What are you saying?

Last week I read an interesting little article from the Wall Street Journal online about how a recent study discovered that even the mental ability of a 2 year old child can be impacted by the socio-economic status of their parents.  The link for the article is here if you are interested.  I was initially interested in reading the article since they used twins (identical and fraternal) in the study as a way to measure the impact of genetics vs. environment factors.  (If you didn't know, Eric is an identical twin.) 

One part of the article really stuck out to me though:

By the age of 3, children from wealthier households hear, on average, about 500,000 encouragements and 80,000 discouragements. The ratio is reversed in households on welfare.

The article explains that prior research has speculated that this is one possible reason as to why children from lower economic status fail to reach their potential.

I'm not trying to agree or disagree on whether that is a reason or not, but rather on the fact that any child would have to grow up in a house where the negative talk outweighs the positive by such a large amount.

Can you imagine growing up in a house where it would seem like every single thing you do is wrong?

I know we all have our moments when we're tired, cranky, running late, had an awful day at work, etc.  There are plenty of times when I want Melissa to do one thing and she is determined to do another, or I need her to take a bath and not run around the house since she thinks it's a game when I chase her.   Those days happen - parenting is tough!   Patience is running low, the negativity can creep in and you just want to get them in bed so you can go to bed and start fresh in the morning.

But we do start fresh in the morning, and shower kisses and hugs and laughter on our children.  Seeing those numbers in the article just reaffirmed for me how important it is to tell Melissa how much we love her and make sure that she grows up in a loving, positive household.