The Miracle of Language: How Parents Build Babies' Brains (with Dana Suskind)

Dr. Dana Suskind, a pediatric surgeon and early childhood expert, discusses the transformative power of nurturing language environments in children's development and the vital role parents play as architects of their children’s brains. Highlights of the conversation include: 

• Starting at birth, the back-and-forth exchanges between parents and young children, both verbal and nonverbal, form the building blocks of brain development. Through nurturing talk and interaction, parents shape children's capacity in a broad range of areas, including literacy, math, spatial reasoning, behavior regulation, ability to cope with stress, perseverance, and even moral development. 
• Pediatricians should play a much larger role in helping parents understand their powerful influence on their child's development, starting at birth. A public health approach to early childhood that integrates perinatal care and pediatric practice could greatly improve early development outcomes. 
• Artificial-intelligence "assistants" will soon have the capacity to provide responsive, back-and-forth interaction in both home and childcare settings. Yet, we must proceed with caution in using AI with young children. Scientists do not fully understand the underlying processes of foundational brain development, and this kind of new technology could potentially change the architecture of children's rapidly-forming human brains. 

Relevant Work

• Parent Nation: Unlocking Every Child's Potential, Fulfilling Society's Promise 
• Thirty Million Words: Building a Child's Brain 

About the Guest
 
Dr. Dana Suskind is a pediatric surgeon at the University of Chicago Medical Center who specializes in hearing loss and cochlear implantation. She is also a social scientist and nationally-recognized thought leader in children's early language development.

Dr. Suskind directs the University of Chicago Medical Center's Pediatric Hearing Loss and Cochlear Implant program. She is the founder and co-director of the TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health, which aims to create a population-level shift in the knowledge and behavior of parents to better support their children's foundational brain development from birth to age three, especially those born into poverty. 

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