical in both species.

What the Cornell research now suggests is that the capacity for listening in humans has been specially tuned by natural selection. While chimps showed a higher rate of change in the genes that govern the structure of the skeleton (making them stronger and better able to climb trees) the human ear was becoming highly tuned to sound.

So forget opposable thumbs, it was when our hairy forebears mastered the skill of tuning into sounds and seeing the actions that rendered them meaningful that marked the big step for mankind.

It is strange to think that the once popular figuring of the Three Wise Monkeys might represent the real difference between apes and man. If you adapt the title of this piece of kitsch from "Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" to hear no speech, see no speech, then, very simply, you get the negative outcomes: speak no speech. Which unfortunately, describes what is happening to an increasing number of children.

Alarm bells started ringing about five years ago when primary school teachers, under pressure to meet government literacy targets, found that many children starting school did not have the basic skills to understand what was being asked of them. They couldn't recognise the sounds that are the basis for language, and weren't experienced in the disciplines involved in engaging in conversation with others. Quite simply, they couldn't communicate.

The scale of the problem was first acknowledged late last year when the government announced that "oracy" was to be introduced onto the primary school curriculum as an integral subject, commanding 10-hours teaching time a week.

Alan Bell, the chief inspector of schools, was painfully blunt when he explained the need for lessons in listening and talking. In a nutshell, he said children were arriving at school unable to do either because parents were failing to engage with them at the crucial stage of early speech and language development. Namely, the first three years when the brain develops 70 percent of its adult capacity.

This came hot on the heels of a statement from Alan Wells, director of the Basic Skills Agency, that communication within families had become little more than a "daily grunt" as parents no longer shared family meals with their children, who were more than likely being babysat by television.

Is this a true picture of family life today? Are we really less communicative than previous generations? The answer, sadly, seems to be yes. "This is a problem we're seeing across all social sectors," says Liz Attenborough of the National Literacy Trust campaign, Talk To Your Baby. "We're living in a time-poor society where the demands on parents, who are often both working, mean children are being rushed around with little opportunity to engage with their world."

Of course, as parents, we know one possible solution. Give us more and better paid maternity and paternity leave, make flexi-time a right, possibly throw in a cleaner, and we wouldn't have this problem. While the government is looking at all these options (bar the cleaner) my money's on pigs flying first. So, in the meantime, what are parents of young families supposed to do?

"Talk, talk, talk to your baby and toddler at every opportunity," says Liz Attenborough. "Give them a running commentary of what you are doing when you are together."

To which many of us will say, "I do, I do, I do." But of course in the first two years of life it is not as simple as that. During this period the ears don't simply pass messages to the brain, they cultivate its development and pile-drive vital neurological pathways.

"Hearing is probably a child's most important sense," says neuroscientist Lise Eliot. "Through it children experience language and music, both of which stimulate their intellectual and emotional development in ways no other sense can."

Seemingly, many of us assume that, once our baby has passed his basic distraction test at his 6-9 months check, the ears will simply do their job: we talk and our fledgling toddlers listen and learn. Unfortunately, it's not as simple as that.

"Listening is a skill that has to be learnt," says Angela Harding, director of Christopher Place, the specialist speech, language and hearing centre in London. "Unfortunately, too many children today are not being given the opportunity to learn."

To teach a child how to listen involves many things: they need to hear, see, engage with the speaker, get pleasure from the social interaction and learn about turn-taking.

When your baby gurgles and coos, this is her first elementary conversation with you. If you respond, she'll respond in turn. She will have been listening to you in the womb for the last four months of pregnancy, which, as many tests have shown, is when the ears first start to function. Consequently, she'll enjoy the sound of the voices of you and your partner more than anyone else’s.

That's not to say you can avoid talking in high-pitched "motherese" for the first six months. All parents naturally adopt this exaggerated, sing-song way of talking. And it's the perfect way to communicate because a baby's hearing is set at a considerably higher level than our own. (The difference narrows during the first two years but it won't have reached parity until the child is around 10 years of age.)

From hereon in, it's a case of talking. Repetitively. This is the point when most of us invest heavily in nursery rhyme books. Your jaws might ache, the rhymes might eventually become the aural equivalent of Chinese water torture, but when your child first adds the "O" to your 501st rendition of Old MacDonald Had A Farm, you'll be in heaven and calling all and sundry with the news.

501st? Did she count them all? You forget, I'm a time-poor mother. The point is that it is generally agreed that a toddler needs to hear a word in context over 500 times before they become confident to use it. (Obviously you will find there are exceptions to this rule: "Stop that!" will never be fully understood while the first F-word in extremis will immediately be taken to heart and parroted all around the playgroup.)

But you get the picture. In your child's first 18 months or so you're going to put in a lot of groundwork for little albeit priceless responses, which is why over the past five years 'time-pressure' on parents has become such a cause for concern.

Unfortunately, there's no way of cheating. Wouldn't it be great if we could just play a looped tape of Old MacDonald and get the whole thing over in a day. Or, indeed, stick our toddler in front of the TV and watch their language flourish from behind a newspaper. If only: Yes, your child will hear and see, but the consensus of opinion is they will not make the critical connections from the aural and visual clues necessary to help them learn language and communication skills.

"To learn how to listen and learn the symbols and sounds of language, you need to give your child your full attention," explains Harding. "For words to have any meaning to her, parents have to map their meaning onto an object."

This involves getting down to your toddler's level, both literally and metaphorically. Go to where he wants to play and give (excuse the cliché) 'quality time' where he is the sole focus on your attention. And let him lead the game. So, don't grab his car and say, "Wow, this is a Sunbeam Tiger, with a 16-valve engine and more torque per square inch than a Harrier Jet." First off, it won't only be your toddler who thinks you're sad and mad, but it will simply be incomprehensible to him.

Whereas responding to his "car goes brrm" with "car goes brrm, brm, brrm - very fast" with the appropriate actions will help him make the many connections inherent in your aural and visual clues. Such direct play is teaching more than the difference between fast and slow, or whatever the subject of the game, he will also be picking up clues about inference, nuance, pitch and much more. For example, a cup of tea is hot. When your toddler heads for it with crazed fascination, you warn her of the potential harm by speaking faster, adding alarm to the pitch of your voice, and, in all probability, play-act recoiling to emphasise the hazard and its potential to hurt.

It's not all about picture-book context, drilling words in and need-to-know stuff. Put a sock on your nose, wellies on your arms, do a prat fall. Anything to intrigue your toddler will help her learn and spark wonder, which demands communication. Introduce her to new things and she will want to share her experiences with you. Similarly, if she hurts you, express your hurt so that she begins to understand the whole gamut of emotional responses.

It's not only parents whose input has come under scrutiny. During the research into why children's communications skills are deteriorating, nurseries also came under the spotlight. And the conclusion were harsh. To the extent that a flurry of initiatives has been launched to investigate how to train nursery staff to play with toddlers in a way that helps them learn the rudiments of communication.

Before you reach for the panic-button, it's not simply the case that the majority of nursery staff and childminders aren't doing this already; it's a question of are they doing it well enough in the environments in which they work to enhance the work of parents? A nursery (and often a childminder's home with a specially-adapted nursery room) is generally a noisy place. Naturally, they are full of toddlers with competing needs and demands. The problem is, this inevitable noise is being massively amplified by the nature of the buildings themselves. With their hard, easy-to-clean surfaces, blinds instead of curtains, lack of soft furnishings, nurseries and generally echo-chambers that make a toddler pushing a trolley sound like an on-coming articulated lorry. Put 10 or 20 in a such a room and the cacophony can be deafening even for the most trained ears.

"There is increasing concern that the right environments are not being created to make it easy for babies and toddlers to hear the notes that make up the music of language," explains Harding. "From the moment they are born, they are having to compete with background noise to understand and hear language. In this regard, nursery schools face a particular problem."

At this age, the ear is still developing, making toddlers particularly poor at discriminating between sounds in a noisy setting. Which means a toddler's needs are largely at odds with the modern world. Traffic noise, television, radio, music and electronic toys are all potential sources of excessive noise that may interfere with his ability to pick up the subtleties of speech. As parents, we naturally talk louder to our toddlers to hold their attention in such environments. Ideally, however, Harding recommends that for part of the day the radio, TV or CD should be turned off "so your child can hear your best voice signal."

This is not to say we should live in tyranny to our toddlers, nor some hermetically sealed cell: simply that we should endeavour whenever possible to take time out to explain their worlds to them. Any parent with older children will tell you the better able your child is at communicating the less terrible the twos are (and the experts add, the rest of his life.)

What can't be over-emphasised is the pleasure - all too fleeting - that a toddler getting to grips with language brings. They do "discombobulate" it, as Doddy used to say of the Diddymen. Misuse, mispronunciations, inappropriate context, they really do say the funniest things.

(Taken from "Hear no, see no, speak no...", Junior magazine)

Tags: Talk To Your Baby