The evidence from around the world is clear. Kindergarten and early education for very young children offer tremendous benefits for most children and great gains for society.

Thus the B.C. government’s look at full-day kindergarten and education for children as young as three is a bold step that could make the province a leader within North America.

The government is seeking comments on proposals for big changes to public education. In the February throne speech, it pledged to assess both full-day kindergarten for five-year-olds and the introduction of optional day-long kindergarten for four-year-olds by 2010 and for three-year-olds by 2012.

Quality early education benefits almost all children, but the greatest benefits flow to the disadvantaged. They are the ones most at risk of starting Grade 1 already behind their peers, wondering in those first school days — and for years after — why the other kids seem to know what to do and how to learn so much better than they do.

It’s hardly surprising. A child raised in an affluent home, perhaps with a stay-at-home parent and active involvement in preschools and play groups and reading programs, is likely to be well-equipped for school’s challenges. A child deprived of those experiences and facing other hurdles, like a weak grasp of English, starts at a great disadvantage.

Research indicates that early education provides social and academic benefits. Done well, it also strengthens families and prepares parents to play a more positive role in their children’s education and lives.

There are bound to be concerns. Staffing will be an issue. That can be addressed in part by avoiding unnecessarily restrictive qualifications.

Some parents will likely seek not just the right to opt out of the programs, but equivalent funding. Choice is likely advisable, but special funding arrangements would not be.

Cost will also be a factor. Extending kindergarten to children of three and four could mean 80,000 extra students by 2012 and some $400 million in annual costs.

That’s certainly affordable, especially given the payback in a more successful, educated population and the harnessing of talent that might otherwise be lost.

But if the price is seen as too high, then one answer is targeted programs focused on the kids who need the early help the most — in First Nations communities and poor neighbourhoods, for example. The Education Ministry has already shown what can be achieved with its StrongStart B.C. drop-in program for children and parents.

The government is seeking public comments on the idea, with an Aug. 15 deadline. A discussion paper and response form can be found at www.bced.gov.bc.ca/ecla/.

This is a positive step, for children and the province. It is a great tragedy to deny children the basic right to make the most of their abilities. They are damaged, and society loses, when their chance to contribute and succeed is limited by an accident of birth.

Source: Times Colonist, Canada
http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/comment/story.html?id=96920524-3558-41aa-9973-e6e56c3f27be

Children who are smacked or yelled at are much more likely to develop serious mental health problems by the age of three, research reveals.

A study of more than 700 toddlers found that those who were harshly disciplined by their parents were at much higher risk of depression and anxiety in later life. Disobedience and aggression were also common problems for infants who had been smacked or screamed at.

The study by Melbourne’s Murdoch Children’s Research Institute showed that parental stress could also have a huge impact on infant mental health.

Children from all walks of life were studied at the age of seven months, then followed up every six months until the age of three.

Researcher Jordana Bayer, a child psychologist, said up to 50% of early behavioural problems persisted through childhood. “In early childhood, behavioural problems such as hitting and kicking and biting and saying no are very common. But if they’re at high levels by preschool age then up to half will go on through childhood and lead potentially into adolescence with conduct disorder and drug use and depression and so on,” Dr Bayer said.

“It’s important for parents to pay attention to when young children behave well and actually reward that behaviour with praise and hugs.”

The findings, published in the latest edition of the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, will be used to develop family support programs.

Murdoch researcher and pediatrician Harriet Hiscock said doctors working with children should always ask about the parents’ stress levels. “There are ways to help reduce this stress and help parents manage their child’s behaviour in more calm and consistent ways.”

Source: The Age, Australia
http://www.theage.com.au/national/childs-mental-health-at-risk-from-tough-love-20080729-3mvf.html

Parents lack the skills to bring up children and the Government is palming off the responsibility to schools, teachers warned today.

He said many children live with “no functioning parent” in the home. “There is no food in the house, no one washes your clothes, you don’t get taken to the GP, the dentist or the optician,” he said.

Mr Parkin said the commercialisation of childhood made it much more difficult to be a parent than it was 30 years ago and he had “sympathy” for parents coping with these pressures.

A spokesman for the Department for Children Schools and Families said new plans mean that “Parents will get more support and schools will have more services around them so that teachers are free to teach.”

Source: Times Online, UK
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/education/article4429867.ece

It often seems that certain aspects of our personalities are influenced by events that occurred in our childhoods. A recent study by Dr. Akaysha Tang’s research team from the University of New Mexico Psychology Department and collaborators at Rockefeller University examined how early life experience influences social skills and ability to handle stressful situations using a rat model. The study will be published on July 30th in the online, open-access journal PLoS ONE.

In this study, Dr. Tang and colleagues examined whether rats that experienced greater novelty by spending three minutes a day away from their familiar home environment during infancy had a greater ability to compete against other rats for exclusive access to chocolate reward compared to their siblings that stayed in the home environment during infancy. They found that novelty-exposed rats were able to “beat out” their competitors more often than their home-staying siblings. They also found that across repeated sessions of competition, novelty-exposed rats decreased their release of stress hormones into the bloodstream, suggesting that they adapted faster to the stressful situation.

In translating possible significance of these findings to the human species, although it is sometimes assumed that the overall amount of care from the mother is one of the most important influences on her children’s development, this study by Dr. Tang and colleagues provides a different view—that the consistency of maternal care may be more important than the amount of maternal care and that other sources of influences, such as environmental novelty can play an important role in shaping a child’s development.

Source: Science Daily
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080729234254.htm

I’m not talking about C++ vs. Fortran here. I’m talking about actual spoken languages. I bring it up in this column for a couple of reasons: first, one of my kids really struggled with French this past year and I’m wondering if there are alternatives that might come more naturally for him (he’s high on the autistic spectrum, so language is a real challenge). That being said, we actually have a high proportion of kids in our school with language processing difficulties.

The other reason that is far more germane to technology is that the advent of Virtual High School and services like ePals mean that schools are no longer limited to a small number of languages in which teachers have expertise.

My European counterparts are probably scratching their heads right about now. Just to clarify, language instruction here in the States is generally treated as an elective; a couple years of a language and the average student is done, never to speak it again. In other parts of the world, it’s a given that students will learn English from an early age and will probably be able to speak in at least one or two other languages with some fluency by the time they graduate from secondary school.

If you live in Europe, this just makes sense (when you’re a couple hours by train from people who speak a different language, and might like to actually travel or conduct business someday, learning a foreign language is a basic skill). Similarly, in countries where different dialects exist (Mandarin versus Cantonese, for example), fluency in common languages like English is quite necessary.

We in the States are finally coming to grips with the fact that everyone else in the world doesn’t speak English and that we just might encounter the occasional non-English speaker. Geographically, Spanish seems like a no-brainer for us, although French is spoken just over that other border (and acts as a nice primer for Spanish). This being an increasingly global economy, Mandarin Chinese seems like a darn fine choice, too.

I took Japanese in high school and, although I’ve forgotten way too much of it, I have a much better understanding of Asian culture than I would have otherwise (IMHO, Asian cultures are far more difficult for the average American to understand than European cultures; a bit of insight into the way Asians think and do business should probably become one of those basic skills, too).

So what should we teach? Can Latin please die? There are just too many other good languages out there, whether available locally or via Web-based services to still teach Latin. What works best in your schools and what has been the most useful to your students? Folks outside the US, please feel free to chime in since we’ve only started getting a clue in the last week or so.

Source: ZDNet
http://education.zdnet.com/?p=1785

Joint Attention and Social Competence, or what a baby pointing at a toy says about well-behaved toddlers

One of the key components of “normal” child development is social competence. We expect kids to become gradually better at behaving respectfully towards peers, to comply with requests made by others, to understand the thoughts of others, to play together with kids and adults, to sustain attention, and to be motivated to learn. But what makes the difference between a child who becomes socially competent and one who doesn’t? Obviously there are some risk factors, such as whether they have autism, whether both parents are present in the household, and the education and poverty level of the family. But some kids who seem to have all the advantages still have trouble getting along with others. Why?

Some studies have found that at-risk babies show some early warning signs that are associated with later poor social competence. It’s possible, for example, to measure several dimensions of “joint attention.” Take a look at this old picture of Jim and Nora playing with their kitchen set (…) Aside from the fact that they’re absolutely adorable, you can see that Jim is reaching for some utensils and Nora is following his reach and looking at the same thing. This is an example of Nora responding to joint attention. (I should add that it’s not the best example because the classic case would have Jim pointing, not touching an object — but it’s the best I could find right now, flying cross-country at 30,000 feet.)

From Jim’s perspective, he’s initiating joint attention — directing Nora’s attention to an object he’s interested in. (Again, not the best example of this since it’s not clear Jim wants to direct Nora’s attention to the object.) A third type of joint attention is initiating behavior requests, such as when an infant points to an object out of her reach in order to “ask” an adult to get it for her.

You might think that these different types of joint attention are all just manifestations of the the same phenomenon, but studies of at-risk children have found that different aspects of joint attention are associated with later social competence in different ways — which brings us back to our original question. Do typically developing kids also show the same warning signs in infancy?

Amy Vaughan Van Hecke and eight other researchers tracked 52 children from age 12 months until they were 30 months old. Initially the infants sat at a table on their parent’s lap. An experimenter across the table had a basket of toys. The experimenter spent 20 minutes systematically playing with the toys and pointing at objects in different parts of the room in ways that were designed to provide opportunities for the baby to demonstrate each type of joint attention.

The researchers then contacted tested each child again with different measures at 15 months old, 24 months old, and 30 months old. Their results matched the earlier studies of at-risk infants: there was no general relationship between joint attention and later communication skills or social competence. Instead, different types of joint attention predicted different results at different ages. For example, babies who had exceptionally high ability to initiate behavior requests at 12 months were more likely to be difficult to soothe at 15 months, but also more likely to understand more words at 24 months. Initiating behavior requests had no significant correlation with social competence at 30 months. But those who had high-level ability to initiate joint attention at 12 months, like Jim in the picture, were likely to be better able to express themselves in language at 24 months (but not comprehend more words). And this ability was the only joint attention skill that correlated significantly with social competence at 30 months.

So while there’s a clear relationship between some joint attention skills and social competence, it’s also clear that some joint attention skills are better than others. What this study doesn’t show is what causes joint attention skills themselves. Are we born with these skills, or do we learn them in early infancy?

It’s also important to note that even high-level initiation of joint attention at 12 months isn’t a perfect predictor of social competence at 30 months. Many babies who aren’t pointing to things at 12 months still end up being socially competent.

Source: ScienceBlogs
http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2008/07/joint_attention_and_social_com.php

Save the males! A new book says society is biased AGAINST men. Ridiculous? Hardly, says Amanda Platell

Every once in a while, a book not so much lands on your desk as lobs itself like a hand grenade, exploding preconceived wisdoms and shattering the bones of the status quo. Save The Males is such a book.

It is the fiercest and most fearless defence of men, fatherhood and ultimately the family I have read in many years.

American author Kathleen Parker’s courageous thesis is that initially, through extreme feminism, then via its craven implementation into society, women have demonised men and trivialised their contribution, especially to family life.

I say courageous because, in the eyes of many women and of the liberal establishment, suggesting men have had a rough deal is nothing short of heresy.

Parker should be burnt at the stake, they cry. But isn’t it ironic that only a woman could make such a plea for men?

She argues: ‘As long as men feel marginalised by the women whose favour and approval they seek, as long as they are alienated from their children and treated as criminals by family courts, as long as they are disrespected by a culture that no longer values masculinity tied to honour, as long as boys are bereft of strong fathers and our young men and women wage sexual war, then we risk cultural suicide.’

It’s enough to set a feminist’s hair on end. Parker argues that in trying to make the world fairer for women, an adjustment most agree was vital, we have made it unfair for men. In our attempt to honour women, we have dishonoured men.

By bending over backwards to make single mothers feel good about themselves, by diminishing the role of fathers, by elevating women as the superior parents, we have gone a considerable way to destroying one of the basic tenets of a successful society - family life.

Apart from the effects of this seismic social shift on society, it is also grossly unfair. Can you imagine a world where men demanded women be more like them - dress like them, act like them, even look like them. Because that is effectively what our post-feminist society has done, but with the genders switched.

The traditional male values, what Parker almost poetically calls ‘masculinity tied to honour’, are now seen as nothing more than a direct assault on women.

Unless men are like us, the thinking goes, they insult us and threaten our existence: hence the feminisation of men, or as we so disingenuously describe it, getting in touch with your feminine side.

Thus Hybrid Man was born. An acceptable male model now is more likely to be of the David Beckham variety, wearing more make-up than the missus, hairless, perfumed, varnished, emasculated by his bossy wife and perhaps fond of wearing her undies.

Good dads, loving husbands, supportive male role models, they’re few and far between even in the fictional world of TV.

But in the real world it wasn’t enough that we demanded they be more like us, we superior human beings. We had to traduce men as well, treating them in almost all forms of popular culture as useless, ineffectual, even comic characters, or as violent, cheating and untrustworthy.

And so Sitcom Man was born. Parker challenges us to try to think of a wholesome, reliable role model in myriad ‘dads’ created on TV or in movies. Fathers are always portrayed as incompetent or inconsequential, mindless or mean, comic or cruel. If you relentlessly portrayed any ethnic or minority group in such a biased way, you’d be pilloried on air.

Parker cites many reasons for the dereliction of men. First, there has been the institutionalisation of motherhood at the expense of fatherhood.

‘We seem to accept that children shouldn’t be raised without mothers, but we regard the contributions of fathers as optional,’ Parker says.

Just last week, Nicola Brewer, the chief executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said: ‘Fathers are being marginalised to the extent of simply “seasoning” in their children’s upbringing.’

And the state reinforces the ‘Mum best, Dad dodgy’ myth. ‘The family courts effectively make fathers a slave to the state, his wages become state property, his time with his children is determined by a family court judge, and he faces jail if for whatever reason he fails to pay his child support on time.’

Family courts in America increasingly approve of ‘virtual parenting’, which means Mum can take the kids and live wherever she likes and Dad can do it long distance, via the phone or internet.

‘Thanks to divorce, unwed motherhood, and policies that unfairly penalise and marginalise fathers, 30-40 per cent of all American children sleep in a home where their father doesn’t,’ she writes.

Parker believes that perhaps the biggest blow to men’s roles in families has come with the explosion and normalisation of single motherhood.

‘By elevating single motherhood from an unfortunate consequence of poor planning to a sophisticated act of self-fulfilment, we’ve helped to fashion a world not just in which fathers are scarce, but in which men are superfluous,’ she says.

It’s enough to set a feminist’s hair on end

Single professional women shopping for donor sperm on the internet has become the equivalent of buying designer shoes online. The number of babies born to unmarried mothers aged between 30 and 44 increased by a staggering 17 per cent from 1999 to 2003.

In short, slowly but surely, men are being made obsolete as society embraces single motherhood as the equivalent of the nuclear family for fear of not offending the sisterhood.

And so, hey presto, the marginalisation of men marches on.

And if the child is born of a normal sexual encounter, the consequences for men can be equally dire, as they have no rights, only duties.

‘If a woman gets pregnant she can abort - even without her husband’s consent. If she chooses to have the child, she gets a baby and the man gets an invoice.

‘Inarguably, a man should support his offspring, but by the same logic, shouldn’t he have a say in whether his child is born or aborted?’

The number of children living in fatherless homes has tripled since 1960, from eight million to 24 million in the U.S.. So it comes as no surprise that 21st-century man feels isolated and increasingly obsolete.

‘At the same time that men have been ridiculed in the public sphere, the importance of fatherhood has been diminished, along with other traditionally male roles of father, protector and provider, which are incredibly viewed as regressive manifestations of an outmoded patriarchy,’ Parker writes.

She also examines the feminisation of education. There is overwhelming evidence now that boys’ and girls’ brains are wired differently, but over 20 years both in America and in the UK we have made learning harder for boys and more suitable for girls. The result, Parker says, is that the gap between young men’s and women’s academic achievements is widening.

In 2005, 133 women graduated from college in the U.S. for every 100 men. By the end of this decade that gap is expected to be 142 females for every 100 males.

And as ever the poorest and most deprived are the hardest hit. Among African Americans, the figures are far worse. Twice as many women as men graduate. Parker blames the achievement gap on the absence of fathers.

What is especially refreshing is that Parker’s quest to Save The Males is not just about fairness to men. We need to do it, she says, not only ‘because we love our sons but because we love our daughters’.

And because she believes, as many of us do, that the best building block for a stable and peaceful society is the traditional nuclear family.

‘Part of our nation’s strength has always been a function of its families. Restoring the family is critical to our survival in these untidy and dangerous times.’ So, too, is ‘respecting men and the important contribution they make to children’s lives and society’.

Fathers are always portrayed as incompetent

Parker writes almost poetically about the ultimate beauty of men’s innate character. When she looks at her own father and fathers around her, she concludes that being a dad is, in fact, the manliest thing a man can do.

It encourages responsibility, sacrifice and the ability to put others before yourself - all essential qualities to a functioning society, let alone a home.

‘When we take away a man’s central purpose in life and marginalise him from society’s most important institution (the family), we strip him of his manhood.’

And it’s not all we strip away, as studies have discovered here. We reduce a child’s chance of a successful and happy life.

‘Growing up without a father is the most reliable indicator of poverty and all the familiar social pathologies affecting children, including drug abuse, truancy, delinquency and sexual promiscuity. Yet some feminists and other progressives still insist that men are non-essential‘

The powerful argument Parker constructs is that unless we wake up, and wake up quickly, to the importance of men in family life, society as we know it is doomed. In the creation of a more femalefriendly world, we have unwittingly created a culture hostile to men, not in the workplace, but the most important place, the home.

How refreshingly honest, how devoid of political correctness or feminist dogma for a woman to argue for and ultimately celebrate the necessity and the goodness of men.

She rightly warns of the dangers to our society of a world without manliness. It’s all very well for the armed forces to affect an equality between men and women, she says, but when the chips are down and a child or a society needs rescuing, it will not fall on the shoulders of our womenfolk.

And in an increasingly hostile world, we will need our men and we’ll need them to be men, to display unashamedly the sheer physical strength and courage that even after a century of feminist intervention still dwarfs women’s.

‘In the coming years, we will need men who are not confused about their responsibilities to family and country.

‘We need boys who have acquired the virtues of honour, courage, valour and loyalty. We need women willing to let men be men - and boys be boys.‘

And we will need women like Kathleen Parker with the courage to fight for men. Saving the males, she argues, will also save women and children as we all ’stand to benefit from a society in which men feel respected and thus responsible’.

By engaging men’s nobility and recognising their unique talents, we all benefit. And the process could start with us just being a bit nicer to them.

‘It wouldn’t hurt to fix a guy a burger now and then without the woman acting as though she’s just established democracy in the Sunni Triangle.’

Chastened, I’m off to buy some burgers and a few buns.

• Save The Males: Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care by Kathleen Parker, published by Random House

Source: Daily Mail, UK
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1038469/Save-males-A-new-book-says-society-biased-AGAINST-men-Ridiculous-Hardly-says-Amanda-Platell.html

Being born underweight leads to a shy and cautious wallflower-type personality, a McMaster University researcher has found.

People who feel inhibited in social situations, aren’t as talkative and are more anxious about taking risks, may not get these traits from their upbringing, said Louis Schmidt, lead author of the recent study and a professor of psychology, neuroscience and behaviour.

Such timidness potentially affects a person’s future and could lead to “delays in occupational obtainment, delays marrying and having children,” he added.

The study, which was published in the July issue of Pediatrics, harks back to the nature versus nurture debate about how someone’s personality gets developed.

“What plays a bigger role?” he asked. “We’re looking at how early life events and early experiences impact brain development.”

Schmidt hypothesized these personality traits could be because the underweight babies spent so much time in a neonatal unit - some for months at a time - and didn’t get the same chance to bond with their parents as normal-weight babies.

Underweight babies also are at risk for other medical problems, like compromised immune systems, and tend to face a higher rate of diabetes and heart disease as adults.

This study looked at 71 young adults, born in southern Ontario in the late 1970s and early 1980s who were underweight at birth, and compared them to 83 people who were born around the same time and region at a normal weight.

The young adults were asked a series of questions about how social they are and how likely they are to take risks.

Underweight babies typically weigh less than 2,500 grams (5.5 pounds). In Canada, one of every 16 babies are born underweight.

Schmidt’s study found the lower the birth weight, the more shy and inhibited the person is as an adult.

They have also been studying brain activity and hormones in these young adults, both those who were born underweight and at a normal weight.

The findings, which are currently under review, show being born underweight could also lead to an inability to handle stress, Schmidt said.

Source: Hamilton Spectator, Canada
http://www.thespec.com/News/Local/article/410333

New parents should be able to share an 18-month leave from work after their baby is born, says a just- released report by renowned early childhood expert Dr. Fraser Mustard.

The report, for the South Australia government where Mustard was appointed a thinker-in-residence, recommends 39 improvements and sweeping changes the state can make in early childhood development, which it has deemed a priority.

Those changes equally apply to Canada, where parental leave is currently one year, says Mustard, considered a world leader in the area.

Key among his proposals is that the South Australian government continue to create a network of early childhood development and parenting centres, linked to schools, to provide families from pregnancy onward with nutrition, health and parenting — including programs for parents to “learn parenting by doing” as well as programming for children, as well as provide child-care where needed. Such centres would also “reduce isolation for parents and young children,” the report says.

“Their society buys that this is important,” said Mustard. “In South Australia, they’ve been working at this for some time.”

Mustard is perhaps best known in Canada for the 1999 Early Years study he co-authored with Margaret Norrie McCain for the Ontario government, and last year’s follow-up that detailed how Canada is last in spending among industrialized nations when it comes to early childhood development programs.

Those reports also urged a national framework for universal “hubs,” with trained staff providing community-based help to parents, activities for children as well as access to health professionals.

Research shows that literacy, school performance and lifelong health and behaviour are largely determined by the brain development in the early years.

Because parents are the main caregivers for children, Mustard says it’s essential they have strong skills.

He estimates the cost of behavioural and mental health problems to be more than $30 billion a year in Ontario alone. The price tag of providing these hubs and extended maternity leave? About $18 billion.

Among the highlights of his South Australian report:

* Implement parental leave: The first six months of parental leave should be for the mother, the remaining 12 to be divided between parents as they see fit. Income support, provided by the government, should be at least 80 per cent of earnings. Currently, there are no statewide maternity leave provisions.

* Assess young students: The government should assess all students in kindergarten given 25 per cent currently are already behind when they begin school; that assessment should be used to monitor communities on an ongoing basis to make sure programs address needs.

Source: Hamilton Spectator, Canada
http://www.thespec.com/News/Local/article/410234

Address reading and speaking concerns early to prevent damage to a child’s academic career, say developmental experts at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

Drs. Sherry Vinson and Adiana Spinks-Franklin, both assistant professors of pediatrics - developmental pediatrics at BCM, said concerned parents should enroll their infants in an early intervention program if they suspect their child is behind on core developmental milestones such as speech and language.

“Children should meet three key milestones by their first birthday,” said Spinks-Franklin. “They should say one recognizable word, walk one step and follow a one-step command with gesture.”

Behaviors to Watch

Vinson and Spinks-Franklin outlined alarming behavioral characteristics to watch for in children:

- Not responsive to the parent’s command (”sit down”).

- Not self-initiating (saying “mama”) and not following a one-step command given with a gesture (e.g., handing the parent what the child has in his/her hand when the parent holds out a hand and says a command “give that to me”) at one year.

- Not self-initiating conversation, saying approximately 50 words, and spontaneously putting two words together (”go home”) plus following two simple commands put together without gesture (”touch your nose then clap your hands”) at two years.

- Following directions appropriately at one and two years, but not self-initiating the words.

There are significant challenges children with language and speech delays will have later in life if parents do not address the situation, they say. “Language allows them to become strong in so many important areas including academics, reading and social skills,” said Spinks-Franklin. “Children with well-developed language skills are overall more productive and perform much better in school.”

Reading, they say, can be a huge hurdle for these children but it is crucial for them to master. “If you cannot talk, then you cannot read,” said Spinks-Franklin. “These children will have significant reading disorders that will damage their academic career if they are not appropriately addressed at an early age.”

Early Intervention

Many states have resourceful, funded programs that evaluate a child’s strengths and weaknesses and devise a plan for enhancing their skills.

Vinson and Spinks-Franklin, who are also pediatricians at the Meyer Center for Developmental Pediatrics at Texas Children’s Hospital, refer parents to early childhood education programs available to children from birth to three years-old. The programs help children improve all developmental skills in a natural setting. Kids work with a variety of specialists including, speech pathologists, physical and occupational therapists and social workers and also provide psychological, educational and family support.

“The earlier the parents contact a program, the earlier the child can receive services,” said Spinks-Franklin. She also added that children do not have to be referred by a doctor to qualify for the services. “Concerned parents should call to have their children evaluated by an educational program.”

Clear Benefits

The benefits from evaluation programs are clear, say researchers who have followed the program for years. “Children with developmental delays who are enrolled in an evaluation program perform much better in school than those who are not,” said Spinks-Franklin. “We continue to follow them through elementary school, and they continue to do well when compared to children with developmental delays who do not receive early intervention services.”

Children involved in early intervention programs are more likely to live independently and graduate from high school, said Spinks-Franklin.

Risk Factors

A variety of factors may cause a child’s developmental delay, including genetics, prenatal environment (exposure to tobacco, alcohol or drugs) and premature birth (neurological development occurring outside the womb), they say.

The time it takes to overcome delays depends on the severity of the case. “If a child is challenged in several areas–language, speech, social and motor skills–it is going to take longer to develop language skills than for a child simply dealing with a speech delay,” said Spinks-Franklin.

Parental Participation

Most significant is parental participation. “Most programs make house calls only once or twice a week,” said Spinks-Franklin. “It is the parent’s duty to continue working with their children the rest of the time.”

Spinks-Franklin said parents should actively label their child’s environment by pointing out objects and colors to help develop certain areas of the brain. Another vital exercise for parents is reading to your child, Spinks-Franklin said.

Children over the age of three can be placed in preschool programs before kindergarten and if they continue to need services after preschool, they should receive special education services from the school system. Private speech and language disabilities programs are also available, including a variety of programs from Texas Children’s.

“Early intervention is very beneficial for these children’s overall development and quality of life,” said Spinks-Franklin. “The involvement and commitment from the parents makes this happen.”

Source: BCM News, TX
http://www.bcm.edu/news/item.cfm?newsID=1171