Parents who completed the programme enjoyed Playtime with Books and gave positive feedback.
In cycle one, we interviewed eight parents who completed the programme and two parents who did not to gather feedback about their experience of Playtime with Books. Parents who took part in the programme enjoyed it and gave positive feedback on the support they received from facilitators. They particularly enjoyed the video-feedback sessions, which involved receiving positive feedback from their facilitators about their recorded clips of sharing books with their child. This helped them to build confidence with their book-sharing skills and helped them to notice new things about their child, such as how much they focused on the book or how much they looked at the parent. These positive experiences led to richer, longer and more regular book-sharing interactions between them and their child and an increased enjoyment of books among children.
The majority of parents said that this experience helped them to share books differently with their child, compared to their approaches to book sharing before the programme. In particular they allowed their child to lead and follow their interests, a key skill encouraged by facilitators. Parents noticed that this led to their child being more engaged and having increased attention when book sharing. Some parents shared their experience of this approach and how it impacted their child:
“One of the things that I'd mentioned to [my facilitator] was that I tend to give her the book and then very methodically kind of flip through. But it wasn't very often that I'd kind of allow her to go back and forth and do her own thing. So that was good for me to learn how to do that and recognise that's part of the experience for her. And I definitely think she has grown to like books more because of that.”
Parent A
Another parent noticed how it felt more enjoyable for her as the adult to share books in this way, compared to reading books before:
“It relieved a lot of pressure off me, so then I enjoyed it more. Seeing and following [child’s name] lead and show what she was actually interested in, and supporting her with that.”
Parent C
Even parents who had more experience of reading with their child felt they learnt something new from the programme. Parent A noticed how this then increased her child’s confidence and enjoyment with books:
“I'm in the early childhood field and maybe went in with slightly more experience than some people would, but even then I found I learned and noticed behaviours in my daughter as far as her confidence with books and her excitement.”
Parent A
