Conversation skill is like any other skill (What is Skill, Talent, Potential, Smart, Intelligence?), it improves with practice and good instruction.

Habit: When someone talks to you, do you always answer, or do you normally not answer.

Rich parents are more likely to have the time, energy, interest, and care to talk to their children, therefore developing the child’s conversation skills and training the child to talk back.  This is a mark of good manners that Rich parents teach: “speak when spoken to” because ignoring someone is rude.  Teaching a child to talk back in turn teaches both independent thinking and independent opinion making, as well as clear and open communication, which is the foundation for all good relationships.

Poor parents are more likely to work minimum wage jobs and never be home, or when they are home, to be too exhausted or uninterested in their children to have conversations with them.  Furthermore, the cultural expectation is different: children in poor families are more often expected to shut up and not talk back, because talking back is considered disrespectful.  This is because the parents probably don’t get enough respect in the real world for being poor or working low skilled jobs, so they demand it from their children: they demand silent obedience, exactly what the world demands of the poor parents.  As a result, the children learn not to talk back, not to have clear communication, not to have good manners, and not to develop independent thinking and opinions.

Check out more Conversation Resources or Rich vs Poor Series

Language Gap – NYTimes; Children from low income homes have a 30 million word gap by the time they enter kindergarden.

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