What is good advice for parents about language and learning development?

Parents As First Teachers (PAFT) - the programme to help parents get their children ready for school

Parents As First Teachers (PAFT), a programme developed in America to help parents get their children ready for school, is proving popular in the UK. It took root and spread throughout Buckinghamshire with the idea starting to be taken up in Wales, the West Midlands, and the north-west of England.

The scheme seems deceptively simple. It aims to help parents give their children a flying educational start by supporting them in their role as "first teacher". Parents hear about it from midwives, health visitors or friends, and those who opt in get a monthly personal visit from a trained project worker, and the chance to join in group meetings with other parents.

In the US, where it is available in every state, results have been spectacular. Research has shown that at the end of the first year of school, children who have been in the programme do better at maths and reading than their peers, and their teachers feel that their social and language skills are higher. In addition, parents who have been through the programme are far more likely to talk to teachers about their children - something that US educators believe is crucial, because other research shows that involved parents can revolutionise a child's school career.

In this country, there isn't yet the same longitudinal data but feedback from headteachers on the scheme is positive.

The key to why it works so well is that parents choose to join in, and the focus is so close-up on the child. At every monthly visit, the trained project worker will chat with the mother about her preschooler, informally check off developmental milestones, and give her ideas about how she can encourage this stage of her child's progress. She also provides an understanding ear for the frustrations and dilemmas of parenthood.

The hallmarks of the programme - its low-key approach and openness to all-comers - means projects can struggle to find funding. For the past seven years the Turners Court Youth Trust, a small charity that supports innovative ways of meeting the needs of children, has backed its development work, while in deprived areas, PAFT can now find funding under the Government's Sure Start programme. But in other areas its financial future is very fragile.

(Independent, 3 April 2003)

PAFT UK National Centre is at Turners Court Youth Trust, 9 Red Cross Road, Goring-on-Thames, Oxfordshire RG8 9HG. Tel: 01491 874 234.

Playtime is the best way for infants to learn safely - avoid the structured approach

Ambitious parents who teach their pre-school child to read, write and add up could be setting them up for mental and health problems in later life, the Royal College of Paedriatrics and Child Health says.

In a report issued in April 2003, it encourages parents to interact with their infants at home through informal play - with shapes, textures, letters and numbers and through songs and stories - but gives warning that parents should not adopt a formal teaching approach. "Rigid and stuctured home-learning and pre-school education directed solely at teaching a child to read, write and do sums is unhelpful for pre-school children, whose self-esteem can easily be dented," Helpful Parenting says.

Sebastian Kraemer, a consultant in child and adolescent psychiatry at the Tavistock clinic in London and a member of the working group that produced the report, said: "There is a lot of middle-class and upwardly mobile pressure to begin formal teaching too soon in this country. You get people wanting to teach their babies to read. Babies need to enjoy conversations with their parents and grandparents, and not to be taught things in a formal way. They learn from looking at faces, not from being told things."

The study, which was discussed with Cabinet Office officials at a seminar in April 2003, will feed into a Green Paper which investigates why so many children have emotional and behavioural disorders at a time that children are healthier, better educated and less materially deprived than ever.

It blames "unhelpful parenting practices" handed down through families; pressure on parents to work long hours; and a lack of understanding among parents of child development. It calls for better education and support for parents and more focus on children's needs.

The report argues strongly in favour of new mothers being given the choice of staying at home and calls for greater social and financial recognition of the invaluable work done by full-time mothers. Yet it also gives warning that for new mothers to leave their jobs purely out of a sense of duty can harm the relationship with the child. "Being at home does not by itself promote healthy development or secure attachment" in children, the report says. What counts is bringing up an infant in a "responsive" way "in which parent and baby follow each other's rhythms, rather like dancers".

The report concentrates on the first three years of life when the child's central nervous system and physical and social development are most rapid and when measures taken to prevent mental and emotional problems are most likely to be effective.

(Times, 4 April 2003)

Resources

Prepare Your Child for School by Dr Helen Likierman & Dr Valerie Muter (Vermilion, 2006). A calm and helpful book for parents keen to get their child ready to tackle the school experience. Two child psychologists offer practical advice, in a highly readable form, on topics such as social and self-care skills, inappropriate behaviour, dealing with teasing or bullying. There is a chapter on language (and listening), others on play and concentrating. For more information visit the Parenting, birth & childcare section at www.randomhouse.co.uk