Children need parents' love and teacher' attention

On a hot summer day in 1982, while helping Bill campaign for governor in a small Arkansas town, I approached a group of women and children and introduced myself. Chelsea -- who was just a toddler then -- was holding my hand when I said to one mother cradling a newborn, "I bet you're having fun, playing with her and talking to her all the time."

The woman gave me a baffled look and said, "Why would I talk to her? She can't talk back."

I wasn't quite sure how to respond. Bill and I knew that talking and reading to Chelsea was not only fun but also helped her begin talking and reading on her own. But we couldn't say why. Until now. In the past few years, researchers have found scientific evidence for what many parents always suspected: Time spent talking, singing and reading to an infant strengthens the bond between parent and child and helps the child develop emotionally and intellectually. In fact, it literally helps a baby's brain grow.

At birth, an infant's brain is far from fully formed. During the first three years of life, the brain is a sponge, absorbing every bit of activity in its environment. It must rely on the stimulation of its surroundings -- a mother's loving voice, sunlight from a window, the warmth of being held against a parent's chest -- to help connect its cells to each other and "turn on" the child's capacity to learn, feel, communicate and relate to others. And without proper stimulation and loving attention from adults in these early years, a child is far less likely to live up to his emotional and intellectual potential.

Thursday, Bill and I will be hosting a day-long conference at the White House to discuss these new scientific findings -- most of them the work of American scientists in government-sponsored labs such as the National Institutes of Health -- and what they mean not only to families but to teachers, employers, lawmakers and our society as a whole. The White House Conference on Early Childhood Development and Learning will bring together leading neuroscientist, pediatricians and child-development specialists with child-care providers, business and religious leaders and others whom we will rely on to help put this new knowledge into practice. It will be transmitted via satellite to some 80 schools, colleges and hospitals across the country.

I'm excited about the conference for a number of reasons. First, we hope to share ways to help parents make sense of and apply this new knowledge in their daily interactions with children. Second, we hope to spur lawmakers, educators and business leaders to recognize the role this information about early childhood development must play in policy-making. Given what we now know about the first years of life, we have an even greater responsibility to bring issues such as expanding early childhood education and improving child care to the top of our national agenda.

And most of all, I hope this conference will help lay to rest the counterproductive, yet enduring, debate in our society over nurture vs. nature in determining a person's success in life. The new research offers evidence that we are the result of both. Our character and potential are far from completely determined at birth. And we can work together to provide all children with the physical, emotional and intellectual nurturing they need to become healthy and productive citizens.

Today, just 39 percent of parents read to their infants and toddlers daily. But we are already witnessing some hopeful efforts to change this statistic and make good use of the new knowledge about the importance of reading in the early years. This week, I announced a new national partnership among several sectors of our society to encourage more parents to read regularly to their infants and toddlers.

Through a national program called Reach Out and Read, pediatricians, who often are the first professionals to have regular contact with new families, will "prescribe" reading aloud to young patients and their parents during every visit. Publishers such as Scholastic Inc. and non-profit organizations such as First Book have promised to contribute hundreds of thousands of free books to health clinics across the country that serve needy families. And through its Born to Read program, the American Library Association will work with the nation's 16,000 public libraries to establish partnerships with health- care professionals to teach the critical importance of reading and pre-school learning.

But with all this attention on the importance of the first three years, let's not lose sight of the fact that learning is never a one-shot deal. As any parent who has shepherded a child from infancy through adolescence can tell you, children need the love of parents, the attention of teachers and the guidance of mentors at all stages of growing up. As a country whose continuing prosperity depends on unlocking the potential of all our citizens, we can't afford to leave any of our children behind.

-- Creators Syndicate