A new study from researchers at NYU Langone shows that a pediatric primary care-based intervention to promote parents reading aloud and playing with their young children could have a sustained impact on children’s social and emotional development.

The intervention, called the Video Interaction Project, involves a trained parenting coach recording video of learning and play time between parent and child, then reviewing the video with the parent to identify and reinforce positive interactions.  This study followed the children over several years and found that closer to school age, the positive effects on behavior persisted. The children whose families had participated in the intervention when they were younger were still less likely to manifest behavior problems such as aggression, hyperactivity, and difficulty with attention.
 
“The key take-home message to me is that when parents read and play with their children when their children are very young—we’re talking about birth to 3-year-olds—it has really large impacts on their children’s behavior,” Alan L. Mendelsohn, MD, associate professor in the departments of Pediatrics and Population Health and lead author of the study, tells The New York Times.

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