Playing Today, Learning Tomorrow: From First Words to First Grade
Every day, newborns’ cries fill hospitals, signaling the beginning of new lives. So researchers wanted to understand how early support for parents can impact a child’s long-term development, especially in families facing economic hardship.
The research team enrolled 403 mother–infant pairs in the study. These pairs were randomly assigned at birth: one group received standard pediatric care, while the other participated in the Smart Beginnings (SB) program. The study was conducted at two sites, in New York City and Pittsburgh.
The results are presented in the study titled “Early Parenting Support on Child Development Through Age 6: The Smart Beginnings Model.” The authors are Elizabeth B. Miller, Caitlin F. Canfield, Ashleigh I. Aviles, Leah J. Hunter, Erin Roby, Alan L. Mendelsohn, Daniel S. Shaw, and Pamela A. Morris-Perez.
Smart Beginnings: Program Results
As explained, the SB program combines two approaches. The first, PlayReadVIP, takes place during pediatric checkups and involves recording parents reading or playing with their child. These recordings help foster interactions that support cognitive development. The second, Family Check-Up, is an in-home intervention that uses clinical family management strategies to address difficult child behavior and other challenges, especially among families facing adversity.
The study found that when parents provide more cognitive stimulation in early childhood, children show stronger pre-academic skills in preschool. These skills, in turn, lead to better outcomes, including receptive vocabulary, oral comprehension, letter and word recognition, and applied problem-solving. It was noted that “early preventive intervention through Smart Beginnings can have long-term impacts in elementary school, even three years after the program ends.” In other words, the results show that the Smart Beginnings model fosters the gradual development of academic skills in children and represents a promising approach to reducing educational disparities from early childhood.
We spoke with the study’s lead author, Elizabeth B. Miller, PhD, EdM, Assistant Professor in the Department of Population Health at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
“Smart Beginnings is a program model designed to effectively intervene with large numbers of families with low incomes during infancy and toddlerhood.”
Since poverty brings stress and worries for parents, how can this research help in this regard? Parents who worry about how to feed their children or pay the bills are under a lot of pressure.
Elizabeth B. Miller: Yes, of course, poverty brings stress and worries for parents. Poverty also has major ramifications for child development. Based on the stressors and constraints of poverty arising from inequality of resources and opportunity, young children growing up in households with lower incomes have fewer opportunities for home-based learning, including limited access to print materials and lower levels of exposure to complex language and shared reading. Smart Beginnings is a program model designed to effectively intervene with large numbers of families with low incomes during infancy and toddlerhood. We have shown in our research that directly intervening with parents and promoting cognitively stimulating activities with their children can have cascading positive effects well into early elementary skills by boosting their academic skills.
What does this mean for future generations, and what are the long-term benefits of this study?
Elizabeth B. Miller: The long-term benefits of the study are that directly intervening with parents and promoting cognitive stimulation in infancy and toddlerhood can lead to improvements in an extended array of academic outcomes for children in elementary school that are foundational for school success over the lifespan. Later achievement is related to prior skills, so building a solid foundation early in life is essential. The study also points to the positive power of parents and how critical they are for their children’s development.
How can this be applied in practice, and what do you think is the key step in 2026?
Elizabeth B. Miller: The two components of Smart Beginnings – PlayReadVIP in pediatric primary care and the Family Check-Up through home visiting – are already being applied in practice in many different types of settings. PlayReadVIP’s successful cultural and linguistic adaptations ensure scalability in diverse settings across the United States and internationally in Brazil and Singapore. At the same time, the Family Check-Up’s evidence base has led to wide implementation in the United States through the federal Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting program. The key step in 2026 is to continue to optimally target program services to family needs.
The study clearly shows that by encouraging parent–child interaction from birth, programs like Smart Beginnings can set in motion a chain of positive changes, from stronger pre-academic skills in preschool to better academic outcomes in the early grades. Equally important, these programs also empower parents themselves, because in those small, everyday moments, in reading, talking, and playing together, the babies from the beginning of our story learn their first words and spend more time in joyful interactions.
Funding for the study was provided by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health, grant R01HD076390.
Image: Elizabeth B. Miller, PhD, NYU Grossman School of Medicine
