Amount of time parents spend in conversation with children per week?

[keith nelson]

Hi, Just picked up on this discussion.  I would 
add that it might be useful to look at the work 
of Gordon Wells and colleagues in which they did 
sampling across all periods in the 
day--extrapolations to total hours per week 
should be easy and they may have done it.    Best 
regards,  Keith Nelson


At 1:50 PM -0700 5/27/05, Lynn Santelmann wrote:
>Thanks to everyone who responded to my query 
>about the amount of time in conversation that 
>parents spend with their children.
>
>The most oft cite resource was:
>Hart, B. & Risley T. (1995). Meaningful 
>Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young 
>American Children. Baltimore, MD: Brookes.
>
>This is the reference that talks about the 
>striking number of different words children 
>hear, and extrapolates the amount of language 
>experience children from different SES 
>backgrounds hear.
>
>In addition,
>I received 2 other citations:
>Bogaerde, E.M. van den (2000). Input and 
>Interaction in Deaf Families, 2000, Utrecht: LOT 
>(wwwlot.let.uu.nl)
>Weijer, J. van de (2002). 
><http://www.ling.lu.se/persons/Joost/Texts/gala01.pdf>How 
>much does an infant hear in a day? In: J. Costa 
>and M. João Freitas (eds.). Proceedings of the 
>GALA2001 Conference on Language Acquisition (pp. 
>279-282). Lisboa: Associação Portuguesa de 
>Linguistíca.
>
>Most studies address the issue of "how much 
>input" with a tally of number of words, rather 
>than total time. (Though, I suppose one can be 
>converted into the other.)
>
>van de Weijer (2002) recorded all input to an 
>infant in the Netherlands for several months. 
>This infant received about 20 minutes a day of 
>direct interaction with the parents and/or 
>caregivers. However, the infant's older sister 
>(age 2) spent approximately 90 minutes PER DAY 
>(60% of the recorded data) either addressing (45 
>min) or being addressed by (45 min) an adult. 
>Since the recordings were made for the infant 
>and not the older sibling, it's possible that 
>recordings of the older sibling would be 
>different.
>
>This is a 2 year old in an academic family in 
>the Netherlands, so we should probably be 
>hesitant to generalize this to U.S. American 
>families, but it makes me all the more 
>suspicious of the oft cited "38.5 minutes" PER 
>WEEK of "meaningful conversation" with parents. 
>(The author of that figure has clearly never 
>driven home with my son!)
>
>Lynn
>
>Thanks to:
>Shanley Allen,
>Annick De Houwer
>Laura DeThorne
>Eve V.  Clark
>Lois Bloom
>John N. Bohannon III
>Linda Cote
>Beppie van den Bogaerde
>Diane Pesco
>Gedeon Deák
>
>Apologies to anyone I've forgotten - -I had a 
>massive e-mail failure this week and am slowly 
>reconstructing the missing links.
>
>Original Query:
>Does anyone have figures or references as to a 
>rough amount of time that parents spend in 
>conversation with preschool and school age 
>children?
>
>I have read numerous places (mostly parenting 
>type publications or web sites) that "the 
>average American parent spends 38.5 minutes a 
>week with their child in meaningful 
>conversation". Having read this EXACT same 
>figure over and over again, I became suspicious 
>and began to search for the source. If they give 
>a source, it's always "American Family Research 
>Council. "Parents Fight 'Time Famine'as Economic 
>Pressures Increase." 1990."
>
>I cannot, however, track down the original 
>article (nor can I seem to find the American 
>Family Research Council, though it may be part 
>of a conservative political group of some sort).
>
>Does anyone have any reliable references/data on 
>how much parents do converse with children 
>(leaving aside the "meaningful" issue, which is, 
>at best, difficult to operationalize)?
>
>I remember the work in differences in 
>communication for different socioecomonic levels 
>(though I couldn't cite it or find it off hand), 
>and somewhere I remember seeing a figure 
>comparing Philadelphia (Jewish?) families with 
>Pennsylvania Dutch families, but can't find the 
>reference.
>
>Exact citations or directions to look in would be appreciated.
>
>Thanks
>
>Lynn
>
>
>
>
>***************************************************************************************
>Lynn Santelmann, Ph.D.
>Associate Professor, Applied Linguistics
>Portland State University
>P.O. Box 751
>Portland, OR 97201-0751
>phone: 503-725-4140
>fax: 503-725-4139
>e-mail: santelmannl at pdx.edu (that's last name, first initial)
>web:  www.web.pdx.edu/~dbls
>*******************************************************************************


--
Keith Nelson
Professor of Psychology
414/423 Moore Building
Penn State University
University Park, PA   16802


keithnelsonart at psu.edu

And what is mind
and how is it recognized ?
It is clearly drawn
in Sumi ink, the sound
of breezes drifting through pine.

--Ikkyu Sojun
Japanese Zen Master,  1394-1481
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