The programs - one in Covington and one in Hamilton County - put mental health professionals in preschool classrooms as observers and consultants, helping teachers build social and emotional strengths for children. They can also provide more focused attention and sometimes therapy for children dealing with serious emotional and behavior problems…

“We’re helping children develop the social and emotional skills they will need in kindergarten and through school and beyond,” said Starkey. “We’re catching them during a really important window of opportunity.”

The two Resilience programs literally will change the future, said Starkey.

“A good start in kindergarten can affect everything that follows,” she said. “If you intervene and give a child the support and therapy and resources they need, you can remediate problems. If a child has social/emotional problems, it doesn’t get better, it keeps getting worse.”

Children who are not ready to learn fall behind and can get trapped in a spiral of academic failures and behavior problems that can lead to crime, poverty, teen pregnancy and lifelong problems with jobs and relationships…

Source: Cincinnati Post, OH
http://tinyurl.com/3d4bbr

Texas has become the first state to rate preschools, day-care centers and Head Start programs on how well they prepare children for kindergarten.

State officials hope the new School Readiness Certification System will transform a parent’s search for a good preschool from a game of chance into more of a science. The system was launched under an education law sponsored by state Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo.

The goal is to improve teaching in public and private pre-kindergarten programs and boost the odds that children will enter kindergarten ready to learn…

The certification system tracks children from preschool to kindergarten. It then uses kindergartners’ scores on reading and social skills tests to determine whether the pre-kindergarten classrooms they were in the year before prepared them…

Children unprepared

Children should come into kindergarten able to identify some letters of the alphabet and read basic words, such as “cat,” Dr. Landry said. They also should get along with other children and follow directions.

In Dallas, educators say too many children show up for kindergarten never having picked up a pencil…

Most children under 5 are in day care, which is why those programs are included in the new system. But many day-care centers have low standards and poor employee pay…

“There’s a lot of disparity,” Ms. Hoff said. “It’s pretty frightening when you know how much happens in terms of brain development in those first five years, and you know what the system is currently like.” …

While the program is voluntary, Dr. Landry predicts that most preschool, day-care and Head Start programs will apply for certification of their classrooms if enough parents start looking for seals of approval…

Source: Dallas Morning News, TX
http://tinyurl.com/2fswan

Brain science is the new battleground in the parents vs. daycare war

The mysteries of a child’s brain have become a bit clearer in recent years, thanks to great leaps in neuroscience. But what governments should do with all that research is still a puzzle…

Now the child’s brain has become an ideological battleground. Child care advocates like Hillary Clinton, claim a child’s brain “has essentially been constructed” by the time he or she enters preschool. This interpretation of brain science — bolstered by decades-old research on poor black children that showed a lifelong benefit to enhanced child care — has led to calls for government supervision of early childhood education so all children enter school on an equal footing.

In Canada, the brain science-recommends-child care argument is most identified with medical researcher Fraser Mustard. His latest report, released this past March with co-author Stuart Shanker, director of the Toronto-based Council on Early Child Development, musters neuroscience to promote a $10-billion national child care program. The government “has failed to act convincingly on the huge body of scientific evidence,” the report laments…

Norman Doidge, University of Toronto psychiatrist and author of the current (if unlikely) bestseller on brain plasticity research The Brain That Changes Itself, argues that what brain science does show is that children thrive when they receive large amounts of personal attention from their parents. “Compared to other species, the human brain remains incomplete long after birth. The long-term bond between parent and child is probably so intense precisely because the child’s brain requires so much one-on-one attention to complete its basic structure.” The mother-child connection, says Doidge, creates “a warm emotional bath” of brain chemicals that fosters learning and healthy brain development. Even instinctive parental actions such as frequent physical closeness and games like peek-a-boo serve vital roles in brain building, he adds…

Source: Macleans
http://tinyurl.com/32mp5c

Information tells that, in China, over 2000 babies are given birth per hour. The total number of babies aged between 0 and 3 has exceeded 70 million, and 11 million babies were born in cities among them. A recent investigation indicated that over half of families spent more than 20 percent of total revenue on their kids every month. Assume that each family spends RMB 3000 on the early education of their kids per year, and then the market scale will reach RMB 30 billion…

A preschool education expert of Beijing Normal University pointed out that children’s brain grew most quickly when they were aged 0~6 and the period before 3 years old was of particular importance. Early education is much helpful for the healthy growth of children. Based on such a huge market demand and development space, both domestic brands represented by Oriental Baby Care and RYB, and foreign brands represented by Gymboree and Child First speeded up market exploration in recent years. The whole early education market is entering a fast track of development…

While early education market is growing fast, it is facing an unexpected challenge, namely shortage of early education talent. “Now there hasn’t been any college in Beijing that specially cultivates early education talents. Many teachers involved in early education are from childhood education field and most institutions train teachers by their own”, Zhang, Headmaster of a children’s center in Beijing, told the reporter about his feeling.

In fact, as the country hasn’t formulated unified and definite laws and regulations on early education of children, early education institutions design teaching contents based on their respective characteristics. The crucial point for early education institutions to get the upper hand in competitions is experienced teachers acquainted with children’s psychology…

Source: China Economic Net
http://en.ce.cn/Insight/200707/26/t20070726_12321002.shtml

The warehousing of children in the guise of “care” or, even more implausibly, “early learning” (”That means the blocks have letters on them,” joked one staff member I spoke to recently) is something more and more parents feel distraught about. The research is now undeniable that babies and younger toddlers do not thrive in child care. Yet the business world does not want young parents to have time off work…

In Britain, the Blair government’s attempt at being mother-friendly consisted of building a vast number of new day-care centres. But the news out of Britain in May was stunning.

Almost a quarter - 22 per cent - of the country’s nursery places are unfilled. Day care has gone out of fashion. British families are making the sacrifices that enable them to stay home when their babies are small.

The reason is not hard to find. A slew of research, from large and well designed studies, has found that too much day care harms under threes in several ways. Lacking one-to-one care, the fine interactions between a loving parent or family member and a baby or toddler do not happen…

Care-raised babies don’t all become psychopaths, but they are measurably more anxious, aggressive and disobedient as they move through preschool and the primary grades. We even know why this is so. The stress hormone cortisol, measured in a baby’s saliva, doubles if they are placed in care, and it is still elevated even months after they start…

Britain is now introducing one year’s paid parental leave. But even before the change only 7 per cent of children in British nurseries are under one, and only 18 per cent of these go full-time. This follows the pattern in Sweden, where parents demanded proper maternity leave in the early 1990s, and got it. In that whole country today, there are fewer than 500 babies in day care. Australia has tens of thousands…

Source: Sydney Morning Herald
http://tinyurl.com/2jvc5x

Children in the UK suffer greater deprivation, worse relationships with their parents and are exposed to more risks from alcohol, drugs and unsafe sex than those in any other wealthy country in the world. That was the damning conclusion of a recent Unicef report which ranked the UK bottom of the league of 21 economically advanced countries according to its “report card” on the wellbeing of children and young people…

Strong, well resourced early years services have a pivotal role to play in contributing to the wellbeing of the child, developing healthy lifestyles and building community cohesion. The Nordic countries have yielded vital rewards for children and families by investing directly in the early years. Currently, however, Scotland spends just 0.5 per cent as a percentage of GDP on early education and childcare in the pre-school sector, compared with Norway’s 1.7 per cent…

Source: Edinburgh Evening News
http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=1003462007

About two-thirds of U.S. moms with preschool children are employed, and many still worry that not having a full-time parent at home will hurt their kids. “I worry that we could do it better, that my husband and I are missing out on time with her that we will not get back,” Decter says.

Worry has been an ongoing theme since baby-boom women surged into the labor market. The percentage of mothers of preschoolers with jobs jumped from 30% to 60% between 1970 and 1990 and has edged up to 65% since then. But today’s parents have an advantage: Research on day care has greatly increased in the last decade, with findings that have been mostly reassuring…

Some parents were taken aback by a new finding in March from the longest, most thorough U.S. study on day care. The federally funded research, following 1,364 children from birth through elementary school so far, has gathered a massive trove of information about their parents, day care arrangements and how the kids are faring emotionally and academically…

Research is rapidly growing on how day care affects children, with studies underway that are more scientifically sound than ever, says Martha Zaslow, vice president for research at Child Trends, a group that tracks children’s well-being…

Source: USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-06-20-daycare_N.htm

Evidence is mounting that young children who spend significant periods of time in daycare while their parents work are more prone to developing aggressive and antisocial behaviour.

A new study from the United States suggests that children who went to nursery during their pre-school years rather than staying at home were more likely to be disruptive once formal education began.

The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) has followed the progress and development of 1,300 children since 1991. It concluded that the longer above 10 hours a week a child spent in group care, the more likely teachers were to report difficult behaviour once they started school.

The findings are strikingly similar to the results of a recently published government-funded research project carried out by Oxford University and the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

It concluded that children under the age of three who spend more than 35 hours a week at nursery show higher levels of antisocial behaviour than those spending less time in daycare…

“These findings add to the growing body of research showing that the quality and type of childcare a child experiences early in life can have a lasting impact on their development.” …

Source: Scotsman
http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=906272007

When child care providers fail, parents often call in sick, quit, or go to work and worry…

Despite decades of debate, child care remains one of the biggest challenges for many employees. The shortage of quality care forces absences, tardiness and turnover like no other issue, experts say.

Though employees still face the brunt of the problem alone, employers are starting to recognize that the lack of quality care is an issue they need to be paying attention to…

Each week 63 percent of American children 5 and younger go off to day care. Annually, parents in Kansas and Missouri spend an average of $4,000 to $6,000 — in some cases more than state college tuition — on child care.

But often that tab doesn’t include any type of formal early learning component, which experts increasingly believe is important to how a child performs in kindergarten and beyond. While their parents work, more than three-quarters of children go to a grandparent or other relative or to an in-home day care, according to the National Association of Child Care Resources and Referral Agencies. Only 18 percent go to child care centers, while about 5 percent go to preschool…

Source: Kansas City Star
http://www.kansascity.com/business/story/135979.html

Experts claim how you treat your child in its early years can impact on the rest of their life

Psychotherapist Sue Gerhardt, author of controversial new book Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby’s Brain, has found that a baby’s nervous system is shaped by early relationships.

Positive facial expressions, hugs, kisses and loving care can all improve your child’s ability to cope with life as an adult.

“It is possible to predict future problems as early as the age of six to 10 months, not from the baby’s temperament so much as the mother’s behaviour,” Sue said…

In our highly materialist driven world, new mothers find themselves going back to careers or jobs for money or adult stimulation, resulting in many babies being cared for by strangers in nurseries.

Experts like Sue and child guru and author Stephen Biddulph are now warning that these children are missing out on the constant love a one-to-one carer can give.

He said: “Probably the most stressful experience of all for a baby or toddler is to be separated from his or her mother. Early separation from the mother increases corticotrophin in the amygdala…

Stephen agrees and has spent the past five years examining studies of infants in long-term nursery care.

In his book, Raising Babies, he claims that during the first two years of life, brain development unfolds at its best with one-to-one care. This care could be from mother, father, a loving relative or, if necessary, a single, attentive paid carer…

Source: Daily Record
http://tinyurl.com/2nq3ey