Child's Play

That's Books-10, TV-0 when it comes to Babies Speech Development

Here at Child's Play we were concerned, but extremely pleased, to see Tom Leonard of The Daily Mail's recent article entitled ''Passive' TV can harm your baby's speech making it harder for them to later cope in school', published on 29th October.

In this he highlighted the potential damage caused to young children by being exposed to mindless TV, particularly when the programme is in fact the choice of the parents, and of an adult nature, and can therefore not even attempt to make claims that it aims to connect with the child in any positive way. Unfortunately Leonard suggests that exposure to viewing of this nature is more widespread than one might expect. Many parents switch on a programme in the background for their own entertainment, while looking after their infants, without considering the impact it may have on the child.

In addition, one of the main points made in the article that caught our attention was that this negative 'TV time' also 'distracts the parent and decreases parent-child interaction.' (Leonard, T. The Daily Mail, 29/10/11) This therefore prevents subsequent time being spent on engaging in activities, such as reading, with children.

Books have long been recognised as playing a key role in babies and young children's communication, language and literacy development and neglecting to spend time sharing books with them can therefore be detrimental to this process. An important aspect of this is the communication and interaction that high quality books encourage between the parent and child. In our books we have specifically focussed on including dialogue within many of our titles to ensure that children are not only reading, but talking about what they are reading at the same time.

We are so pleased to see the importance of parent-child interaction being recognised within a major newspaper and do hope that this recent article will motivate parents to switch off the box and appreciate the enjoyment and benefit that their children can get from enagaging in the simple activity of reading!

Why not start building up your own Child's Play collection for sharing with your child? Visit our bookshop to view our full range of fantastic products.

Thu, November 3rd, 2011