Lending Library

‘What parents do is more important than who parents are.’

Social class, income, living conditions and parents’ own education levels are clearly directly related to child development outcomes. However, the quality of the early home learning environment (from birth) acts as a significant modifying factor. All parents can enhance their child’s progress if they engage regularly in activities that encourage positive social development and thinking (stretching children’s minds). The play activities seen to have the most impact are reading and sharing books, going to the library, going on visits, playing with letters and numbers, singing songs and rhymes, drawing and painting and playing with friends. The research also indicates that boys are less likely than girls to have the benefit of these high quality early learning experiences.
Children with strong early home learning environments are ahead in both social and cognitive development at the age of three. They show advanced language ability, higher levels of confidence, cooperation and sociability, as well as having greater discrimination and spatial skills (recognising similarities in pictures, completing patterns and block building). This advantage continues as the children progress through school, as they continue to perform well on language and discrimination tasks and show greater awareness of rhyme and alliteration, written symbols and early number concepts. At the age of seven they attain more highly on standardised reading and maths tests as well as expressing more positive attitudes towards learning.

National Children’s Bureau © 2013