Young children thrive on 30,000 words a day

October 25, 2007

For children between birth and age 3, the most powerful number is 30,000. That's the number of words children need to hear every day from their parents and caregivers to ensure optimal language development and academic success, according to the research of Drs. Betty Hart and Todd Risley and confirmed by Colorado-based Infoture, Inc., and their analysis of over 46,000 hours of speech data - the largest database of parent-child audio information in the world.