Huron Daily Tribune > News > Local News:
Parents don’t need a teaching degree — but they do need to teach
By Kate Hessling
Tribune Staff Writer
Published: Friday, April 8, 2011 11:35 AM EDT
HURON COUNTY — Let’s face it: Learning does not begin in preschool or kindergarten.
Experts upon experts have stated — based on an abundance of research — that parents truly are their child’s first teacher.
Last week, Dr. David Walsh, founder of the National Institute on Media and the Family, and author of “No! Why Kids Need It and How We Can Say It,” presented evidence that in order to instill self-discipline and raise self-reliant children, a parent’s job begins at their child’s birth.
“Talk, talk, talk, talk — read, read, read, read,” he said, noting that is the recipe for success, as research shows a child with a greater number of one-to-one conversations and whose parent regularly reads to them is going to be able to read much easier than a child who does not have as many one-on-one conversations to or isn’t read to that often.
He said it’s critically important for economically at-risk families to understand this concept, because it’s proven the number of one-on-one conversations a child in poverty hears gives the child a knowledge of only one-third of the words learned by a child not living in poverty.
By the time a child living in poverty enters kindergarten, the child has been read to 24 times, Walsh said. A child not living in poverty has been read to about 2,000 times by the time he or she enters kindergarten.
“Can you image the disadvantage?” he asked, as he stressed we need to help parents understand how important this is — and how important it is to engage their children in conversation.
He said it has to be personal interaction — not media, as primary language is acquired through the feedback loop between the child and the caregiver. Walsh said a lot of evidence shows having a television on actually interferes with a child learning its first language.
Yet 28 percent of babies under the age of 2 now have television screens in their bedroom, Walsh said. He attributed this fact to the plethora of products like Baby Einstein DVDs that target babies 5 months and older because that’s when children can focus eye sight and sit up.
He said the smartest thing about this product is the name, because it sends a threat to parents that if their child doesn’t have them, the child will be stupid.
Walsh said there’s no research stating it’s beneficial, and Disney actually was ordered to provide a full cash refund for any purchase of the Baby Einstein DVDs because they used deceptive advertising.
He said the images of the videos are harmless — but the end result is that they wire a baby’s brain to orient to screens before it can crawl or speak. And it results in a child expecting to be constantly entertained.
Baby Einstein, My Baby Can Read, Brainy Babies and Baby Mozart are just some of the products out there targeted to anxious parents who are afraid their child won’t get off to the right start, Walsh said. But while all of them promise to give children an advantage, there’s no evidence any of them can do so, he said.
That’s because a child’s real world experience is much more rich than what a child can get from a screen, Walsh said.
“Creativity and imagination should come from the child — not the screen,” he said.
Walsh stressed he is not “anti-technology.”
Huron County has a Parents as Teachers (PAT) program through the Huron Intermediate School District, according to Rebecca Gettel, Huron County Great Start Collaborative director.
PAT offers parents the knowledge and skills to help their children build a foundation for academic success.
It is a free home visiting program and is open to all families with children ages birth to 5. Home visits take place monthly and a trained parent educator gives parents developmental information and activities for their child(ren).
The information includes methods to enhance parent-child interaction that promote social and emotional development and age appropriate language, mathematics and early reading skills.
For more information about the local PAT program, contact Great Parents Great Start, located at 711 E. Soper Road in Bad Axe, or call (989) 269-3485.
Read the full version of this article in the Huron Daily Tribune or online in our e-Edition.
