Teach Your Baby to Talk (and the rest follows) by Penny Johnson

babies and toddlers, DEVELOPING EARLY LITERACY SKILLS, Help for Parents, HELP FOR PARENTS, How can I help my child read?, Reading with your child at home, Speech Development by teachbabytotalk

Teach baby to talk ( and the rest follows)

In 2012 I did a radio interview with Penny Johnson on ABC Melbourne. She has a radio program for new parents called     “Baby Talk”.

I had gone to Melbourne to be interviewed on the Channel 10 daytime program called ” The Circle” and had arranged to meet up with Penny after I had finished at Channel 10. We had a wonderful time talking ( and laughing )about why I had written my book and the important information I was trying to “get out there”. Here is a copy of the introduction she has written to accompany my interview.

Babies are little packages of potential but how do you give them the best start on their educational pathway? It could come down to how you teach them to talk and it seems that the evidence shows that baby-talk is not helping children learn to speak. 

 Learning to read is acknowledged as one of the major milestones of early education and most of us with babies are a fair way away from that step but what if your actions now could have an impact on your child’s ability to learn how to read?

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Most of us acknowledge we’re definitely in the ranks of beginners when it comes to raising children but this wasn’t the case in previous generations when there was always a lot of people around meddling in (or helping) with the task of raising a family. So the task of learning to talk can sometimes be left to parents without much experience, less time than ever before and with more technology than they know what to do with.

Sandra Jean Smith has written a book called “Teach Baby to Talk and Make Reading Fun, the Importance of Speech and Language in Learning to read.” Calling on her 32 years experience as a Primary School and Kindergarten teacher she explains how speaking and reading are closely linked and how children are coming to school with less language ability than in previous generations.

Less interaction with cross generational groups and more time spent in front of the TV and computer are all to blame but parents need to work on helping their children as best they can. Listen to some of Sandra Jean Smith’s simple ideas for giving your child the best start to their language journey with some good old fashioned advice.

Get your copy of Sandra Jean Smith’s book “Teach Baby to Talk and Make Reading Fun” can be found on her blog

If you wish to listen to the interview or watch my TV appearance in the Circle they are both available on this blog under the title ” Media”

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