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Your baby’s brain is a work in progress and you can influence it the most.

Positive, loving interaction with a parent is the food that your baby’s brain grow to be healthy, sharp and ready learn.

Nearly 85 percent of the brain develops by age 3. The more words a baby hears in that time, the better prepared for school and life he or she will be.

Think of like this: A baby’s brain is like a piggy bank. Every positive word a baby hears from a parent or caregiver is another coin in the bank. The payoff of all those words will come when your baby is ready to start school with the skills to help him or her be ready to learn and succeed in school.

How can you help? Ditch the smartphone or tablet. Instead spend face-to-face time with your baby talking, laughing and being together. Babies learn better from a loving adult than from a screen.

Listen here: 

That's advice from Dr. Dana Suskind, the founder of the Thirty Million Words Initiative at the University of Chicago. That's good advice for interactions with adults, too, BTW.

For more advice, check out TMW Tips: Building Your Baby's Brain, linked here.