Hillary Clinton lent encouragement Sunday to pediatricians who are trying to promote parents reading to children, while weighing in on the debate over how much electronic screen time is healthy for infants and toddlers.
At the San Diego Convention Center, Clinton announced the distribution of an early literacy tool kit to help promote the verbal development of young children. The effort capitalizes on the trusted role of pediatricians in encouraging parents to read out loud, chat freely and even sing more with their young children from day one. The tool kits will be shared with 62,000 members of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which is holding a conference in San Diego this week.
As we have learned in the last 15 years, scientists can literally watch the synapses and the neurons firing when parents are reading and talking with children from their very earliest days, said Clinton, a former U.S. Secretary of State. The Academy of Pediatrics touched off a national debate about the use of electronic devices by young children in June when it recommended no TV or electronic screen time for children under the age of 2, and less than two hours for older children.
Clinton, the author of It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us and Dear Socks, Dear Buddy: Kids Letters to Their First Pets, embraced those concerns during extended comments about the word gap among children whose vocabulary development falters in early life.
Now technology is of course changing how Americans read and in many ways it is opening up exciting new avenues for learning, Clinton said. We dont have enough research, but I think what we are learning is that the earliest years before a child is 2, televisions, iPads and screens are no substitute for actual parent-child interactions like talking, reading and singing.
The academy has joined forces on literacy development with the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation and Next Generation, the California-based policy group on Climate change and childhood issues. Their initiative, dubbed Too Small to Fail, responds to a growing body of research highlighting language sensitivity starting in infancy.
Speaking for nearly 30 minutes on stage without a Teleprompter or notes, Clinton touched on health care policy milestones of the 1990s, including the defeat of her own health care reform initiative as First Lady.
Clinton brushed off a jarring interruption by a man with a megaphone and siren who was escorted out of the room.
You know there are some people who miss important developmental stages, she said to applause.
Among those in the audience, Clintons prospects as a possible presidential candidate in 2016 were on almost everyones mind.
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Hillary Clinton says no iPads for babies