On Friday, September 5th, 2008, Caroline (with Barbara assisting) gave a workshop to The Welcome Baby Program (Amy Chatten, Program Coordinator) in San Diego that partners with agencies and service providers who reach new parents. About 50 representatives from hospitals, community clinics, physicians offices, home visiting programs, childbirth education and parenting classes, childcare agencies and family resource centers were all there. What a wonderful group of people! These are the Angels who do their best to give parents the information they need to ensure that babies get enough language through reading books and plenty of conversation that books provide.
As an example, we used the baby book from the First Five Kit (First Five California – The California Children and Families Commission – www.ccfc.ca.gov). We hope that other states and countries are reaching out to babies and toddlers to address their needs for neurological, language, and literacy development through reading aloud.
In our talk we emphasized the role dads can play in their baby’s neurological development. We showed a lot of photos in our Power Point of dads reading to their babies. No longer do dads stay in the background when babies are infants. Today dads can make a huge difference in their child’s development from day one. Research shows that babies who are read to daily have almost twice the amount of words they understand (receptive language) by 18 months as babies who are not read to. Success in school and all aspects of life depend on the amount of language heard daily.
Note the Power Point Photo of dad reading to his newborn and two-year-old. Yeah Dads!
