Rx For Baby: ‘Green Eggs, Ham’

Parents: Expect “Green Eggs and Ham” to be prescribed on your baby’s next visit to the pediatrician.

Under a new national campaign announced Wednesday by first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, pediatricians and hospitals have teamed up with book publishers to prescribe reading to infants and toddlers as part of standard pediatric care.

More than 250,000 books, such as the Dr. Seuss classic, have already been donated so that, instead of a lollypop from the doctor, kiddie patients will get a book to take home.

“Time spent sharing a favorite book with a child, even a newborn, strengthens the bond between a parent and child, and prepares that child for reading - and literally helps a child’s brain grow,” Clinton said at a Roosevelt Room ceremony announcing the initiative.

It served as a kickoff for today’s daylong White House Conference on Early Childhood, which the president and Hillary Clinton were hosting to explore what the latest brain studies say about how very young children learn and grow.

Research has shown that when a physician instructs parents to read to their children - and gives books to low-income parents - they are four times more likely to follow those instructions, Clinton said.

The partnership, which involves no government funds, has committed to distributing 250,000 books to clinics nationwide. It will also train 10,000 pediatricians and 950 health centers to give parents a reading checklist and free books as part of standard care for hundreds of thousands of children by 2000.