We need to talk about Jeannie because the
really awful, terrifying things that
happened to that poor little girl taught
us so incredibly much about
language development in humans. So
Jeannie was a little girl born to a very
unwell family. She was the fourth
child, but only the second living.
So her mother was legally blind
from neurological damage, and her father
had a lot of mental issues. He.
Didn't like noise. He didn't like
hearing noise. So when the couple had
their first child and it cried, he put it
in the trash and it died of pneumonia at
10 weeks old. This sets the stage
for the life that Ginny would lead. She
has an older brother and then another
child that died of some kind of blood
incapability at birth. But the older
brother still survived and he was lucky
because his grandmother took him for a
little while. And
yeah, that is probably what saved his
life, even though he was eventually given
back to his family. Now the father was
super abusive. Beat his wife, beat his
son, beat his his daughter Jeannie. Beat
them all. But when Jeannie was about 1
1/2 years old, her father started to get
incredibly unhinged and he
started locking Jeannie in a dark
room all day, strapping her in a
straight jacket to a child toilet
for the entire day. He would only feed
her baby purees and baby cereal and
things like that, and would do so
intermittently. She was very
malnourished. And then at night he
would take her off the child's toilet and
strap her to a sleeping bag in a cot with
a metal grate over the top. He didn't
allow anyone to make noises
in the house, so no one ever spoke
to Jeannie. She never heard any
linguistic input. She never heard
anything. And if she made noises, she was
beaten viciously eventually. At the
age of 13 1/2, after being locked in a
room for 12 years,
Jeannie's mother was finally able to
leave the house with her child, and
social services figured out that there
was something up and they rescued
Jeannie. By the time doctors got to her,
they tried to help her learn language,
and unfortunately it was near
impossible to get Jeannie to learn
language the way that you and I speak it,
the way that a child speaks it. She
never quite acquired any kind of
sophisticated language. She can say a
couple of words, but not many, and she
can't put them together in a very formal
sentence. What this taught
us, what Jeannie and this horrible
experience taught us, was that there is a
critical period of acquisition for
language where a child's brain is
open to the reception of language, but if
it doesn't get it, the child will never
learn. Formal language in their life. So
there you have it, folks. Children
require linguistic input, language,
someone to talk to them before the age
of seven at the very latest. But
those early years are incredibly crucial.
And the best way to teach your child
language is to speak to them, is to have
a conversation with them, even if you
don't think they understand, and even if
their response is to you is babble.
Do Genie a favour and talk to your kids.
as much as you can, all the time.