Language Treasures

It is important that all children in the Netherlands have the opportunity to reach their full potential and lead a healthy and happy life. Good language development is a very important factor for this. Talking and interacting with your child seems obvious, yet this is not case. Certainly not in a digital society. Some parents do not know how important their role is; others do not have or take enough time. And others have doubts about how they should approach this.

A great deal of energy is currently put into identifying and dealing with language delays as they manifest themselves.

The Language Treasures (Taalschatten) project aims to ensure that all 170,000 children annually born start school at the right language level. The goal is that all parents—from all backgrounds and educational levels—know that talking and interacting with their children is a prerequisite for the (brain) development of their children, just like nutrition, exercise, and sleep.

As a partner, Tilburg University is responsible for the development and evaluation of scientifically supported interventions aimed at increasing awareness of and knowledge about the effect of a rich language environment on the (brain) development and important success skills of young children (0–4 years old) in order to optimize the development of the child in the first years of life as a foundation for the rest of his/her life.

Collaboration

This project is a collaboration between the Number 5 Foundation, Reading & Writing Foundation (Stichting Lezen en Schrijven), and Tilburg University. Together they are working on the realization of the mission. One of the necessary factors is to involve the ecosystem surrounding the young child including both public and private parties. Key players herein are general practitioners, pediatricians, midwives, childcare, and speech therapists. By working together with these parties, the project partners want to create a social movement to complete the mission.