Make it easier for parents, taxpayers to gauge whether kids are prepared

The results are in for the Michigan Merit Exam, which includes the ACT — a national college entrance exam that’s considered a reliable predictor of college success. Rather than take a comprehensive look at the results, most high schools will spend the next month reassuring the public that they’re doing a splendid job.

Oftentimes it’s an illusion, inviting rebuttal and reinforcing the growing concern that schools are out of touch with reality.

Schools need support. But also they need to admit — to themselves and to parents — that there’s much to do.

This posturing does nothing to drive school improvement or help our children.

Consider the 299 schools that can boast that their average ACT composite score beats the state average of 18.9. Does that mean those schools are doing a good job of preparing students for college? Who knows? Beating the state average has little bearing — if any — on college admission or success.

Knowing how many students met the nationwide average ACT score for incoming college freshmen would be more meaningful. The average freshman score for many universities in Michigan is between 21 to 23 with the highly selective universities accepting freshmen with averages pushing 28 to 30.

Just 60 high schools in Michigan — out of 722 — saw their average student achieve a score of 21 or higher.

Another meaningful goal might focus on the ACT college readiness benchmarks. According to the College Board, they represent “the minimum ACT test scores required for students to have a high probability of success in … college courses,” such as math, science and English.” They are “empirically derived based on the actual performance of students in college.”

Mind you, a “high probability of success” means earning a “C” or better in an entry-level college class. Few schools find their average student meeting these benchmarks.

Unfortunately, the state doesn’t report the percentage of students meeting these benchmarks. Knowing that data — especially knowing how many students meet all four benchmarks in English composition, college algebra, biology and the social sciences — would help parents better evaluate their schools.

Consider that Rochester Community Schools ranks among the top in the state by many measures, and 95 percent of its graduates are college-bound. Yet less than half meet all four benchmarks.

That may mean remedial courses in some subjects — at the going college tuition rate — or disappointing outcomes for students who aren’t prepared for the rigor of college coursework even though they’re admitted.

Really, aside from being self-serving, there’s little value in trumpeting the fact that a school is “above the state average” or “top tier.”

The leadership needs to start with local school boards, which tend to set weak goals and have shallow communications. This is unlikely to change until parents and taxpayers demand candid assessments from these boards and hold them accountable for the results.

Mike Reno is a trustee on the board of the Rochester Community Schools. (…)

Source: DetNews.com, MI
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080910/OPINION01/809100321

The Government’s Sure Start initiative was founded on the most well-meaning of principles.

Children from disadvantaged homes were lagging behind those from more affluent homes by the time they started schooling because their parent/s did not have the resources to give them the stimulation they might get in a better-off setting.

So the answer was to provide the parents with day-care or nursery places where their children could get development help and a start to learning the basic skills which they might otherwise have missed out on.

Now comes a report from the Centre for Social Justice – headed by the former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith – which indicates this simplistic thinking may be missing out part of the equation: that the child may get more from the one-to-one attention at home rather than separation from his or her parents at an early age. The think-tank argues that much antisocial behaviour and violence by children has its roots in that early separation from the home.

Of course, the answer would not be to just turn the clock back. The CSJ report recognises this. After all, that would just mean that those parents who were struggling to bring up their children in a disadvantaged home – sometimes on their own – would be sentenced again to doing just that. The gap in developmental skills between rich and poor children as they start compulsory schooling would therefore still be there.

One of the answers that it comes up with is to concentrate more aid on helping parents to cope in the home. This teaching of skills so that parents can better make use of play time and home time with their children is certainly an alternative, and productive, use of the nation’s resources in care provision for nought to three-year-olds, if not a better one.

Source: Independent, UK
http://tinyurl.com/63yclm

For teachers, parents, and most youngsters, it’s back to school time. But for 400,000 children, it’s an even more important occasion - starting school for the first time.

Most of them are ready for school, and, years later, most of them and their parents will look back fondly on their first few weeks.

Sadly, about one-third of the children who are starting school aren’t ready. Many of these youngsters will still be behind by the time they reach third grade.

Many may never be able to catch up with what their schools - and our society - expect them to learn and be able to do.

This is a problem - and there is a solution.

Taking the long view from early childhood to young adulthood, there is increasing interest in creating a more “seamless” system of learning that begins early and assures that students can successfully finish school and move on to higher education or job training and, eventually, into the work force.

In the New Economy, where Americans must compete with workers from throughout the world and keep adapting to changing technologies, “seamless learning” - and, indeed lifelong learning - is essential for everyone.

Looking at the early years of education - from age 3 through third grade - our preschools and elementary schools need to address four fundamental realities.

Reality 1: The early years before children start kindergarten are crucial for student achievement.

Neuroscience demonstrates that the brain’s development is nearly 90 percent complete by the time a child is 5 years old and that the years from birth to age 3 represent the most rapid brain development.

Economists tell us that investments made in the early years will bring large returns in the form of fewer drop outs and grade retentions, increased graduation rates and ultimately increased adult productivity.

Educational research shows us that children who have opportunities to participate in quality early care and education programs are well prepared for school and do better when they get there.

Reality 2: The transition from early learning into kindergarten is important and can impact later school success. What’s needed: Communication and cooperation among schools, communities and families.

When children feel safe and prepared for kindergarten and families understand and value what happens in school, then issues like persistent absence and lack of parental involvement are not problems.

When children come to school regularly and parents support learning at home, children succeed.

When kindergarten and early education teachers can exchange information or visit each other’s classrooms they are better able to coordinate children’s experiences across the two systems - and children do better.

Reality 3: The positive effects of high quality early care and education may dissipate for some children unless they are followed by consistent and high quality teaching in kindergarten through third grade.

These early elementary grades are critical for later school success because the foundation skills that children will need to have in place in order to meet school expectations going forward - must be established by grade 3. Without this foundation children will not be equipped to handle the higher level academic challenges they will encounter.

Reality 4: When children’s learning experiences before and after they start school are coordinated - or aligned - then the first component of a “seamless” learning system is in place. In other words, children will succeed when what they experience, how they are taught, and what they are expected to know is high quality and linked across the early years and the early grades.

Creating these links is not easy. It will require two groups of people who usually aren’t used to working together - early childhood educators and K-12 educators - to find ways to connect their two systems.

Because this is a vitally important but challenging task, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Education Commission of the States are teaming up with Governors in five states to convene meetings that bring together education leaders and policy makers to explore ways that states can create more coherent and connected systems of learning across early learning and the early grades.

The “Linking Ready Kids and Ready Schools” Governor’s state forums are helping to raise awareness of these issues and will jumpstart efforts to link early care and education and the early grades so all children will be ready to succeed by grade three.

By working together, leaders from pre-school education, elementary education, and public policymaking can make sure that, when back to school time rolls around again, more children will be well on their way to completing a successful educational journey.

Mimi Howard is early learning program director for the Education Commission of the States, a Denver-based non-partisan public policy institute.

Source: San Angelo Standard Times, tx
http://www.gosanangelo.com/news/2008/sep/07/curb-early-learning-problems/

Better childcare will curb social ills

The first few years of a child’s life are the most important; it is in these early years that the quality of their lives is laid down. Yet too many parents who wish to nurture their children at home are being forced back to work by financial pressures when their children are still babies.

We need to level the financial playing field for parents. The current system pressurises mothers - and it is mostly mothers - into going back to work soon after their children are born. Yet the research shows that the seeds of later unhappiness and antisocial behaviour by young people are often sown by the failure of parents to form a close and loving relationship with their babies.

Society is paying a high price for the quick fix of getting mothers back to work so soon after birth.

We seem, as a society, to place economic and academic concerns well above relationships despite the latter’s crucial role in a child’s - and later an adult’s - wellbeing. Regardless of the very large body of scientific and sociological evidence, children’s policy and political thinking miss the influence of the early years on a host of social problems we face today.

I asked Dr Samantha Callan to form the Early Years Commission to study this question. Its report, which will be published tomorrow, should make compelling reading for policy makers and parents. Crucially it shows that violent and antisocial behaviour by young people can be traced back to parental neglect when they were very young. They in turn pass on this dysfunction to their own children, perpetuating the cycle.

Professor Margot Sunderland, a child mental health expert on the commission, unambiguously stated that the quality of childcare has lifelong consequences for mental health as the first three years of a child’s life are crucial for healthy brain development and psychological stability.

The yardstick of quality applies across the spectrum of childcare: parental, informal and formal. It’s not the case that home care is always good and nursery always bad. But whether it is politically correct to admit this or not, there is a “hierarchy” of quality in childcare that policy is currently ignoring.

If parents want more than anything else to be with their children most of the time in the early years, and want to give them the continuity and intensity of relationship that science says they need, then surely they are the ones best placed to provide it.

Facilitating this aspiration should be a cornerstone of childcare policy. If parents don’t want to do this or cannot (and 81% of parents said financial pressures made them return to work early), the emotional and cognitive needs of their children must still be met.

This can be done by well motivated family members, well trained nursery nurses or other childcare professionals who have the time to give them enough one-to-one care. The evidence shows that, after motivated parents, family members offer an excellent childcare source.

Yet at present they are discounted by policy makers. Worryingly the commission also heard that childcare professionals are unsure if they should even hug children and that many nurseries prioritise health and safety and administrative needs, not personal childcare. Empathy doesn’t feature in the measurement of care quality, yet it is critical.

It seems that most of the public sense that policy is wrong. When asked in our poll, 82% of adults said that more should be done to help parents who wish to stay at home in those early years and some 70% felt that parents were encouraged to put their children into daycare too soon.

We need a fairer system in which the financial sacrifice of giving up work to look after a baby is offset by extra help from the tax and benefit system. The commission’s report recommends “front-loading” child benefit so a larger proportion of the child’s total entitlement would be available during the first three years when parents most want to spend time caring for children and when attachment and intensive nurture are most important.

It also recommends transferable tax allowances to reflect the fact that, if one spouse is not working outside the home, that family requires more support from the tax system. Similarly the benefits system should not penalise low-income couples who want to live together – which requires tackling the “couple penalty”. And it proposes a change in the rules to allow working parents to use childcare tax credits to pay unregistered close relatives to look after children.

With the growing demand on mental health facilities, the rising number of children in care and the peculiarly high levels of dysfunctional family behaviour, our failure to place cognitive and social development in the early years at the heart of our policy for children is already costing us dear. It is surely time to change all of that.

Source: Times Online, UK
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/article4692207.ece

Schools across the country will be opening their doors to students beginning next week. For thousands of children across Canada, this will be their first step inside our nation’s educational system and this is the week to prepare your child as well as the family.

To help ease the transition into the classroom, The Learning Partnership (TLP), a national not-for-profit organization dedicated to championing a strong public education system in Canada, is providing strategies and resource ideas that will enable parents to help prepare their children for the start of kindergarten by introducing early literacy and numeric learning skills through play.

“Our children deserve every opportunity to succeed,” says Veronica Lacey, president and CEO of The Learning Partnership. “Starting school is a huge milestone for both the child and parents. More than ever before, it’s important that we reach out to parents and teachers — and help provide them with the necessary tools to make sure that children are given the opportunities to succeed at school.”

Recent research used by The Learning Partnership has shown that when parents are given the proper early learning resources for use at home, pre-school children are better prepared for school and learning. Furthermore, parents who establish a foundation in early learning for their children at home are better prepared to support school success.

Keeping this in mind and recognizing that preparing children for school can be a challenge, The Learning Partnership’s CEO Lacey recommends that parents and children use early learning materials and engage in play-based activities which will help their children with the transition to school.

Top tips for early learning and a successful transition into kindergarten include:

- Take every opportunity that comes along to talk to your child — ask questions and answer questions. This will not only develop the child’s language skills but also nurture curiosity.

- Read to your child and talk about books to help develop your child’s listening skills and an interest in stories and print.

- Talk to your child about letters and numbers and do fun activities with them to help your child develop number and letter awareness. For example, when at the grocery store make a game of looking for items with a letter that is the same as your child’s initials.

- If English is your second language (ESL), speak to your child in the language that is most comfortable for you. ESL parents should continue reading and talking in their first language to their children.

- Initiate activities with resources such as crayons, safety scissors, construction paper, glue and playdough to help your child develop the finger control and the co-ordination they need for writing as well as encourage their creative expression.

- Chant rhymes and sing songs to help your child play with language as well as hear and recognize sounds and learn new words.

- Encourage independence: help your child learn to get dressed; express feelings, thoughts and needs clearly to others (such as going to the washroom or getting a beverage).

- Help your child make choices, for example: which clothes to wear, what activities to do.

Calgary Herald, Canada
http://tinyurl.com/6xp3p3

Parents spend a lot of money on their children’s care, education and extracurricular activities to help them reach their potential and to give them the best possible start to their lives.

If an infant’s relationship with their carers is inconsistent or unstable, they won’t get the ongoing, responsive interactions required for the healthy development of these capacities. If you have a less attentive care - when an infant is rarely noticed, touched or talked to - you lessen their ability to withstand stress, to learn, to control emotions and develop into healthy adults.

Knowing this, we should welcome the recent comments by the children’s author Mem Fox about the importance of good care for our babies and infants. The responses to her comments show the community is justifiably concerned about how we provide the quality of care young children need for optimal development.

At a time when the nation is deciding the best model for a national paid maternity leave scheme, it is timely that the needs of the child become the central focus in any decisions that are made around care. Yes, some parents will always have to return to work early. However, a well-supported paid parental leave scheme of at least 12 months would make this an exception rather than the rule it may become.

If we continue to abandon our parents to find their own unsatisfactory way out of the dilemma of working and having a family, then premature return to work will occur.

The more time parents spend with their children, the more they learn how to be better parents. The repeated interactions parents have with their children help them to become better at responding to their baby’s needs and identifying problems. When parents are in prolonged employment during their children’s early years of life, the opportunities to learn these parenting skills can be affected.

We need to find better ways to allow parents to stay at home during the first year of their child’s life, to provide these continuous one-on-one interactions that infants need with their parents for healthy brain development.

However, parents will only take leave from work to spend time with their infants during these critical first few years if they can afford it. We now need a system that supports parents in their role as carers as well as their role as workers.

It is much more cost effective and developmentally advantageous to provide parents with paid leave for at least 12 months so they can foster that important one-to-one relationship and nurturing environment that will optimise their baby’s chances during a crucial stage of their early development.

Gillian Calvert is the NSW Commissioner for Children and Young People and Marie Coleman is the spokeswoman for the National Foundation for Australian Women.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
http://tinyurl.com/5aljat

There’s nothing controversial-sounding about Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama’s campaign pledge to make a $10 billion federal investment in high-quality early education. After all, 38 states and the District of Columbia now underwrite pre-kindergarten. With GOP stalwarts such as Alabama Gov. Bob Riley and South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds on board, and support coming from the likes of Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, as well as a host of big-city police chiefs, you’d think that the benefits of preschool are as generally accepted as the reality of global warming. Think again.

While the McCain campaign remains mum on the topic, the free-markets think-tank, the Reason Foundation, has rushed in to fill the void. In an Aug. 22 Wall Street Journal commentary piece that’s getting wide circulation in the blogosphere, foundation staffers Shikha Dalmia and Lisa Snell take a rhetorical cudgel to preschool. Not only is pre-K a waste of money, they claim - it can even do “lasting damage.” This op-ed comes dressed in the trappings of social science. That may make it sound impressive, but the argument is pure snake-oil.

The Reason Foundation staffers cherry-pick from the studies to make their case. They treat research whose outcomes comport with their biases as gospel, even when those studies flunk the test of scientific respectability. Research published in leading journals that reaches a contrary result go ignored. The staffers’ biggest gaffe is the contention that James Heckman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and a leading authority in this field, is an ally. Quite the contrary: In a recent Science article, Heckman calculated that, over a 40-year-period, the annual rate of return on investment for the children who participated in the famous Perry Preschool experiment is a glimmering 16 percent. If Perry Preschool were a business, Warren Buffett would want to invest in it.

These writers show their true colors when they describe the parents of the Perry preschool youngsters as “drug addicts and neglectful.” Those mothers and fathers were poor, badly educated African Americans - to leap to the conclusion that they were drug-addled speaks volumes about the authors’ biases.

To be sure, pre-kindergarten isn’t a panacea. Giving all kids a decent shot at success would require offering parents the support that many of them need to raise their children well, as well as strengthening the public schools. What’s more, when preschool is badly done - with classes that are too big, teachers who know too little about child development and parents who are discouraged from getting involved in their own kids’ education - no one comes out ahead.

When pre-K is done right, though, the evidence confirms that it can alter the arc of children’s lives. That’s why the goal of policy should be to guarantee every 3- and 4-year-old a preschool opportunity as good as what the wisest parents would want for their own children.

When the Reason Foundation abuse the research to discredit pre-K they’re doing the next generation a disservice. And because good preschool is a sound investment in the country’s future, they’re short-changing the rest of us as well.
Point and counterpoint on preschool

The evidence demolishes the Reason Foundation’s claims.

Claim: Oklahoma and Georgia enroll the biggest proportion of children in pre-kindergarten. Nonetheless, students in those states perform terribly on the nationally mandated fourth-grade reading and math tests. Preschool is money down the drain.

Fact: In both Oklahoma and Georgia, math and reading test scores increased once the preschoolers reached fourth grade. Nationwide, a RAND study shows, good state pre-kindergarten programs lead to higher test scores.

Claim: The benefits of Head Start, the nation’s biggest early education program, fade out over time. Any early education gains are illusory.

Fact: The most rigorous research shows that Head Start makes a long-term difference: educational attainment is higher and crime rates are lower.

Claim: Children in Finland, who don’t start school until age 7, do well on international tests. If they don’t need pre-kindergarten, then why do we?

Fact: Finnish youngsters aren’t babes in their mothers’ arms until they reach age 7; their parents have a host of early childhood education options from which to choose. What’s more important, international studies show that preschool helps all children and that the least advantaged youngsters benefit most. In nations where pre-kindergarten is widely available, 15-year-olds do better on international tests than youngsters in similar countries where pre-kindergarten is less common - that means the benefits of early education endure. Moreover, in countries where most children attend preschool, the test score gap is narrowest - that means early education does the greatest good for those who most need the help.

Claim: Preschool can do lasting damage, reducing kids’ motivation and increasing their aggressiveness.

Fact: Studies that meet the highest scientific standards show just the opposite - that good pre-kindergarten programs have positive effects on how children develop socially and emotionally.

Claim: Only the most disadvantaged children can benefit from pre-kindergarten. If government is going to invest in early education, that’s where all the money belongs.

Fact: Research dating to the 1980s, including a study of Oklahoma youngsters published in the prestigious journal Science, concludes that while the least well-off kids may gain the most from high-quality preschool, middle-class youngsters are also better off.

David L. Kirp, professor at Berkeley Law and the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, is the author of The Sandbox Investment (2007). W. Steven Barnett is the director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle, USA
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/01/ED3612LC8C.DTL

Parents who teach their children at home could have twice the impact on raising their child’s performance at school compared to a good nursery education, a new study suggests.

There have been rising concerns about the relatively low numbers of children taking up science and mathematics at the secondary level and evidence is published today that parents could have a much bigger impact on raising standards later on than preschool education, by a Government backed project following more than 3000 children.

Ten-year-olds who have attended “high quality” preschool tend to score higher on mathematics tests than those who haven’t, reports Prof Edward Melhuish of Birkbeck, University of London, and colleagues from the Effective provision of Preschool and Primary Education (EPPE) project.

He said they were surprised by the degree to which early experience both in the preschool and home were so influential later in the child’s life.

“For the average child who went to a particularly effective or high quality preschool their maths scores would be boosted by around 27 per cent,” says Prof Melhuish.

However, the project revealed that the education of the parents - particularly the mother- still has the greatest influence, having twice the effect and thus boosting maths scores even more.

What parents did at home mattered too. “The effects of the early home learning environment were very strong, much stronger than people had anticipated.”

“An ideal home learning environment would be rich in stimulation and very responsive to the child’s communications and activities,” says Prof Melhuish.

“Parents would talk to their children frequently, read to them, maybe visit library to increase range of books for child, provide opportunities to draw, paint, learn songs and rhymes, dance and physical activities, play with numbers and shapes.

The important thing is that the home provides lots of learning opportunities, The fact that learning is taking place is more important than the actual content of the learning. This provides the child with the mental structures needed to learn new things.”

The team calls in the journal Science for countries such as America to adopt universal preschool, which might cost up to £5000 per child, of the kind adopted in Britain since 2004.

Whereas much of the previous research on preschool’s long-term effects focused on disadvantaged children, the researchers followed children from throughout England, from ages three and four through to age 10, and is still studying them at secondary school.

“This detailed data allows us to examine the effects of various factors while allowing for the differences in the other factors and backgrounds of children,” says Prof Melhuish.

“Our study is the first to show that preschool shows advantages across the whole population, while being able to allow for other confounding factors.”

The home environment is the most important; five years of “effective” primary school is next most important but is closely followed by 18 months of preschool experience in terms of relative size of effects.

As for what parents should look for when chosing a preschool, he says: “A play-based curriculum that offers lots of learning opportunities that cover reading and play with numbers and shapes and some time in individual, one-to-one activities as well as small group work”.

Starting “between two and three can be very beneficial, particularly for children from disadvantaged homes.”

Source: Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom
http://tinyurl.com/5jevbu

If children in the South learn that cheating is wrong, they probably won’t learn it from their parents.

Web site Ask.com released results today of a nationwide survey of 778 parents with children under 18. The survey showed that more than 40 percent of parents admitted to doing their children’s homework. In the South, that percentage jumped to almost 90 percent.

“One of the reasons we assign homework is to build attitudes of responsibility,” Fox said. “A parent who does their child’s homework is not supporting their growth as an individual, as a human being.”

The survey is being used to promote the Web site’s new study help feature, Askkids.com.

The survey, conducted by Kelton Research, provided insight into differences in:

Gender. Dad is a softer touch than Mom. Mom handles English. Dad handles math. Both help with art projects.

Age. Parents 65 and older are more likely to help their children with history and social studies homework. Young parents favor English. Math is for the middle-aged.

Affluence. Rich parents help more with homework than poor parents.

Region. Parents in the South and West are more likely to help with math than those in other parts of the nation.

Donna Layer, coordinator for the Birdville school district’s guidance and counseling department, said she can’t estimate how many parents locally do their children’s homework. But Layer said that the concern comes up occasionally.

“That could cause a problem if the teacher chooses to test on information attached to a homework assignment,” Layer said.

Fox said a parent’s job is to make a place for a child to do homework that is comfortable, free from distractions and has basic supplies.

“If a child asks for help, explain the process,” she said. “Don’t do the work for them.”

Source: Fort Worth Star Telegram, TX
http://www.star-telegram.com/593/story/864455.html

For years, new parents have been hearing that “breast is best,” and each decade, more and more women choose lactation as the primary food source for their newborns. It appears that breastfeeding may now produce a generation of smarter, happier babies. Studies have shown that babies need touching and nurturing to develop and survive and breastfeeding supplies both needs on a regular basis.

Breastfed babies followed from birth to 6 years had higher IQ scores than formula-fed babies. This is not a new finding. Past research has shown that mothers from more affluent backgrounds were more likely to breastfeed. Consideration was given to the fact that improved mental abilities may have been related to family circumstance as much as breastfeeding.

Researchers from Canada’s McGill University attempted to overcome the possible influence of family economics by evaluating children born in hospitals in Belarus. The group studied over 13,000 breastfed babies born in 31 maternity hospitals. Some of these hospitals ran breastfeeding promotions to boost rates across all groups. Some provided nursing training and provided support for breastfeeding mothers. The mothers who received the training and continuing support were more likely to nurse for a longer period of time.

The children were divided into groups for evaluation depending on whether their mothers were given nursing training or not. Babies who were exclusively breastfed for the first three months scored 5.9% higher on IQ tests in childhood. Tests indicated that the longer the babies were breastfed the more significant the intelligence difference.

When these children began school teachers also gave them significantly higher academic ratings in both reading and writing than children in control groups. The Archives of General Psychiatry lead researcher Professor Michael Kramer said, “Long-term, exclusive breastfeeding appears to improve children’s cognitive development.” Professor Kramer also said that it was not known if the increased intellectual development was due to some nutritive value of breast milk, or related to the physical and social interactions of breastfeeding.

There are several reasons that breastfeeding may improve the mental development of babies:

* Breast milk contains fatty acids and other nutrients that are necessary for the development of babies.
* Physical and emotional aspects of breastfeeding may lead to permanent improvements in brain development.
* Breastfeeding may increase verbal interaction between mother and child which could aid development.

Though the exact mechanism of improved intelligence as a result of breast feeding is not known there are also other reasons for breastfeeding; children who are breastfed generally have fewer gastrointestinal problems and they have better protection against obesity, diabetes and cancer. Women who breastfeed have a quicker recovery from childbirth and breastfeeding reduces a women’s risk of developing breast cancer.

Breastfeeding is natural and good for the baby and the mother. A pregnant woman who wants to breastfeed but isn’t sure how to began can ask her physician or midwife for a referral to a professional, or any of the many groups who advocate breastfeeding.

Source: HealthNews, CA
http://tinyurl.com/6lvajn