Quality of children’s care before kindergarten is crucial

Education Minister Dale Kirby recently announced that full-day kindergarten will start at “full-steam” in September 2016 in Newfoundland and Labrador.

While this is a relevant measure to enhance positive stimulation in a child’s early life, creative strategies are also needed to raise awareness among parents, early educators and the general public about three critical considerations to get a better return for this investment:

1) Advances in brain science and human development research indicate that the foundations of physical and mental health, educational achievement, economic productivity and sense of citizenship are formed early in life.

“Early,” in this case, means from the moment of conception, while the baby is in the womb, and during the first three years of life, which is a highly sensitive period of maturation for the developing brain. For example, if a child, who since her/his early stages in life has lacked a loving, supportive, resourceful environment and instead suffers aggression, shouting, humiliation and neglect, she/he eventually learns conflictive adaptive skills to survive within that environment.

However, these adaptive skills may lead the person to face more challenges later in life, from disruptive behaviours and learning difficulties to mental health issues and drug addiction, which are likely to significantly impair their health and well-being throughout the lifespan.

In addition to the human cost, the lack of preventive measures is likely to result in higher costs in the social assistance, justice and health-care systems. In stark contrast, an environment of loving and supportive attitudes that allows infants to deal positively with stress is the best guarantee of a quality start in life. This brings to the fore the fact that parenting awareness programs and family supports are essential.

2) Client-focused support services are particularly relevant for parents with a history of early adversity and chronic stress when they were growing up. Throughout the different strata of society, there are far too many adults who have experienced poor parenting themselves.

Parenting skills are a learned experience, and the cyclical trend is to reproduce the kind of upbringing one has had. If, in addition to a lack of loving, nurturing skills and experiences in a parent’s early life, we add a history of poverty, learning difficulties, and limited social, cultural and economic resources, the opportunities to develop a well-regulated caregiving environment for the new baby are extremely limited.

3) Although the plea for enhancing parenting capacities is broadly accepted, there is usually a limited understanding among most service providers about the challenges involved.

Parents will not learn by simply being told to be sensitive, or by lecturing them on good parenting. On the contrary, this may create a defensive reaction.

It is only going through a therapeutic relationship of trust and supportive understanding that this person may start feeling some empathy for himself/herself. Research shows that services that improve the mental health, functioning skills and self-regulating capacity of young parents are the best investment to enhance an infant’s early development.

Harvard researcher Jack Shonkoff conducted a critical review of this kind of intervention in developed countries and asserted that early educators are usually trained to meet the intellectual skills of young children, but usually lack the time, preparation and emotional skills to deal with the complex disruptive behaviours some of the children may present. Moreover, they have even less time or skills to deal with parental issues.

Shonkoff ’s recommendation is that researchers, front line workers and policy makers should work together with a two-pronged approach, one that combines appropriate stimulation for the child with “creative strategies to strengthen the capacities of parents and providers of early care and education to help young children cope with stress.” Otherwise, what we face, he said, are “complaints about high rates of problematic child behaviors, increasing antipsychotic drug prescriptions for children as young as age three, and large numbers of children being expelled from preschool programs.”

On a positive note, in a research study conducted in St. John’s, entitled “Framing preventive measures for children’s adverse experience,” we heard endless praise for Daybreak Childcare Centre, serving approximately 45 young children and families in metro St. John’s.

Why? Daybreak is doing exactly what Shonkoff recommends: fostering opportunities for positive parent-child interaction, while enriching the children’s education and development. By the same token, the provincial Poverty Reduction Strategy was also highlighted by participants as a potential investment for supporting young families, particularly single mothers, by enhancing their chances to create nurturing, positive environments for their children to thrive.

Martha Traverso-Yepez is a faculty member at the division of community health and humanities at Memorial University in St. John’s.