What if the secret to raising curious, confident children was already in your kitchen cupboard?

Sergei Urban is the founder of The Dad Lab, one of the most followed play based learning platforms in the world. With over 10 million followers and 3 billion YouTube views, his content is used in classrooms worldwide including by the Australian government. He has done all of it without a science degree, with a masters in economics and a kitchen cupboard.

In this episode, George sits down with Sergei to talk about why hands on play matters more than any curriculum, how to create a home environment that builds curiosity without pressure, the truth about screen time and what he actually did when his toddler got addicted to an iPad, why social media gives children answers when what they need is questions, and what it means to raise children in the age of AI.

Whether you have five minutes or a full Sunday afternoon, this conversation will change how you think about play at home.

Best Beginnings is the podcast from Babyzone about what happens in the first five years of life and why it shapes everything that comes after.

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What can we actually know about a child's development in the first year of life? And what should parents do with that information?

Professor Emily Jones is Professor of Neuroscience at King's College London, leads the BOND lab at Birkbeck University and is Principal Investigator of BASIS, the British Autism Study of Infant Siblings, which has followed hundreds of babies from six months through childhood.

In this episode we talk about the biggest myths around autism, what sleep patterns in babies as young as 14 months can tell us, why neurodivergent parents may naturally be creating better environments for their children and what Emily would most want every worried parent to hear.

Best Beginnings is a podcast from Babyzone about the first five years of life and why they shape everything that comes after. Each week George Looker speaks to the researchers, practitioners, parents and policymakers thinking most deeply about early childhood.

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Neil Leitch has spent decades fighting for the early years sector to be taken seriously. As CEO of the Early Years Alliance, the largest early years membership organisation in England, he has seen what happens when families don't get the support they need in the earliest years of life and what changes when they do.

In this episode we talk about a freedom of information request that took two and a half years to win and revealed that in 2021 the Department for Education calculated it would cost £7.49 per hour to properly fund early years provision for three and four year olds. Today providers receive around £5.60. Less than the government's own figure, four years on, after double digit inflation and rising costs.

We also talk about why 77% of early years educators who leave the sector say they feel undervalued by government, what real education actually looks like, why every child has talent but not every child has opportunity and why the earliest years are the single most important period we consistently underinvest in.

Subscribe to Best Beginnings wherever you listen to podcasts and if you know someone who needs to hear this, share it with them.

1 million new neural connections form in a child's brain every single second during the first three years of life.

By the time a child turns two, more than 80% of their brain architecture is already in place.

And yet, as a society, we invest the least in the years that matter most.

That's what Best Beginnings is here to change. In this opening monologue, George Looker makes the case for why the earliest years aren't just a social priority, they're an economic one. And why what happens at the kitchen table matters more than any government programme.

Subscribe to Best Beginnings wherever you listen to podcasts and if you know someone that needs to hear this, share it with them.