LIVE: MIT Researcher Romeo On Importance Of Having Conversations With Children

LIVE: MIT Researcher Romeo On Importance Of Having Conversations With Children

Rachel Romeo, a graduate student at Harvard and MIT and lead author of the new study published in Psychological Science says having conversations with your child can have a major impact on their language and brain development. 

“We like to say it’s not just good enough to talk to your child, you have to really talk with your child,” Romeo says.

The speech-language pathologist says helping your child learn isn’t just about dumping language into your child’s brain, it’s about carrying on a conversation with them— or what researchers call a “conversational turn”.

Romeo explained that conversations with children look different at different stages of their life. In infancy, she says conversational turn-taking could include exchanging sounds or making faces and as the child ages, you can evolve the turn-taking to asking and answering questions.