Sue Palmer, Literacy Expert and Chair of the Scottish Play Commission

‘So what you’re tellin’ me,’ said a dad at a parents’ talk I was giving in Glasgow, ‘is that neuroscience has caught up with what my granny used to know?’‘Yep,’ I said. I’d just spent several years researching what children need for healthy development in the early years only to discover that my granny used to know it all as well.

For instance, to entertain fretful babies (or to entertain happy ones), grannies used to pick them up, rock them from side to side, and sing or talk to them. They sang what they remembered their own mums singing – the old nursery rhymes – and talked in a simplified, singsong language that psychologists now call ‘parentese’. And they did it day after day, time after time, over and over again. By doing so, they unconsciously tuned the babies’ ears to the sounds and rhythms of language, preparing them to speak for themselves. The psychologists call it ‘the dance of communication’, and it’s as old as the hills.

Grannies played with babies too – automatically going into routines like Peekaboo and encouraging them to reach and grasp, crawl and roll, so they naturally developed the physical control and coordination that underpins all healthy development. Once they could toddle, grannies would let wee ones play around with whatever was handy as they got on with their work. My granny was a school cleaner and I well remember trotting along behind her with my own little brush, ‘helping’ her sweep up the chalk dust, and making a horrible mess with a bucket of soapy water as I washed down the school steps.

And at bedtime grannies would tell stories – wonderful stories – about fairies and giants and (my granny’s speciality) what mum and dad did when they were little, and what it was like in our street in the olden days. My granny was more-or-less illiterate, so she couldn’t read me stories. But we did share the books mum brought home from the library, looking at the pictures together while I parroted the bits I could remember. She was so proud of me and predicted that one day I’d be a teacher (which I was).

So there’s nothing new about the ideas behind the Scottish government’s Play Talk Read campaign. The problem is that – in a rapidly changing world – the wisdom of generations of loving grannies has been lost. A generation or so ago, it seemed to be past its sell-by date. Modern parents don’t need to play, talk and read with their wee ones to soothe or entertain them, or find active ways to keep them busy while they get on with chores. Nowadays we can plug babies and toddlers into electronic babysitters – DVDs, Baby TV, the CBeebies websites and endless electronic toys.

It’s taken neuroscientific research to show that, while these technological miracles keep children quiet and engaged, they don’t provide the human ingredients needed for physical, emotional, social and cognitive development.

So please have a look at the wonderful Play Talk Read website. It’s teeming with great ideas to get parents (and grandparents – indeed, any caring adults) interacting with babies, toddlers and preschoolers. And it backs up the ideas with easily-digested nuggets of scientific fact that we need these days to substitute for ancient wisdom.

And please, when you’ve checked out the website, pass it on. If we want to build on the great democratic tradition of Scottish education, we must ensure that all today’s mums and dads know how to lay the foundations on which literacy and learning are based. The way parents interact with their small children can make a very big difference to those children’s future – and to the future of Scotland as a whole.

Sue Palmer, Chair of the Scottish Play Commission

About: Sue Palmer is a writer and presenter, best known for her books Toxic Childhood and 21st Century Boys. She is also one of the UK’s most well-established authorities on the teaching of literacy.

For more information visit the play talk read website.