Parents should be paid to spend time with their children to stop toddlers as young as two being sent to schools and nurseries, a leading head teacher has said.

Clarissa Williams, the new president of the National Association of Head Teachers, said that parents were being separated from their children too early.

“Why do we feel the need to send children into an education environment at the age of two? Are parents so distrusted that we want to separate them from their children at the earliest opportunity?” asked Ms Williams, the head of Tolworth Girls School in Surrey.

Speaking at the NHT annual conference in Liverpool, the head said parents should be rewarded financially for staying at home, playing with their children, reading to them and bringing them up well.

“There needs to be a contract between the receiver of the benefits that if they stay at home to do quality things with their children, they will be rewarded.

“Lots of mothers stay at home and deal with a single income and we should respect that.”

Ms Williams said some young children reacted badly to intuitional settings, echoing research that suggests that putting toddlers in nurseries for a long amount of time can lead to aggression.

“Lots of children react well to nurseries, others are more anxious and that manifests itself in their behaviour, said Ms Williams.

The head suggested that child allowance as well as benefits should reflect the effort parents put in with their children.

The proportion of working mothers has risen steadily over the last decade.

Thousands of babies are now looked after by nurseries. Government vouchers giving free child care places to 3 and four year olds have also led to a rise in the number of children in pre-school settings.

Children in the UK also start formal education at age 5, much earlier than the rest of Europe where 6 or 7 is the norm.

In her speech Ms Williams also criticised school admissions.

She said choice was limited “mostly to those able to exercise it.” She suggested that allocating secondary school places by lottery could be fairer.

The controversial distribution of school places by ballot has been adopted by Brighton and Hove, several schools in Hertfordshire and a few in London.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom
http://tinyurl.com/4oce7j

Ilene Serpa gets a discount on child care for her daughter, and that’s pretty wonderful, she says.

At a time when child-care centers can charge up to about $15,000 a year to look after an infant, and more than $10,000 for other youngsters, many parents are strapped.

Ms. Serpa, who gets her discount as an employee of a child-care provider, suggests that parents look early and hard when choosing the right facility — especially given the tough competition for slots.

“A lot of people don’t start looking until after they’ve had their child,” Ms. Serpa says. “The fact of the matter is that it’s really important, especially if you are living in an area like [Washington] D.C., or New York, that you start looking when you are first expecting.”

Competition for Slots

Parents should get on a waiting list at centers that seem like good options as soon as possible, experts say. At Ms. Serpa’s company, Bright Horizons Family Solutions, the wait can range between one and two years in urban areas.

Also, expect to pay a fee. At Huckleberry Cheesecake, a Washington child-development center, a nonrefundable $100 charge will get your child on a waiting list, which has a typical duration of 12 to 18 months. Admission is first come, first served, with the exception of siblings, who get priority if one is already enrolled.

“People are on the list when they are two or three months pregnant,” says Traci Sonennberg, co-owner of the facility. She adds that the center won’t list couples who are just thinking about pregnancy.

In searching for a center, both price and quality come into play.

“Parents need to check on the qualifications of the staff,” says Richard Brandon, director of the Human Services Policy Center at the University of Washington in Seattle. “It’s an underpaid profession, and the requirements in many states are less than they are for a cosmetologist.”

Average wages for child-care providers are about $8 an hour, Mr. Brandon says, and many workers do not have high skill levels. Parents should ask whether staff members receive training and professional development.

Teachers at Huckleberry Cheesecake take additional training and some hold a bachelor’s degree. State regulations to work in a child-care center vary, with requirements ranging from a high-school diploma, to a special credential in child development, to a college degree, according to the Labor Department.

“There are no free lunches, you get what you pay for,” Mr. Brandon says. “The quality of early learning experiences makes a difference in school success, makes a difference in social success and in later life.”

A Way to Pay

You may be able to get a tax break for child-care spending. The tax code provides a child-care credit and allows for employer-sponsored dependent-care accounts, which let parents pay for care with pretax income.

But many parents will have to depend on their own resources for day-care expenses, says Linda Smith, executive director with National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies.

“The problem is that child care done reasonably well costs more than the average family can afford,” Ms. Smith says. “The families of the most concern are not the low income who qualify for assistance, but those families that we would call the working poor.”

Source: Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120805501701010715.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Two leading scientific societies and a charity that promotes scientific understanding have written to every local education authority in the the UK to warn that a programme of exercises being promoted to help child learning relies on “pseudoscientific explanations” and a “bizarre understanding” of how the body works.

The British Neuroscience Association, the Physiological Society and Sense About Science are concerned that some local authorities have promoted the exercise programme, called Brain Gym, in their schools. Brain Gym involves teacher-led exercises that are supposed to improve the cognitive abilities of pupils in primary schools.

“According to the calls we have received and to the material in the Teacher’s Guide to Brain Gym, children are, for example, being taught special exercises to ‘connect the circuits of the brain’ and ‘unblock’ neural pathways,” the scientists wrote. They believe that promoting these bogus explanations of how the brain operates undermines science teaching in schools.

Calls to Brain Gym in the UK for comment were not returned, but the Brain Gym Teachers’ Edition textbook describes the exercises as, “a series of simple and enjoyable movements that we use with our students in Educational Kinesiology (Edu-K) to enhance their experience of whole-brain learning. These activities make all types of learning easier, and are especially effective with academic skills.”

Other promotional material reads: “All liquids [other than water] are processed in the body as food, and do not serve the body’s water needs … Processed foods do not contain water.”

The scientists dismiss all these claims as nonsense. “I know of no evidence to support the claim that, by doing a particular repetitive activity, children will gain general benefits in learning,” said Prof Colin Blakemore of Oxford University, a former head of the Medical Research Council. “There have been a few peer-reviewed scientific studies into the methods of Brain Gym, but none of them found a significant improvement in general academic skills.”

Source: Guardian, UK
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/apr/03/brain.gym

Children from loving homes are stressed when placed in poor quality child-care centres, new scientific evidence reveals. But children from disadvantaged families are better off in child care even if the quality is substandard.

The Australian study measured the levels of cortisol - a hormone produced in response to stress - in 156 children attending 16 centres. Samples of saliva were taken from the children twice a day.

It shows that good quality child care benefited children from both happy and disadvantaged homes. The children’s stress levels fell over the day, an indication that their needs were being met by responsive and caring staff. The fall in stress levels was dramatic in the children from disadvantaged homes. Even in poor quality centres, these children showed declining levels of stress across the day, but this was not the case for children from loving families.

“I don’t want to say poor quality child care is OK because it’s not,” Margaret Sims, the author of the study, said. “But for some children poor quality child care is better than what they’re getting at home. If they go into really good quality care, however, you see an even bigger drop in their cortisol levels.”

Dr Sims, associate professor in social science at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia, visited Sydney last month for the “1:4″ campaign by child-care specialists designed to persuade the State Government improve staff/child ratios in centres.

She said chronically high cortisol levels were implicated in long-term health and behavioural problems, and, in young children, could put at risk the still growing pathways in the brain. Cortisol levels normally peaked just after waking and declined across the day unless children were put under stress.

The study is an extension of Dr Sims’s earlier pathbreaking research. It showed that stress levels fell only when children attended centres rated by her evaluators as high quality. Even centres rated satisfactory were not good enough, judging by the children’s rising cortisol levels.

A high-quality centre was characterised by warm, responsive, and respectful staff/child relationships and good communication between parents and staff. “A lot of the surface glitz that’s marketed as quality - bright toys, slick literacy programs - is not quality. Quality is about relationships,” Dr Sims said.

The latest research takes the child’s family background into account - after parents completed a survey that evaluated their parenting style. “Where children receive care that is as good or better than they receive at home, they are able to learn in the new child-care environment,” she said. (…)

Dr Sims said the scientific evidence demonstrated it was crucial to get the early years right because of the long-term consequences. This meant providing support to families at home - “giving them help before they fail” - as well as improving child care. (…)

Source: Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
http://tinyurl.com/2fhfyp

Jack P. Shonkoff, a Harvard pediatrician, was only sort of joking when he referred to 3-year- olds as middle-aged.

By then, much of the basic circuitry of a child’s brain, a series of connections not yet formed at birth, has already developed.

A child whose parents interact with her will probably have well-formed brain circuits and a strong foundation to build on. A child raised in an abusive environment may have damage to his brain architecture that sets him on a path to lifelong problems in learning, behavior, and mental and physical health.

“Things are happening early on in the lives of young children that are either going to set a strong foundation for high economic achievement and high economic productivity … or can build a foundation that’s going to be the beginning of failure, of school failure and economic dependence and criminal behavior,” said Shonkoff, a professor of child health and development and founder of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University.

Shonkoff spoke to policymakers, educators and other professionals Tuesday as part of the Governor’s Early Childhood Summit.

“Every child gets one chance at their first 1,000 days,” Gov. M. Jodi Rell said. “We don’t want to squander that.”

The summit came as many states, including Connecticut, work to expand and remake early childhood programs, spurred in part by research that links a child’s earliest experiences to key brain developments. Studies have shown that focusing on the most disadvantaged children as early as possible can lead to significant savings in special education, welfare and prison costs, Shonkoff said. (…)

Stable, safe relationships and rich learning experiences are key to brain development, Shonkoff said. Children can get them at home and in child-care programs, but they must be evidence-based, quality programs, he said. Child care must be treated as something to facilitate child development, not just to allow parents to go to work, he said. (…)

Source: Hartford Courant, United States
http://www.courant.com/news/education/hc-ctwired0116.artjan16,0,4930379.story

Pre-schools have become a breeding ground for bullies who are bolder than previous generations, researchers claim.

An international expert in early childhood told a conference in Melbourne yesterday many preschool teachers failed to respond adequately to bullying behaviour by three and four-year-olds.

“Preschool teachers who do not intervene at all and just think it’s part of playing can affect a child for life,” said Ester Ng.

“If the behaviour is not controlled, by the time these children go to primary school they will have mastered the skill in bullying in a more aggressive way.”

Speaking at the National Coalition Against Bullying Conference, Ms Ng said preschoolers often used group power to exclude a child from a game - or a more confident child would snatch toys from a vulnerable one.

She said, unlike previous generations, these children were far more bold in their expression.

“They say what they think. Preschool teachers say they do it discreetly, they either use an elbow or hand to push someone away and they are only three-years-old.”

Ms Ng called for early childhood teachers to be better trained to identify and discipline potential bullies.

She said how a preschool teacher responded helped determine if the child would master the skills of excluding or picking on someone - or targeting a weaker one…

Source: NEWS.com.au, Australia
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,22697832-5006009,00.html

In the early 1990s, I was taken aback to overhear my 3-year-old son insisting to his 6-year-old cousin that he went to “ABC school,” not to day care, as she condescendingly referred to it. (He was spending a few sociable hours a week at a children’s center chosen because it was around the corner.) I had no idea where he got that term, or when he decided his educational credentials needed upgrading. And, given that alphabet drills weren’t in fact part of the program, I wasn’t sure what he was really boasting about.

But with universal prekindergarten (UPK) emerging as a campaign issue, it’s now clear to me that he was a kid ahead of his time. Hillary Clinton and John Edwards have recently joined a chorus of early-childhood-education advocates, governors, foundations and social activists who have been promoting the cause in notably wonky, rather than warm and cuddly, terms. Calling for an overhaul of the current patchwork of uneven preschool programs, UPK proponents invoke neuroscientific evidence of brain growth rather than child-care needs. They cite the long-term economic benefits of an early investment in boosting “cognitive skills” and “school readiness,” especially for low-income children. There is little mention of, say, pretend play in the pitch for government-subsidized pre-K, which supporters argue should be affordable and available (though not necessarily mandatory) for all.

The hardheaded rhetoric conveys an important message: expanding access to early education is serious business, not baby stuff. The universal-preschool mission, too often dismissed as nanny-state meddling, capitalizes on the inclusive No Child Left Behind drive to close the K-12 achievement gap: the moment is ripe to reach downward to the post-diaper and pre-backpack stage, where disparities between white and minority students start. Yet aligning with an ethos of no-nonsense academics inspires uneasiness among UPK crusaders themselves, as the Berkeley professor Bruce Fuller points out in “Standardized Childhood: The Political and Cultural Struggle Over Early Education.” After all, for your bouncy 4-year-old — “wild and wonderful” is the epithet one classic parenting book applies to the age — how much ABC school do you really want? …

Source: New York Times, United States
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/magazine/28wwln-lede-t.html?ref=magazine

Both the Government and the Opposition want to get women back into the workforce as quickly as possible after giving birth. I suspect that most mothers are also keen on getting back into paid employment as soon as possible.

The problem is the politicians want to do it on the cheap, while mothers are reluctant to entrust their children to second-class care or to paying so much in child care that there is no financial incentive to return to work early. The result is a halfway house in which the Government doesn’t take direct responsibility for the provision of child care and early education but provides what amount to vouchers that subsidise these services run by non-profit and for-profit organisations…

The Scandinavian countries spend between 1.7 and 2 per cent of GDP on early childhood education and care. To reach this level would require a three-to-four-fold increase in government spending on children up to age six. The Scandinavian countries spend between $12,000 to $15,000 a year for each child aged one to six years, but this is not a net burden on taxpayers. The much higher expenditure has to be set against the much higher workforce participation rates for young women with children compared with Australia and the higher proportion of Scandinavian women occupying high-productivity, full-time professional jobs.

In 2006 the OECD published a comprehensive survey of early childhood education and child care. The central insight in the report was that it saw early childhood services as a public good, which provides an unequalled opportunity for investment in human capital. It cites research that shows the social return from investment in child care and preschool is higher than an equivalent level of investment in primary and post-primary education.

According to the OECD report, “In early childhood positive (or negative) dispositions towards society and learning are absorbed and the basic life skills acquired … Additionally, parents are particularly protective of their children at this age and eager to support development and learning. In comparison, remedial education interventions targeting young school drop-outs or adults with poor basic skills are far more costly, and according to the research, of limited benefit.” …

Source: The Age, Australia
http://tinyurl.com/2pr5wa

Parents are creating a generation of yobs by failing to teach children good manners at a young age, researchers warn today.

Infants are “naturally” aggressive and must be taught to control their emotions, it is claimed.

Academics say busy families who do not spend enough time curbing bad tempered three- and four-year-olds risk fuelling serious behavioural problems in later life, including drug abuse and violent crime.

Mothers who smoke during pregnancy and parents on low incomes are more likely to find their children become aggressive, the scientists say. The findings — in a study by Richard Tremblay, professor of paediatrics at Montreal University — will be presented at a conference in London today.

They follow the publication of a Government-backed report that found toddlers left in a nursery for more than three hours a week were more likely to develop anti-social behaviour…

“Identifying the factors which stop children becoming well socialised adults should help us design preventative measures. These should put an appropriate emphasis on the behaviour of the parents.”

In today’s research, scientists claim young children do not learn to be badly behaved. Instead, infants are naturally more physically aggressive and must be taught how to control their behaviour.

Children’s ability to shake off violent tendencies is dependent on “both genetic and environmental factors”, with some parents better at teaching youngsters how to be well-mannered and communicate properly.

The findings will fuel the debate over childhood, with academics saying that the amount of time parents spend with children has a dramatic impact on their ability to develop…

Source: Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/16/nyobs116.xml

Lederman is presiding judge of Miami-Dade juvenile court and she’s pioneering territory that could help change, possibly reverse, the course of how the nation treats abandoned and abused children and perhaps how they ultimately treat you.

“We now know from the explosion of research of brain development that the early years are absolutely crucial. We used to ignore infants and toddlers when they came into court, because we didn’t understand the science,” she said. “[We thought] they will get over it, if they are harmed how would we know because they can’t speak. We were so very, very wrong, well meaning, but very wrong.”

Lederman went on to say, “and as a result, we so missed a tremendous opportunity to change the course of these infants, babies and toddlers minds.” …

At issue, when a child particularly between birth and age 3 is denied love, touch, attachment. The growth of neurons in the frontal lobes seems to be stunted. The area of the brain associated with empathy, having an ability to care for others, that’s called attachment disorder.

“And when you have an attachment disorder, you do not have the ability to relate to people, to be empathetic, and in effect what we are doing is creating monsters, and it’s a really horrible thing,” says Judge Steven Leifman, assistant administrative judge for Miami-Dade County circuit court…

“And when they don’t have that attachment to another human being, there are parts of the brain that don’t develop and it causes huge problems later on for the child,” he said.

Leifman says the latest research is staggering because it means juvenile court systems around the country have unwittingly damaged children in foster care by purposely preventing attachments.

“It is particularly acute in the foster care system and one of the things that we realized, again, the court in advertently contributed to the problem, because we felt that we didn’t want children to become too attached, that it would do more harm than good if they got attached then we’d move them. So for a long time we kept moving the kids around the foster care system.”

Leifman now knows they did the absolutely wrong thing and that attachment is the most important thing. Now they try not to move the kids around…

Source: CBS 4, FL
http://cbs4.com/topstories/local_story_255195814.html