CELEBRATING THE JOY AND MAGIC OF YOUNG CHILDREN
This week we celebrate the Week of the Young Child. In early childhood policy, it seems we often dwell on the adverse situations that undermine the development of very young children. But this week is a time to focus on the joy that young children bring to life, both for their parents and those who support their development in early care and learning programs. To watch a baby or young child, to whom the whole world is brand new, make discoveries at once small and monumental is literally to see magic happen. Using the themes set out for this week by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), we offer our insights on how each theme contributes to this magic, provide some resources, and highlight the policy connections to bring more joy into the lives of all babies and their families.
Music Monday: Making Beautiful Music Together!
When you tire of endless renditions of The Wheels on the Bus, think of this: music can be the spark that ignites all areas of development—intellectual, motor skills, language and overall literacy. Singing together also can help promote social-emotional development. When parents or caregivers and babies make beautiful music together, they can build powerful connections with each other. The mutual joy experienced during shared musical moments strengthens relationships. The bonds created with parents will be a child’s model for close relationships throughout life—including the relationships with other caregivers and teachers, creating the trust needed for learning. The powerful emotions music evokes can help keep children in military families connected to a deployed parent through a video- or audiotape of the parent singing a treasured goodnight lullaby.
Music is also a unique and powerful way for children to connect to their roots or learn about the roots of others. An African-American spiritual, a Yiddish or Irish lullaby, a Mexican folk song… all introduce baby to their family’s heritage in a way that goes beyond words or pictures. And connecting to roots is another way to make a child feel safer and more secure. Learn more.
Policy connection: Paid Family Leave gives parents and babies more time to become attuned to each other, including sharing musical moments. Early care and learning programs such as Early Head Start and high quality child care programs can use music as a dimension of quality, offering opportunities to engage in music making as an exploratory and creative activity as well as incorporating song and movement into classroom routines. The Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting program funds home visitors who can help parents see how to use music in their interactions with their children and foster strong connections.
TACO Tuesday: Good early nutrition builds strong brains and bodies.
Why do toddlers nibble dubiously at new foods several times before embracing them? Understanding the answer to this and other questions can help parents and caregivers struggling to build healthy eating habits in their babies and toddlers. Nutrition provides fuel for the growing mind and body, so it’s important to get these habits off to a good start. Research shows that early childhood feeding influences later school performance, adult intelligence, bone strength, and the risk of obesity. Understanding how to use natural developmental stages and windows of opportunity can help. Some instincts were ingrained deep in human history. So why are toddlers so cautious about those new foods? Because long ago, toddlers of hunter-gatherers learned to be suspicious of edible things found in the wild—that unfamiliar plant might be ok, but then again it might be poisonous. Better to try a tiny bite a few times to make sure. While modern parents and caregivers are unlikely to serve young children dangerous foods, it’s good to know that this behavior is actually one of self-preservation! Our Parent Portal has more resources on nutrition.
Policy Connection: Some of the most important federal children’s programs help attack food insecurity and boost nutrition. Families and child care programs on a tight budget are challenged to offer children a nutritious array of foods. And too many babies and toddlers face food insecurity. The Child and Adult Care Food Program helps early childhood programs provide nutritious foods and promotes quality. Young children whose families receive benefits from the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) are less likely to be underweight or at risk for developmental delays. Mothers who participate in the supplemental nutrition program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) are 44% less likely to have low-birthweight babies and also experience fewer preterm births.
Work Together Wednesday: Babies and caregivers build strong bonds and brains together!
Wherever babies and toddlers are, at home or in a child care setting, is a major brain construction site. They build relationships and learn from their experiences about who they are, how they are valued, and how the world works. They become explorers and scientists, using the power of play to learn to problem solve and understand people. In the process, their brains build important neural connections, the foundational architecture on which to scaffold all later learning. How should caregivers and parents best support this earliest learning? It turns out that babies have their own agendas that a skillful “teacher” facilitates but doesn’t actually teach. In a ZERO TO THREE podcast, Alison Gopnik talks about how showing a child how a toy works actually narrows the possibilities for discovery open to a child left to his own devices. She says, “If you see…a wonderful preschool teacher, you’d see that they…intuitively get a sense of when to let children explore and figure things out for themselves, and when to just give them the right hint at the right moment rather than having an agenda that you want the children to accomplish.” Learn more about how to encourage young children’s learning with the School Readiness Interactive Birth to 3.
Policy Connection: Caring for infants and toddlers in a manner that supports their rapidly unfolding early development is highly skilled work that calls for professionals who are well-trained and appropriately compensated. Federal and state early childhood policies should support professional development focused on competencies needed to care for infants and toddlers and on higher levels of compensation. Ultimately, as a recent Institute of Medicine report called for, the field needs to work toward a level of professionalization and education for the workforce that recognizes the level of sophisticated knowledge and competencies indicated by the science of early childhood development.
Artsy Thursday: The joy of creating art taps into the magic of imagination.
You might see those first scribblings as the first step to writing a child’s 12th grade term paper, but they are actually a whole lot more. Creativity is a bridge to learning. Being creative and curious helps children come up with answers to the problems they encounter. Most importantly, creative expression lets children tap into the magic of their own imaginations—which is what being a child is all about. One of the most satisfying ways of being creative is with crayons and paper. For very young children, art and early writing skills are one and the same. At first, it’s all about just figuring out what these cool things called crayons can do. Then the child discovers the link between her hand holding the crayon and the line she made on the page: Presto! She experiences the power of cause-and-effect. This leap in thinking skills is helped along by her new ability to hold things in her hands and fingers. The growing control the child has over the muscles in her hands lets her move a marker or paintbrush with purpose and with a goal in mind.
From scribbles to the recognition that drawing lines and curves conveys meaning, art experiences help children develop independence within limits, and give them the opportunity to represent their ideas on paper or in other formats. Once a child has begun to purposefully draw images, she has mastered symbolic thinking. She begins to understand the difference between pictures and writing. And don’t forget to put that picture or missive up on the classroom wall or home refrigerator—that way, the child knows her work is valued and important. Find more tips on early art and writing here.
Policy Connection: For early care and learning programs, incorporating a variety of age-appropriate art activities as an integral part of classroom activities to promote early development is a component of quality. Home visiting policy promotes early childhood development that is enriched when home visitors help parents offer their children opportunities for creativity and understand the developmental stages.
Family Friday: Engaging families to partner in their children’s development.
Our first and most important connection in life is with our families. As parents go to work or seek early learning opportunities for their young children, other caregivers play key roles in promoting the emotional well-being of children. These caregivers can partner with parents to best encourage the child’s positive development, creating a mutual support system. Many barriers can exist to developing this relationship, including overburdened staff and overstressed parents who may view each other warily. But working through these barriers is worth it. Families need and want a partner, someone who sees them as an equal, and who will collaborate with them to problem-solve whatever challenges may arise, versus telling them what to do. As Jerlean Daniel, former NAEYC Executive Director, put it in a ZERO TO THREE podcast, when “the parent and the caregiver have open two-way communication…that there’s nothing too large or small to talk about, even if each party feels a little uncomfortable with it, they’ve built a relationship...[and when the parent sees] a caregiver who is curious and anxious to know your child—really know who your child is… that will make a relationship soar.”
Putting families in the child care picture—in other words, creating parent and family engagement—is more than just family pizza night. Parents need to be engaged using every touchpoint with families as an opportunity to connect, support and inform. It is these everyday moments that make the difference—staff showing parents that they feel their pain, and are there to support and partner with them, not to judge or blame. This is the glue that bonds parents to programs and leads to greater participation and thus impact on the child. To learn more, read ZERO TO THREE’s comments on family engagement.
Policy Connection: Family engagement is built into programs like Early Head Start and Head Start, as well as home visiting. Child care programs should see it as an integral part of their work and receive the resources to achieve that. The quality set-asides in the Child Care and Development Block Grant are one source of support.
Celebrate the magic and joy of early childhood every day by visiting our Parent Portal and our Policy Center page.
