Cutting out baby talk is just one way to improve your child’s reading ability

WHITFIELD COUNTY, Ga. (WDEF) – The Whitfield Health department says that nearly 70% of Georgia’s children are unable to read proficiently by third grade.

Officials explain how replacing baby talk is just ONE thing you can do to combat this growing issue.

According to the Whitfield County Health Department, Georgia ranks as one of the lowest states in the nation for literacy.

With the help of a 2018 Early Language and Literacy Grant, they are able to work with several organizations to combat this issues in every stage of life.

Marcela Navarro, Literacy Ambassador, says, “I get parents to understand they’re talking to their babies in that maybe baby talk is cute, but it is not very beneficial because they are not hearing every day words that they need to be hearing.”

The health department is also an advocate of early literacy because they believe it not only impacts them professionally, but also leads to what they call “low health literacy.”

Isabel Barajas, Planning and Partnership Specialist says, “you would be surprised at how many times we have families who have just spoken to a doctor and you were like so what did you think and they are like I really don’t know what to say and it is to the point where they are so confused that they don’t even know what to ask. It eventually leads to better health care because they know what their options are, they know what is being explain to them.”

Navarro says she talks to them about “how they can be teachers to their children and they don’t necessarily have to wait until they’re in school to have teachers. The teaching starts at home.”

That’s what Vicky Ingram does with her grandchildren… reading with them 4 times a week.

Ingram says, “I love to read and my dad used to read to me. It was the newspaper but it makes them smarter.”

The library, a local non profit, local college as well as the health department have programs that will help a child every step of the way.

Barajas says, “it was a community effort we all needed each other and it would not have been as impactful if it wasn’t all of us coming together, because we all taken different stages and it just works out perfectly.”

There is a clinic each Tuesday for parents, even those who’s babies are in utero, and officials say it’s never too early to start like this family who reads on their follow up visits.

Ingram says, “they learn more and they learn a lot more and if you talk to them, it helps them a lot, I understand more.”

Officials say there are detrimental effects of poor reading skills on a person’s standard of living and quality of life. They say the consequences of low reading literacy tends to be low health literacy, which affects that person’s well-being over a lifetime due to a limited capacity to obtain, process and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions on matters such as healthy lifestyle choices, access to healthcare, and so on.

Here is the link to the 2018 Early Language and Literacy Mini-Grant that was awarded last January to Northwest Georgia Healthcare Partnership.

The Whitfield County Health Department (WCHD) says their program is “designed to transform our waiting room into a literacy-rich space where we address one of four core pillars that have been identified as the foundation for change: Language Nutrition, the language rich adult-child interactions that nourish or facilitate brain development. Serving women as they come in for prenatal care, our Literacy Ambassador offers opportunities for these women to learn from a trained coach, receive information on how reading and talking/storytelling affects babies in utero and early infancy, and obtain free books to build their family’s home library. By establishing a literacy focused framework for mothers-to-be, we are modeling the importance of early literacy intervention so that none of the women, mostly low-income, will miss out on these critical opportunities to build early success for their children.”

For the mothers participating in WIC, Peer Counselors also serve as an encouragement system to advocate for family literacy. They give away books as well as support early reading and conversation. The WIC staff is trained in Talk With Me Baby (TWMB) and say their “sustainable model of literacy education can continue after the expiration of our funding.”