Tune in, talk more, take turns is good advice for anyone hoping to build their conversational skills. It is also the name of an enrichment program created by the University of Chicago’s TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health to promote equity in children’s language acquisition and to reduce disparities in developmental outcomes for children from low-income families.
Pediatric surgeon Dr. Dana Suskind, who specializes in cochlear implants and has authored books on brain development and early childhood development, founded the research initiative that would evolve into the TMW Center in 2010 after observing the degree to which differences in her patients’ early language exposure led to inequalities in their ability to learn and thrive. These disparities often fell along socio-economic lines. Parents across the board want to help their children get the best possible start in life, Suskind knew, but she saw that they often lack basic knowledge about how to foster early learning. Envisioning a population-level shift in parents’ and caregivers’ knowledge and behavior, Suskind and her team created an asset-based, parent-centered curriculum — Tune In, Talk More, Take Turns — also known as the 3Ts.
The program has been in existence long enough now for researchers to study its long-term effectiveness. The conclusion? It works, and it keeps on working.
When Parents Know More, They Do More
Abundant research shows that frequent conversational exchanges with adult caregivers promotes children’s language and vocabulary skills, cognitive performance, brain function and even the structure of their brains. A 10-year study by researchers with the LENA Foundation (Language ENvironment Analysis), for example, confirmed that the number of two-way conversations with adults that babies experience in their first three years is related to their verbal abilities and IQ in adolescence.
While all families communicate with their children, studies have shown that children in low-income families generally hear fewer words, shorter sentences and phrases, and are less likely to have books in their homes, setting up disparities that lead to later deficits in academic and social achievement. There’s a lack of consensus around this “word gap” though. Some researchers have questioned the validity of these findings, while others call for more exploration of them, but encourage the idea of supporting families with specialized programs to help their children develop early language skills — which is what Suskind and her team are doing.
The TMW Center has been focused on developing resources and programs to help parents and caregivers understand more about brain development — and the 3Ts have been core. There’s a 3T curriculum for families, a 3T curriculum centered on home visiting, and an online professional development course for educators who want to engage with families about the science of brain development, which are all free to use.
These resources provide parents and adult caregivers evidence-based information about how their kids’ brains are developing, and the vital role caregivers play in their child’s cognitive and language development.
The 3Ts Home Visiting (3Ts-HV) curriculum, for example, is a six-month program for caregivers of 13- to 16-month-old toddlers from low-income families that coaches parents in their homes through 12 tutoring modules. One module discusses executive function and presents strategies for using talk to regulate children’s behavior, particularly during tantrums — and offers guidance to help parents recognize their own emotions and tone of voice. Another addresses the difference between issuing directives versus using explanations to foster young children’s ability to think things through. (Think: “Don’t throw the football in the house because you might break something,” rather than “Don’t throw the #$%$# football in the house” — though the latter is a communication style to which any parent can relate.) Other modules discuss how caregivers can use encouragement, storytelling, numbers and patterns when engaging with babies and toddlers.
Through relatable videos (featuring beyond-adorable infants), parents learn that their young children’s brains are like sponges, soaking up words and ideas, then using them to make billions of neural connections. One lesson describes their verbal interactions like a piggy bank, with every word like a penny in their account. “The more you invest now, the richer they’ll be later.” Parents are encouraged to be in the moment with their child and to talk about what they’re focused on and to look for opportunities to talk and interact. The subtext: language learning isn’t something that exists in isolation, but rather it’s a part of daily life. Everything a child sees and hears shapes their experience, and caregivers are the facilitators who help make that happen.
Evaluating the 3Ts Curriculum
A 2018 study published in the Early Childhood Research Quarterly evaluated the 3Ts-HV curriculum and found that caregivers who participated in the twice-monthly visits were significantly more knowledgeable about early childhood development and engaged more with their children in the conversational turn-taking that builds language. These caregivers praised and encouraged their children more, explained more, asked more open-ended questions, and used less critical language and physical control in their interactions with their children.
The initial study showed the effectiveness of the 3Ts-HV intervention in fostering changes in parents’ interactions with their children within six months of their participation. A recent longitudinal study published in October in the Journal of Academic Pediatrics shows that the program not only improves children’s language learning in their toddler years, but offers sustained benefits to their vocabulary and literacy skills when they reach kindergarten and beyond.
According to Christy Leung, the TMW Center’s director of research who co-authored the most recent study with Suskind, this simple intervention with a group of families increased parental knowledge when the child was 26 months old, contributed to more frequent parent-child conversational turns at 38 months, and promoted children’s language skills at 50 months. The study provides empirical evidence that increasing parents’ knowledge and enriching parent-child linguistic interactions during their toddler years promotes language development at preschool age. Mothers who received the intervention continued to provide their young children with enriched language input without showing significant declines even after the intervention’s “honeymoon phase” ended, Leung says.
When designing the curriculum, Leung notes, “We wanted to emphasize that the parent is the best person to educate their small children. They struggled to realize that they are their child’s first teacher, and they don’t have to wait until their child goes to school [for them] to start learning.”
One of the hardest things, Leung says, is to change parents’ minds about the idea that educational TV is better than they are at teaching their children, especially at an early age. They think they don’t have a good enough vocabulary or education to do so.
Leung adds: “But we emphasized that they are exactly the best resource for their children, and they know their child best. Once they saw that their child learns best from a real person — and that they’re learning all the time, even if they may not be verbal yet — that was a big realization for them.”
Simply put: What parents know matters, and it shows up in their children’s learning readiness.
Prevent, Don’t Remediate
Brain development research has shown that the first years of life are when the brain is growing and developing most rapidly and that the child’s ability to learn in later educational settings depends on what happens before age 3. Early deficits in language learning often accumulate and can affect the entire trajectory of a child’s life. We know this. But that knowledge doesn’t jibe with what the U.S. does, or mostly doesn’t do, to help develop those brains.
Prevention, rather than remediation, is the battle cry for Suskind and her team at the TMW Center, who view parents as an untapped resource in this equation. Their studies point to a doable and easily replicated way of using the public health approach to support families in building the healthy foundations for lifelong learning. (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines the public health approach as one rooted in the scientific method that strives to provide the maximum benefit for the largest number of people.)
According to the TMW Center, 3Ts programs are on course to reach 15,000 families across the U.S. by the end of 2024. Communities and individuals can sign up on the 3Ts website and receive free resources to implement the curriculum in their schools, museums, libraries, community centers and other organizations.
“We’ve gotten such positive feedback from the parents, who say having this experience is unique and valuable,” Leung says. “We heard from our curriculum team that one of the moms receiving the intervention saw another mom in the laundromat and said, ‘This is something you really should sign up for. It changed my life.’”
“That touches us so much it brings us to tears,” she says. “It also gives us another idea for how we can spread the word.”
K.C. Compton worked as a reporter, editor and columnist for newspapers throughout the Rocky Mountain region for 20 years before moving to the Kansas City area as an editor for Mother Earth News. She has been in Seattle since 2016, enjoying life as a freelance and contract writer and editor.
