A DISCUSSION OF THE EFFECTS OF SOCIO-ECONOMICS ON CHILDREN’S LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

Children in low socio-economic homes tend to struggle with language development. Studies have identified that there are gaps within language development due to poverty, educational resources and home environment conditions which cannot be ignored. Students that do not have access to technology devices that are so present in school are struggling to manage educational demands today. These students struggle daily to find the time to commute and compute with the limited free sources available to them. These discrepancies do not stop in educational sources, studies report that poverty affects children’s curiosity and willingness to learn as this is not familiar in their daily routines. Children tend to branch out to what’s more culturally similar and expect immediate gratification due to the struggles experienced in their homes.
From a young age children are curious individuals ready to explore the world yet there’s a wide range of language development across children from the same ages. Every child learns differently based on many factors. Children that come from low- socioeconomic families tend to struggle even to develop their first words. As easily as educators tend to move fast on blaming the parents for these language discrepancies, there are many factors such as limited resources, environmental struggles, cultural differences and parental support.
Environmental struggles in poor homes can look like limited resources, spaces to focus on learning and stability. There are cultural differences in low- socioeconomic homes. These differences at times place importance on “big, immediate goals” or in other cases “just plain complaint.” These cultural differences do not promote children to express and grow independently of their counterparts. They tend to be more reluctant to engage in learning activities at home. Parents' support impacts students’ eagerness to learn due to parental limitations of language or educational background.
In my time teaching, I have noticed that it's not that parents do not want to spend their income on finding available resources for their children but it is sometimes not possible. Working 40-60 hours a week while a caregiver/ family member supports school drop off and pick ups, parents are just making enough to feed their children. The food tends to be something easy and low cost. In America that food  tends to be processed unhealthy foods. This is not due to parents not wanting to feed their children healthy food but rather limited family time and finances due to poverty.  However, in affluent families, resources such as tutors, nannies and educational programs tend to ease the time parents have with their children. These parents are more likely to have more bonding time with children and therefore language development occurs more naturally through dialogues. These dialogues among children and families outside of school are crucial to their language development. This is crucial in infants with language delays. In low - socioeconomic households parents sometimes do not notice their children's delays or understand if their child/children have autism due to their lack of understanding of developmentally appropriate stages.
Therefore, my question is "What are educational systems doing to close the language development gaps for low-socioeconomic students ?" Should schools provide parents with the educational resources to implement/ use in their homes? However, educational places tend to just blame it on “outside forces” instead of implementing appropriate support and curricula for students in low-socio economic disadvantages.
Here’s the big question "How do we develop and close the gaps for students in low-socioeconomic areas?"
Family evenings: promote language development through conversation ( game boards, interactive games, psychical sports games etc. )
Cooking/ Recipe Family: promote language through conversation while creating a recipe
Read the recipe / Write the recipe with children
Step by Step make the recipe ( continue conversations while cooking)
Label ingredients that were used for a recipe and label other household items
Use tasting the recipe to ask children to use their senses and verbalize their thoughts in complete sentences
Read a book with your children ( Ask your child about the book/ questions that allow for more than yes questions
Above I listed a few ways of implementing language development but the most important thing is to speak to your children in complete sentences with clear pronunciation as opposed to “baby uttering/chanting “ in any language.  Even though there are misconceptions about children getting confused due to speaking different languages, bilingualism allows for cognitive /language development to flourish organically.

Citations

Tanner, E. (2003). The costs of education: a local study. London: Child Poverty Action Group

Language learning, socioeconomic status, and child-directed speech Jessica F. Schwab and Casey Lew- William Wiley Interdiscip Rev Cogn Sci. 2016 Jul; 7(4): 264–275.

Mani A, Mullainathan S, Shafir E, Zhao J. Poverty impedes cognitive function. Science. 2013;341:976–980.

Rowe ML, Denmark N, Harden BJ, Stapleton LM. The role of parent education and parenting knowledge in children’s language and literacy skills among white, black, and Latino families. Infant Child Dev.2016

Cartmill EA, Armstrong BF, Gleitman LR, Goldin-Meadow S, Medina TN, Trueswell JC. Quality of early parent input predicts child vocabulary 3 years later. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA.2013

Brent MR, Siskind JM. The role of exposure to isolated words in early vocabulary development. Cognition. 2001