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 Lots of research has shown that reading to young kids can help
improve their language development and cognitive skills. But while
programs teaching parents the best ways to read with young kids have
proven effective in affluent areas, less is known about how well
these interventions work for poor children whose parents have lower
levels of education and literacy.
For the current study, researchers tested a reading program for
parents of kids at 22 free child care centers for low-income
families in Boa Vista, a city in northern Brazil. At the start of
the school year, half of the centers were randomly selected to offer
parents the chance to participate in the reading program, while the
rest of the centers provided only traditional daycare.
Families at the centers with reading programs could borrow books
each week, and parents could participate in monthly workshops
focused on reading aloud and interacting with kids during story
time. By the end of the school year, children in these families
scored higher in assessments of cognitive skills, language and
memory than kids at centers that didn’t offer reading programs.
“Because books contain language and ideas that are much more diverse
and complex than typical speech to children, this increase in shared
reading supported children’s learning of new words and concepts as
well as their ability to engage in more abstract thinking, which was
reflected in tests of vocabulary, memory and IQ,” said lead study
author Adriana Weisleder, a pediatrics researcher at New York
University School of Medicine.
Since the families in the study had limited education and income,
the results suggest that the intervention might be successfully
duplicated in countries where many parents need help learning how to
read with their kids, Weisleder said by email.
“This provides strong experimental evidence that the benefits of
parent-child shared reading are observed across countries and
cultures,” Weisleder added.
Altogether, the study included 279 parent-child pairs at centers
offering the reading program and a control group of 287 parent-child
pairs at centers without the program.
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Most of the parents who joined the study were mothers, and roughly
two-thirds of them were married or living with a partner. Half of
them earned no more than minimum wage and about 40 percent didn’t
finish high school.
In the reading program, parents attended monthly workshops with a
facilitator who guided discussions about reading aloud and other
opportunities for interacting with children such as play and talking
during everyday routines.
During each workshop, parents shared their experiences of reading
aloud at home, discussed any potential barriers and solutions to
reading aloud including challenges with child behavior, and
practiced reading aloud with their child.
One limitation of the study is that it excluded parents who were not
available when families were enrolled, which might have skewed the
results toward families with parents that had more ability to
participate. The study was also limited to children enrolled in
daycare, and might not reflect what would happen for kids outside of
this setting.
Even so, the parenting program in the study could be incorporated
into existing child care programs and has the potential for
widespread dissemination, said Dr. Caroline Kistin, a pediatrics
researcher at Boston University School of Medicine who wasn’t
involved in the study.
“Programs such as the workshops studied here can help parents engage
and support their children during shared reading and move beyond
simply reading the words on the page,” Kistin said by email.
“Common interactive approaches include asking the child questions
about what characters are thinking, letting the child explain the
scene, and discussing the meaning of the story after the book is
finished,” Kistin added. “These conversations expose children to
complex language and ideas, which in turn promote early literacy
skills.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2EVPQcG Pediatrics, online December 28, 2017.
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