By bread alone

When we were expecting our first baby, decades ago, my husband and I encountered lots of baby-raising advice, welcome or not. Experts disagreed on touchy subjects like the whys and hows of discipline, but all stressed the importance of talking to kids even before they’re able to understand. To me this was a given. How can you not talk to a baby when she’s looking at you like that and making those adorable baby noises in return? Reading to our children came just as naturally, and once we were able to have actual conversations I entered a new “joy of parenting” phase.

Nevertheless, it seems to be news to some that, according to The Atlantic, poor kids are starving for words. Research shows that higher-income parents spend more time interacting with their children than lower-income parents do, to the point that children of the former, by the age of 5, will have heard about 30 million more words than their disadvantaged peers.

Words are as vital as food to a child’s development—who would have thought? Actually, God did: “Man shall not live by bread alone.” Perhaps in belated recognition of this, the White House along with the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation have launched an initiative to “bridge the word gap,” and encourage lower-income parents and “home-based” caregivers to start talking.

This is all research-based, of course. For example, the National Bureau of Economic Research aimed to discover “how maternal knowledge about child development affects the maternal choices of investments in the human capital of children.” In other words, what do moms think is worthwhile interaction time? According to the study, they didn’t seem to understand the value of talking to their kids, but once it was explained to them, they appeared more likely to do it. I hope so; to me it came naturally, even though we roamed all over the poverty index during those early-childhood years. As much as the initiative actually encourages lethargic parents to wake up and start communicating directly with their offspring, it’s all to the good.

Still, the pragmatic justification is a little cringe inducing: “Bridging the word gap is not just an educational imperative, it’s an economic imperative,” according to the Clinton Foundation’s Maura Pally. How about a human imperative? Of course words are needed to prepare kids for the future, but they’re also for building human relationships right now.

Economic imperatives take us right back to “bread alone,” instead of the breathtaking potential that language was intended for in the first place. God fed His people with manna for 40 years, “that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD” (Deuteronomy 8:3, ESV). The purpose of building a 3-year-old’s vocabulary is not so he will eventually get a good job and contribute to the tax base, but so he can build interlocking relationships with his parents, his friends, his community, and ultimately his Creator.

Words are vital, and it’s good the White House and Clinton initiative recognizes that. But words can also obfuscate and deceive unless we understand what they are for.