Thirty Million Words

Building a Child's Brain

By: Dana Suskind

Narrated by: Kathleen McInerney

The founder and director of the Thirty Million Words Initiative, Professor Dana Suskind, explains why the most important—and astoundingly simple—thing you can do for your child’s future success in life is to to talk to them.

What nurtures the brain to optimum intelligence and stability?

It is a secret hiding in plain sight: the most important thing we can do for our children is to have conversations with them. The way you talk with your growing child literally builds his or her brain. Parent talk can drastically improve school readiness and lifelong learning in everything from math to art. Indeed, parent–child talk is a fundamental, critical factor in building grit, self-control, leadership skills, and generosity. It is crucial to making the most in life of the luck you have with your genes.

This landmark account of a new scientific perspective describes what works and what doesn't (baby talk is fine; relentless correction isn't). Discover how to create the best "language environments" for children by following the simple structure of the Three Ts: Tune In; Talk More; Take Turns. Dr. Suskind and her colleagues around the country have worked with thousands of families; now their insights and successful, measured approaches are available to all.

This is the first book to reveal how and why the first step in nurturing successful lives is talking to children in ways that build their brains. Your family—and our nation—need to know.

*Nominated for the Books for a Better Life Award*

I wish I would read this book before!

Dana is amazing doctor and person. I enjoyed this book and recommend it to everyone.

Every Parent Should Read this book!!

Dr. Dana Suskind, a cochlear implant surgeon wonders why some of her patients receiving the same surgeries successfully develop language and others do not. As she studies this problem,she delves into social science research and language acquisition determining that caregiver’s abilities to facilitate a language rich environment is the key to successful surgical outcomes. Dr. Suskind subsequently develops the “Thirty Million Words” (TMW) platform to promote the concepts of “Tune In, Take Time, & Talk More, to babies and young children to foster rich language acquisition and brain development. TMW is a national movement with federal funding to help caregivers nurture and foster strong brain development and future cognitive and social success! Such a simple but profound message! Put down your phone (read this book) and talk to a child!!

Good but too long for content

Perhaps I got irritated with the reader, or maybe not... The parts are beneficial and offered helpful info but the latter speaks of macro applications and society wide changes that are not useful for parent readers -- noble, but not very helpful.
A good book to go through nonetheless, although several solid journal article would have covered the same content, but still a good use of audible credit.

Good read....

I will never understand why literacy and early childhood development aren’t the major focus of our national agenda.... it would solve so many of our challenges....

Every new an existing parent should read this book

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this book. It was very reaffirming and useful to my role as a parent and a teacher. I would recommend that everyone who works with or has small children to read this book. It’s also very insightful for people who work with multilingual speakers or want to speak another language.