Breastfeeding for longer, cutting out TV and enlisting grandparents to babysit are among the keys to bringing up happy, healthy children, a new Federal Government-funded report shows.

The four-year study measured children’s physical, learning and cognitive development plus social and emotional functioning.

Federal Families, Housing and Community Services Minister Jenny Macklin released the report - Growing Up In Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children - in Sydney today.

The report shows infants aged three to 19 months had higher learning scores if they were cared for by a range of family and friends - including grandparents - rather than just their parents.

Ms Macklin said grandparents were the unsung heroes of the Australian family unit, providing a strong support base for families by lending a hand with day-to-day family life and influencing their grandchildren’s development.

“This new study demonstrates just what a critical role grandparents play in the development of children,” Ms Macklin told reporters at a daycare centre in inner-city Redfern.

Spending time with grandchildren, reading to them, cooking together and taking them shopping were simple interactions which made the difference, she said.

The only option better than getting grandma and grandpa to babysit was for the children to attend early education programs, the report says.

The study began in 2004 and more than 10,000 families agreed to take part.

Also indicated in the study was that mothers were still not breastfeeding exclusively for long enough.

The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) recommends mothers breastfeed exclusively for at least six months, but while most of the mothers who had taken part in the study had breastfed, they had not done so for long enough, the results showed.

The majority of children had diets that did not meet nutritional guidelines and many preferred less physical activities.

The lack of breastfeeding also positively correlated to incidences of wheezing in infants and a strong prediction for asthma in children aged four to five.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, children who read more - alone or with a parent - and watched less TV tended towards better developmental scores across the board.

“We know from this study how important it is to a child’s development to … spend as much time as possible everyday reading and spending time playing with children,” Ms Macklin said.

The study also showed that six per cent of children studied lived in households that had been forced to skip meals or not pay bills in order to cope with growing financial stress over the past 12 months.

However, while financial stress had an adverse affect on the child’s development, overall income levels did not - meaning children growing up in affluent households were not necessarily better off than those growing up in poorer homes or neighbourhoods.

The Growing Up in Australia report is the first comprehensive national study of Australian children over time, Ms Macklin said.

Source: The Epoch Times
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