Children’s development at 22 months old has been shown to be a predictor of academic outcomes at the age of 26. With babies now being funded from September, we can support that development, explains Oliiki app founder Clare Stead

Are we confident that our staff fully understand the needs of our babies, and can our staff confidently support those babies’ development? Are we setting ourselves up for success or should we be taking steps to assist parents in supporting their child in the first nine months of life, so we can ensure all children in our care reach their full developmental potential by 22 months old and can go on thereafter to thrive?

The time from conception to age two is the time babies’ brains are literally building themselves. Each tiny activity, interaction and engagement is a chance for a baby to build vital neural connections and develop their skills and test their knowledge. With that in mind, the baby room is one of the most important spaces in our settings. But too often they are staffed with junior staff and are rooms that are grounded in functional activity rather than brain building adventures. One of the issues stems from staff lacking a deep understanding of child development and how play supports that development.

Addressing this challenge can be incredibly costly and often prohibitive due to staffing issues. And lessons learned in training are often not integrated into activities upon returning to the setting.

But what if we turned things on their head? What if we sought to make our baby rooms the best places to be in our setting? And what if that ambition started with the support we provide for parents from the first look around our setting? And what if our training was based in-house and was focused on each tiny activity that was offered? Not only would this be cost-effective, it could start immediately and have significant impact.

How would that change our practice and our provision? With the increased interest in places for our babies, parents are looking around settings earlier, often while they are still pregnant.

Have conversations with the parents as early as possible to build a strong connection and help the parents feel more supported in your environment. If you get it right, it’s an excellent marketing tool, differentiating your nursery from others in your area. Giving parents, particularly first-time parents, the means to understand the impact that they have on their child’s development and the tools with which to implement this successfully is powerful.

Showing them how to engage and interact with their baby right from the start and showing them not just what to do but why they are doing it helps them gain confidence in their newfound role as a parent. Helping parents meaningfully engage with play helps them ultimately understand play for development. And this helps us too.

If babies have been born into an engaging, interactive environment, when they arrive at our settings they will be more prepared to engage in the exciting, brain-building activities that we provide for them. This means we will be able to add more value to their development and help them become truly school-ready over time.

But we also need staff who understand how to use play to support development and how to make each tiny moment a brain-building moment. With this in place, it means that the time spent in the baby room becomes an adventure in playful learning. Doing this and supporting parents in this way is easy to do, one activity at a time, with tools like the Oliiki app.

Transformation in the baby room begins with the adults who are involved in it. The more that staff and parents understand play for child development, the more our babies will be able to develop and thrive.

Here are some things to do today to start the transformation in your setting:

• Upskill your staff – it’s the quality of the interactions that drives the outcomes for our babies.
• Focus on connection – make it a cornerstone of your curriculum.
• Slow down – new brains need time to connect, hear what is being said, see what is being shown, compute the information and then respond.
• Give time.
• Don’t plan for areas in the baby room, plan for development of the child.
• Share the developmental learning with the parents at the end of the day and aim to encourage them to continue it at home.