By John Carpenter

Blue Sky Reporter

Everyone knows this picture: Parent or babysitter sits in a coffee shop staring at a smartphone, while a baby sits gurgling in a stroller.

Those who’ve been in those trenches are perhaps less likely to judge, knowing that the space between joyful bursts of smiling baby talk includes vast, numbing stretches of infant-parenting boredom. But experts say there’s a deeper problem brewing.

“It’s a huge issue,” said Dana Suskind, an author and associate professor of pediatric surgery at the University of Chicago, referring to device-distracted parents. “Language in those first few years of life is the food for the developing brain.”

To read the rest of this story, published in the Chicago Tribune September 8, 2015, click here.