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Frequently asked questions

• Why do we need a campaign to encourage parents to talk to their children?
• Why is early years communication a problem now?
• What does Talk To Your Baby do?
• What does the campaign hope to achieve?
• As a parent, what can I do to help my child's early language development?
• Is TV the major culprit?
• What are speech, language or communication impairments?

Why do we need a campaign to encourage parents to talk to their children?

Children need to be confident communicators in order to lead happy, fulfilled and successful lives. There is evidence of high levels of speech, language and communication difficulties among young children and the negative effects this has on children's social-emotional and educational development.

The majority of pre-schoolers' time is spent with their parents and it is parents who are in the best position to effect change and promote the development of their children's communication skills. Parents are their child's first teachers and the years from birth to three are crucial in developing all aspects of a young child's growing need to communicate.

Why is early years communication a problem now?

Recent research has found increasingly high levels of speech, language and communication impairment among young children. There are a number of possible reasons why:

• Parents' working patterns mean less time to talk
• Loss of extended family surrounding baby and smaller family unit
• Family gatherings are rare (e.g. fewer family mealtimes)
• Background noise from TV and radio may distract parents from talking to their children
• Children and childhood are not valued in the UK and children have a low status
• The adage that children should be seen and not heard - hence dummies to keep children quiet
• Most pushchairs face away from the pusher
• Pace of living - lack of time even for sustained eye contact
• Parents may have lost the ability to engage in imaginative, active play
• An expectation that children will just pick up speaking skills from general chatter around them, or learn language once they begin at nursery school
• General lack of awareness of the importance of pretend play, music, rhythm and rhyme on language development
• Parents may feel they should strive to provide expensive toys/equipment, when time playing with their child would bring as much pleasure and more benefits
• Solitary activities that don't foster dialogue dominate the home
• Lack of parental awareness of the importance and pleasure of talking and listening, and of how communicative behaviours start from birth onwards
• Central heating means that families do not need to congregate in one warm room

It is unlikely that parents and carers are wilfully not talking to young children - perhaps they don't know that they should, or they need reminding. We need to stop praising children who are quiet as 'good'. Communication is the building block to everything in our lives, therefore we need to shift cultural expectations so that children are seen and heard. We need to understand what the barriers might be to language-rich early years in the home, then we can plan to make things change. Communicating is a pleasure for both adult and child.

For more information read our discussion paper, Why do many young children lack basic language skills?

What does Talk To Your Baby do?

Talk To Your Baby is a campaign promoting the message to parents and carers that communicating with babies is vital to their development. We promote this message to parents through our partnerships with early years professionals such as speech and language therapists and health workers, and to the wider public through the media. We have a website and quarterly newsletter that pull together the latest research, resources and initiatives in early language development. We produce free downloadable resources for early years practitioners, such as an advocacy pack for those wishing to make a case for more attention or staffing to support work in the early language field. The campaign aims to focus on different themes affecting children's language development, including television and the role of grandparents and fathers.

What does the campaign hope to achieve?

We want all children in the UK to receive from their parents a stimulating, language-rich start to life. Talk To Your Baby will get talking with babies on all the key agendas - through the general media, the specialist parenting press and through the work of early years professionals - by pushing a strong and consistent message that talking and communicating with babies matters. Parents will recognise the importance of talking with babies and communicate with them more. Teachers will begin to see that children entering school are more competent communicators. Professionals working with parents and young children will have communication skills as one of their key training components. Ultimately we would expect hundreds of thousands of homes to have a more supportive language environment as a result of the campaign.

As a parent, what can I do to help my child's early language development?

All parents wish to do their best for their children but often lack the confidence or knowledge to implement powerful parenting practices, such as attentive listening, singing songs, playing rhyming games and sharing books. We want parents to recognise their vital role in helping their child make sense of the world, through encouraging communication at every opportunity. They may not know how important, easy and pleasurable this is. Young children are active learners and the pleasure to be gained by both child and adult in simply talking together is undervalued as a vital first step.

Is TV the major culprit?

Television is just one of many social and cultural factors that impact on young children's language development. Our research found that in the right circumstances, television can help young children's communication skills. To make the most of TV parents and carers should consider the following:-

• Although watching the same video over and over may eventually impinge on a parent's sanity, the repetition and familiarity of words and phrases makes it easier for children to learn from them.
• For a child to learn from a TV programme or video they need the opportunity to talk about what they have watched with an adult. This is easier to do when an adult and child watch together.
• It is especially important that younger children watch programming designed for their age group. This is difficult when watching with an older brother or sister who may dominate the remote control. Set aside TV time for all siblings.
• When the programme or video has finished, turn it off. There is no substitute for talking with children.

What are speech, language or communication impairments?

A significant problem with speech, language or communication is one of the most common developmental difficulties in children. In some cases, the language problems arise as a result of conditions such as a learning disability or a hearing impairment. In other cases, however, there is no obvious reason for the child's difficulties. Such children are usually described as having a 'specific language (or speech) impairment' (SLI for short). It is to help these children that Afasic was founded in 1968.

Speech and language are extremely complex, and a lot of different things can go wrong with their development. Some children are described as having a 'language delay', which strictly speaking means that their language is developing in the usual way but at a slower rate than in most children their age. However, many professionals use the term 'language delay' to mean any type of speech or language impairment. Some children, though, have a speech, language or communication disorder which means that one or more aspects of their language is developing atypically. Speech, language and communication comprise a number of different skills, any of which might fail to develop properly.

Some children have difficulty articulating some or all of the sounds that go to make up speech ('d', 'g', 's', 'w', etc) or putting them together to make words. Their speech may sound very unclear, and, in the worst cases, it may be impossible for other people to understand what they are saying.

Children with language problems may have difficulty understanding language (this is known as 'receptive' language) and/or with producing words and putting them together to make coherent sentences ('expressive' language).

Communication problems involve a difficulty with responding to and using language appropriately in different contexts. Children with communication disorders often have difficulties with social interaction generally and some of them may be described as having an autistic spectrum disorder.

Extracted from an article written by Alison Huneke of Afasic (the Association For All Speech Impaired Children).