- [Presenter] "Your Fantastic Mind", brought to you in part by Sarah and Jim Kennedy.

(no audio) (thrilling music) (thrilling music continues) (thrilling music continues) - [Students] O-W-O, O-E-O.

- For years, many schools assumed reading would come naturally, but only about a third of children are reading at grade level.

Science shows the building blocks start at birth even before.

Hello, I'm Jaye Watson.

Welcome to "Your Fantastic Mind".

Knowing that reading can shape a child's future, a program was created by the Atlanta Speech School, a nationally recognized leader in early childhood language development, in partnership with the Georgia Department of Public Health and Grady Hospital in Atlanta.

It's been taught to thousands of families and its changing outcomes.

It's called Talk With Me Baby.

(agitated music) (baby fuzzing) Every life begins the same way, a breath, a cry, and a question.

- [Comer] Every baby ever born for thousands and thousands of years, in their first breath, asks themselves the question, am I safe?

In their second breath, they ask themselves, am I connected?

(gentle music) - [Jaye] What happens next in those first moments, hours, days, may shape everything that follows.

Because long before a child speaks, they are already listening, already learning, already building a brain.

(gentle music) At Grady Hospital in Atlanta, something remarkable has been unfolding for nearly a decade.

A simple idea, so simple, it almost feels too obvious.

- Open your eyes, bubba.

- [Jaye] Talk to your baby.

(gentle music) - Well, hello, Mr.

Cameron.

If no one's told you yet, happy birthday.

We're so glad you're here.

- [Jaye] This is Talk With Me Baby, a program that begins before a child is even born and continues through those first critical years of life.

Its premise is rooted in both science and something deeper.

- That every parent wants their child to have a better life than them.

It's just a matter of human nature.

- [Nurse] You could see him though, he's like fluttering.

He's trying.

- [Jaye] But for many families, belief in that possibility that agency has been lost.

Talk With Me Baby is about giving it back.

(heart beating) In the final months of pregnancy, a baby can already hear the rhythm of a mother's voice, the patterns of language, even the building blocks of speech.

- Hi, sweet boy.

Good morning.

How was your sleep?

- [Jaye] From that moment on, the brain is wiring itself at astonishing speed.

- [Mom] One, two, three.

- That's also when the baby's language centers start to develop in their brain as well.

They don't, of course, they don't fully understand language and words and things like that, but they start to get the basics of communication and sounds and relating those sounds to different actions and feelings in utero.

(lips smacking) - [Jaye] Connections forming, circuits strengthening.

- Brain is creating so many circuits during this window that it can't hold all of them.

It would look like our attic, if it did.

And so, the brain is pruning off the connections that aren't being developed.

(carers speaking at once) - [Jaye] What remains becomes the foundation for everything.

- Look, bubba.

(mom gasps) There's Rosie with new popsicle.

I know.

It looks so yummy.

- [Jaye] Learning, behavior, emotional health, and at the center of it all is language.

- Help me get some water?

- Language is the fundamental thing that helps a baby's brain grow and develop.

So, all of that language is literally helping to connect billions of brain cells.

- You got it.

- [Jaye] This isn't just about talking at a baby, it's about something called serve and return, a conversation before words exist.

A baby serves with a look, a sound, (baby babbles) - Yeah, I know.

- [Jaye] a movement of their hands or eyebrows, and the adult returns.

(baby crying) - Oh no.

(baby crying) What is it?

(baby crying) What is it, friend?

- Hey, Cameron.

- [Jaye] Back and forth, response and recognition, a relationship.

- [Denise] You can literally have a conversation with a baby who can't yet talk.

- I think they're gonna bark, bark, bark, bark, bark.

- [Jaye] This back and forth does more than bond a parent and child.

It builds the architecture of the brain.

And just as importantly, it tells that baby, you are safe, you are seen, you matter.

- I like it.

(lips smacking) It's so yummy.

- [Jaye] In other words, before a child ever reaches a classroom, their trajectory may already be set.

At Grady, they've redefined what it means to deliver a healthy baby.

Not just heart rate, not just weight, but brain development.

- A healthy delivery at Grady includes a newborns leaving their birthing center with a family who can provide the necessary language.

I mean, necessary language, nutrition for the child's development of healthy brain development.

- So, we are meant to be brain to brain with someone else.

Like, humans are relational people, right?

And creatures.

So, that we need that connection.

And without that connection, our brains cannot thrive.

- [Jaye] Here, every nurse is a coach.

Every interaction, a lesson.

- But to be able to role model it and encourage it.

- [Jaye] It's called narration, talking through the ordinary moments of the day.

- Let's go put out the strawberries here so we can cut them.

- You can say, ooh, we're gonna be making spaghetti tonight.

Let me go find that spaghetti.

I guess we're gonna have to heat up some water.

And just literally talking through everything that you're doing, the baby is literally storing all of those words.

- It's like right now, he's pretty relaxed.

- [Jaye] Words become meaning.

Meaning becomes understanding.

Understanding becomes opportunity.

- Sometimes when they're really ready or they're starting to wake up, the tone will get a little bit more rigid.

- [Jaye] This isn't a pamphlet handed out at discharge.

It's lived, modeled, practiced.

- It's as certain as whether babies should sleep on their backs or on their stomachs.

So, once you know the science, why wouldn't every effort be made for that change to happen the next day?

- [Nurse] And it's a good way to make those tiny little deposits in their brain.

- [Jaye] From nurse to parent.

- Hey, Cameron.

Can you say hi?

- [Jaye] From parent to child.

It works.

Over the past nine years, more than 30,000 families have been part of Talk With Me Baby.

- We were so pleased to see in the study that the parents that we had coached were still practicing the skills that we taught them even as their babies were getting older.

And we were even more thrilled to find out that our babies are doing at or above average in their language skills.

- [Caroline] You are so sweet.

Did you have a good nap, buddy?

Oh goodness.

- [Jaye] Eight-week-old Jack and his mom, Caroline, already in conversation.

- You wanna sit?

Goodness.

What are you doing?

I feel like I talked to him, but until I'd read something about how it's important to talk when you're doing even the mundane stuff throughout the day, I never really thought about doing that.

You know, during those tasks, especially when I wasn't holding him and looking at him.

What are we gonna make for dinner tonight?

Basically tell him what you're doing.

Kinda like narrate the different things you're doing throughout the day.

And at first, it felt kind of funny, but then now, it's a little more natural.

You see the puppy dog?

I know.

- [Jaye] What once felt like effort becomes instinct.

- Do you wanna go on a walk today?

He lights up just as I'm talking to him about stuff, so.

What do you wanna do tomorrow?

I think it made a difference.

I do think it made a difference.

And I do think it bonds you in a way too, that you don't think about just chit-chatting.

And it's like your little buddy, your little sidekick.

(traffic droning) - To better understand the real world long-term impact of Talk With Me Baby, we came to Boston to speak with a Harvard researcher who studied the program, and an expert on why early language nutrition is so critically important for babies.

(mouse clicks) - I'm really interested in how to really make lives better for particularly vulnerable children and families in their communities, particularly when they've experienced trauma.

One of the things that's the most amazing is- - [Jaye] Dr.

Cathy Ayoub at Harvard's Brazelton Touchpoint Center studies how early experiences shape a child's life.

So, she and her team look closely at years of data from Talk With Me Baby.

- They would talk about brain nutrition, they would talk about communication, and it's all documented in the medical record.

- Maybe you're hungry, let's try that.

- [Jaye] Mothers in the program didn't just hear the message once.

- Their whole body is preparing to communicate, to tell you something.

- [Jaye] On average, they had about 10 meaningful exposures to Talk With Me Baby education during their care.

- Hey, is anybody here?

Can they hear me and see me?

And you're going, I got you, man.

What you need?

- [Jaye] Ayoub's team followed up at home to see what stuck, reaching out to more than 5,000 families.

And more than 1,400 parents responded, completing detailed surveys and standardized assessments of their children's communication skills.

- We saw in the parents of one year olds and two-year-olds and three-year-olds and four-year-olds and five-year-olds, which means that these parents were sustaining these practices.

And so, that was really important, 'cause one of the things you look for when you look at any, you implement any kind of an intervention is, is it going to fade?

Is it gonna go away?

And we know that most of the time, it does.

But with Talk With Me Baby, there's no fade.

(gentle music) - [Jaye] Talk With Me Baby years later, still in practice.

- [Nurse] As they get a little bit older, you'll start seeing it soon as the smiles.

- [Jaye] And then, the outcomes.

- I have to say that I was surprised and I think my research team was surprised at the findings from Talk With Me Baby.

They were just so over the top.

To the place where we were thinking we would find some differences, right?

And then, you can do statistics to compare the differences.

And my statisticians would get all excited.

My statisticians were really bored.

It's like, everybody is doing well.

- [Caroline] You wanna make some dinner?

Should we go to the grocery store and get our stuff?

Yeah.

- By the time these children were four or five, only 2% of the children had atypical behavior and that is much lower than the national average than what we know across the country, which in terms of, which is almost 15, can be 15 to 20%.

- You're getting so strong.

- [Jaye] A remarkable result and maybe even more surprising.

- What we found was that Talk With Me Baby works for everybody.

And we really worked to try to discredit that.

We really did.

And so, what we could say is that this is a universal intervention.

In other words, it works for everyone.

- And he was advance- - [Jaye] A universal intervention, a rare find in early childhood.

Ayoub says the program's success comes down to execution.

Grady Hospital didn't just introduce the concept, they trained staff deeply and followed up with families, creating repeated meaningful touchpoints.

But what may be most powerful is what this kind of language is really doing.

Because this isn't just about words, it's about connection.

- Language communicates connection, right?

So, it's a way that a parent shows attachment as well.

So, these critical questions that children have, is this world safe?

Can I rely on you?

Is there someone who will care for me?

Language is a way of communicating.

I'm here.

I see you.

You're valuable.

You're worthy.

You're meaningful to me.

(keys clacking) - [Jaye] Renee Boynton-Jarrett is a pediatrician in Boston University Researcher whose work focuses on how early childhood trauma and adversity shape lifelong health and development.

(baby babbles) - [Narrator] In this Still Face Experiment.

- [Jaye] In one well-known experiment at Brazelton Touchpoints, a mother plays with her baby, smiling, responding, engaging.

- [Narrator] This baby starts pointing at different places in the world and the mother's trying to engage her and play with her.

And then, we ask the mother to not respond to the baby.

- [Jaye] Then, she stops.

Her face goes still.

No response, no return.

Within seconds, the baby changes.

(baby screams) Confusion, distress, and urgent need to reconnect.

It's known as the Still Face Experiment, studied here in Boston and it reveals something fundamental, language is relationship.

(baby crying) - Okay, Biancy.

(baby crying) I'm here.

And what are you doing?

- All of those factors create a sense of fear, fright, loss.

And so, emotionally, it's stressful and taxing for the infant, even in that small Still Face Experiment of a moment, a few moments.

- [Jaye] A baby reaches out and when an adult responds, the brain builds.

When that response is missing, the brain shifts into survival mode.

- And that impacts how your brain grows and develops.

So, if the world is unsafe, your attention becomes focused on safety, right?

And you can't spend as much attention on creativity and learning and mastery and exploration because the basic need of being safe is becomes the predominant, the predominant focus.

(gentle music) - [Jaye] That's what Talk With Me Baby is really doing.

Not just teaching parents to talk, but helping them connect from the very beginning.

(indistinct) - [Jaye] A fair chance, not determined by ZIP code or income, or education, but by something every parent already has, a voice.

- Hey, Cameron.

- [Renee] It's transformative, it's nurturing.

It sets the foundation for healthy relationships, future relationships.

- [Jaye] Those moments add up, to language, to learning, to possibility, to everything that follows.

- Oh, I think it sets some on a path that can make all the difference in the world.

(gentle music) (mom faintly speaks) (agitated music) - [Students] E-X, out.

A-R-M, weapon.

O-W-O, O-E-O.

- [Jaye] Just a few years later, that same brain enters a classroom.

- Second thing I asked you to make was what sound?

- Ah.

- Ah.

- [Jaye] Where everything depends on learning to read.

- [Allison] Say boyhood.

- [Students] Boyhood.

- In box number seven- - [Jaye] Across America, a crisis has been unfolding.

Only about one-third of fourth and eighth graders are reading at grade level.

- Boy, toy.

- [Jaye] For many children of color, that number drops to nearly 15%.

- He wanted to know how- - [Jaye] For decades, we've assumed children would simply learn to read.

- [Allison] What spelling pattern are we using?

- [Students] O-I-O-Y.

- [Jaye] But science now tells us, that assumption was wrong.

- Box three and box four, you can divide into two separate pieces.

I am blessed to be a second grade teacher.

Four, but five different ways that- - [Jaye] Allison Taylor teaches second grade at AL Burruss Elementary School in Marietta.

- What's in your number six box?

- [Jaye] But until five years ago, - When you're looking at the front, what have they given us?

- [Jaye] she says she wasn't taught how to teach reading at all.

- It was just all about the feelings of reading and the hopes of reading, and finding really good authors and not really about how the brain learns to read or what the brain needs to do to become a strong reader.

(gentle music) - [Jaye] For years, classrooms across the country followed a method known as balanced literacy, (gentle music) focused on exposure to books, memorization, and context.

The idea was simple.

If children loved reading, they would eventually learn how to do it.

- And so, we just spent time hoping and wishing and leaning on parents to do the work, to read with kids at home, to practice hard words with your child.

(gentle music) - [Jaye] But many children never did.

They struggled, fell behind, and too often were left without answers.

That uncertainty didn't just affect academics, it affected confidence, behavior, and a child's future.

- All of the work in Marietta changed quite honestly with one phone call.

- But we know what to do.

We- - [Jaye] That call came from the head of the Atlanta Speech School, educator Comer Yates, who asked Marietta School Superintendent Grant Rivera, how much did he know about the science of how kids learn to read and how they develop their reading brain.

- Comer said, "Listen, there's a better way to do this.

And it starts at birth and it goes all the way through elementary school.

And if we lean into the science and the research, we could create a model in Marietta.

It really becomes the model for the entire country.

Are you interested?"

And he had me at hello.

- Good morning.

- From that moment on, Marietta committed fully, every principal, every teacher, every classroom.

Five years ago, Marietta Schools switched to structured literacy, also known as the science of reading.

(gentle music) - So, structured literacy is really about a systematic and explicit way to teach students to read.

And all that means is we know that children learn to read using sounds, using letters, and then creating those sounds and letters to make words, and then those words to make sentences, and then those sentences to build fluency, and then that fluency to build comprehension.

- Toys.

- Yes, toys.

What word?

- Enjoy.

- Enjoy.

Good job.

- [Jaye] Instead of guessing words or memorizing them, students are taught how language actually works, how letters represent sounds, how sounds build words, and how words build meaning.

- I teach you what sounds are and what letters make the sounds.

And then, as long as you can do that, then you can make a word, And if you can make a word, you can make a sentence, and then we can build from that.

But the foundation is that phonics piece, is that phonological understanding.

(students speaking at once) - [Jaye] The difference, students aren't guessing anymore, they're decoding.

And for teachers like Taylor, the difference was not without sadness.

- So, there was almost like a mourning process for the teaching practices, but also for like the students that we realize now we could have helped and we didn't.

And that's hard for teachers, you know, that's hard for us to say like, I was working so hard and I wasn't doing a good job.

- When Marietta started imagining how... I remember sitting at the table with a group of leaders and community partners five and a half years ago.

I said to them at the time, if we can do this right, it will be the most important work I do in my entire career.

And I didn't understand a fraction of how significant it was gonna be.

- [Students] A scientist.

- [Jaye] With success comes something powerful, confidence.

Because when children can read, they no longer have to hide from it.

- It's changed everything.

- [Jaye] This wasn't about preference.

It was about science.

AL Burruss' principal, Jillian Johnson.

- I knew that we had so far to go.

I mean, our data was just so disappointing because our teachers were working really hard, like really hard.

Just not doing the right work.

They didn't know, we didn't know that it wasn't the right work.

- [Jaye] Administrators got trained first, spending five days with national literacy expert, Dr.

Margie Gillis.

- I've been doing this work for 47 years.

- It was the most impactful professional learning of my career, of my life.

And so, we spent five full days with Dr.

Margie Gillis, learning about how the brain learns to read, learning about the science of reading, learning how to implement it so we didn't just get the science, we got the how.

- So, what did you put in?

- [Jaye] The training changed how Rivera taught his own children.

- I went home after my first training with the science of reading and I grabbed all the sight words that grandpa had purchased for the kids, and I threw 'em all in the trash.

(engine humming) (bird chirping) - [Jaye] At AL Burruss Elementary, the results over the past five years have been dramatic.

- So, pre-COVID and we had in students in grades three through five, we had about 55% of students reading at or above grade level.

And this past year in 2025, the assessments showed us that we now have 80% of our students reading at or above grade level.

So, remarkable growth in eight years and it's just, we still have a long way to go.

(student laughing) - [Jaye] And it's not just academics.

- Additionally, our, actually tracked our student behavior referral data from 2019 to, I think the last time I pulled it was in 2024, we had a 90% reduction in specifically classroom disruptions, 90% reduction.

Because children are getting what they need, exactly what they need, the way that they need it.

Children want to learn.

They don't want to make poor choices or disrupt class.

(footsteps tapping) (wind blowing) - [Jaye] Because when children succeed, everything changes.

- Early on, when he was not absorbing his, the alphabet, the sounds of the alphabet, and it just wasn't coming more naturally.

Like with his classmates, he was behind in understanding just even letters.

So, we knew something was going on.

(footsteps tapping) - [Jaye] For families like the Gillands, reading struggles were deeply personal.

(lock clicks) - [Beth] He was only reading a few letters and then just guessing at what the word was.

- [Neal Dean] After breakfast, me and Mr.

Lewis- - [Jaye] What looked like behavior in Neal Dean was frustration.

- [Beth] He was getting in trouble at school just because he was goofing off because he may not understand what was going on.

- [Jaye] Then, everything changed.

- It's about a boy that lived through the Great Depression.

The little girl, Kim, talked with milk running down her throat.

- They were able to identify what was going on in his brain and pinpoint and teach the way he needed to be taught so that he could learn and move forward.

- [Neal Dean] I can't tell you how proud I am.

- [Jaye] With structured literacy, teachers could finally see the problem and fix it.

- It helped me read and then I didn't know to sound out the syllables, and then find the different word parts in the letters.

And then, that really helped for the bigger words.

- [Jaye] And with that came confidence.

- I feel good.

I like to read like every time.

Lefty Lewis noticed I was- - The wars are over.

Balanced literacy, balanced reading, lost structured literacy is the science.

- [Student] Smaller is an object- - [Jaye] Today, more than 40 states have passed laws requiring the science of reading.

But change is slow and millions of children are still being taught the old way.

- It's not wired into our brains to learn to read.

We have to have explicit instruction by well-informed teachers.

- [Jaye] Reading is not natural.

The brain must build new pathways, connecting sound, symbol, and meaning.

But when it does, it unlocks something powerful.

Freedom and agency.

- Reading.

Literacy should be considered a basic human right because it gives the foundation for the release of the potential of every individual.

It's not that reading will absolutely affirm that potential, but it allows that potential to be released.

- [Jaye] For decades, national reading scores have stagnated or declined.

But some places like Marietta Schools are showing what's possible.

In Mississippi, one of the first states to fully embrace the science of reading, fourth grade reading scores have surged.

The state has gone from near last in the nation to the top 10, with students outperforming the national average.

And the gains didn't just raise scores, they closed gaps.

Low-income students now rank among the best readers in the country.

- In a knowledge economy and an information age, it is literally the key that unlocks the future for our children.

Whether it be digital literacy, financial literacy, even health literacy.

If children are not literate, they don't have much of a life.

When we look at the prison system, it's a perfect example of why this is so high stakes.

- [Jaye] Literacy changes everything.

And now, we know how to unlock it.

- [Jillian] Every child deserves to be a reader.

It opens up every door of their life.

It's everything.

(students speaking at once) (gentle music) - And that's gonna do it for us this week.

See you next time on "Your Fantastic Mind".

(thrilling music) (thrilling music continues) - [Presenter] "Your Fantastic Mind", brought to you in part by Sarah and Jim Kennedy.

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