“Let the kids play out”.

That was the call from Elland mum Lindsey Emerton who, after a University of Huddersfield project, is convinced that children need to be playing and socialising, not slumped in front of a TV screen or surfing the web.

Now, after achieving exceptionally high marks in her degree studies, Lindsey, who has an eight-year-old son, is poised to carry out postgraduate research that will probe and analyse parental attitudes to the internet.

It will lead to a Master’s degree, to complement the BA in Early Years that she has just been awarded, scoring First Class Honours with ultra-high average marks of 89.2%, the second best of the academic year and qualifying her for a University of Huddersfield Chancellor’s Prize.

For Lindsey, a former riding instructor who became a primary school teaching assistant, her success has revealed an aptitude and passion for academic work, which she now builds on with her MA project.

It will deal with the interaction between parents and child internet safety organisations and Lindsey will gather data via questionnaires and interviews, analysing her findings in a thesis. The project has emerged from her own experiences and from conversations with other parents at the Todmorden primary school where she became a teaching assistant after a long spell teaching riding at an equestrian centre in Norland, near Halifax.

“Children nowadays are what we call digital natives. They have been brought up in the internet age, whereas their parents haven’t, so there is a generational gap, with parents being left behind,” says Lindsey, who lives in Elland.

“There are serious issues such as violent images and grooming via social networks, but on top of that, children are meant to go outside and play together.

“The benefits of play far outrun anything they can learn from the internet or watching television. Children are meant to be social creatures and the skill to be able to converse with somebody is learned at a very young age.”

Lindsey, 39, studied for her Early Years course at the University of Huddersfield campus in Barnsley, after studying for a Foundation Degree at Calderdale College. For her BA, she covered topics such as the psychology and sociology of childhood.

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