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I started my career as a preschool teacher. For 13 years, I helped 3- to 5-year-old children learn how to write their name; count, sort and use other foundational math concepts; manage their toileting and dressing independently; and meet other easily-observable school-readiness milestones. The children were flourishing, and their families were delighted with their achievements! But woven throughout the multi-faceted learning experiences supporting cognitive, language, physical, and self-help...

The people paid to watch America's children tend to live in poverty. Nearly half receive some kind of government assistance: food stamps, welfare checks, Medicaid. Their median hourly wage is $9.77 — about $3 below the average janitor's. In a new report , researchers at UC Berkeley say that child care is too vital to the country's future to offer such meager wages. Those tasked with supporting kids, they say, are shaping much of tomorrow's workforce. "Economic insecurity, linked to low...

“He was very angry. He was scratching his face, kicking, and screaming,” Carrie Giddings, a preschool teacher, said of one of her students during his first days in her class at Kruse Elementary School in northern Colorado. The boy’s father had been in and out of jail, Giddings said. She thinks the 3-year-old had witnessed abuse at home before he enrolled in preschool at Kruse. His family was poor. For a while, they had lived with relatives, unable to afford their own place. “Everything that...

[Photo Credit: Karsten Moran for The New York Times] The New York Times published an op-ed piece yesterday on investing in early childhood that is worth the read: The biggest obstacles and greatest inequality often have roots early in life: If we want to get more kids in universities, we should invest in preschools. Actually, preschool may be a bit late. Brain research in the last dozen years underscores that the time of life that may shape adult outcomes the most is pregnancy through age 2...

[Photo by Evan-Amos ] The Village of Newburgh Heights, outside Cleveland, is a working class community of about 2,500 residents. It's also home to the most progressive parental leave policy of any municipality in the nation. As of last week, full-time public employees will be eligible for six months of paid parental leave after the birth of a child. [For more of this story go to http://www.npr.org/2016/05/24/479349640/small-ohio-town-passes-progressive-parental-leave-policy]

A group of scholars at Harvard University is spearheading a campaign to make sure the early-childhood programs policymakers put in place to disrupt intergenerational poverty are backed by the latest science. The idea sounds entirely reasonable, but it’s all too rare in practice, says Jack P. Shonkoff, the director of the university’s Center on the Developing Child and the chair of the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child . That’s because program grants and policies are...

[Photo by Bryan Jones ] The human brain begins as a neural tube that develops five weeks after conception. Years later, it is fully formed. On Tuesday, experts in neuroscience, genetics and social work met in Manhattan to talk about what can happen to it along the way, and what emerging research tells us about how children who seem broken can be made whole. Officially, the meeting was called Poverty, the Brain and Mental Health. It could have been called This Is Your Brain on Poverty. Or:...

Study identifies factors that can help children thrive in the face of adversity - Medical News Today Research shows that people who experience four or more adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), such as economic hardship, exposure to violence or the death of a loved one, are more likely to have lasting physical and mental health problems. But a new research abstract to be presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies 2016 Meeting suggests that certain family, social and community assets may...

New research shows that certain family, social, and community supports may boost a child’s chances of thriving in the face of adversity. According to researchers, people who experience four or more adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), such as economic hardship, exposure to violence, or the death of a loved one, are more likely to have lasting physical and mental health problems. But a new research abstract presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies 2016 Meeting identifies several...

Several First 5 Commissions (Alameda, Orange, and Ventura) participated in a learning lab hosted by the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP) on toxic stress. The learning lab brought together several model early childhood programs from around the country and developed a framework on community approaches to toxic stress: http://www.cssp.org/reform/early-childhood/early-childhood-linc/working-toward-well-being-community-approaches-to-toxic-stress-web.pdf This framework will be...

Public health researchers cheered an encouraging trend recently : Childhood obesity rates, which rose steadily through the 1980s and 1990s, seemed to have plateaued in the 2000s. But new research suggests a different, troubling problem lurking behind that plateau — a steep rise in the rates of severe obesity, particularly among older and minority children. The fraction of adolescents with severe obesity — a body mass index of 40 or greater — has more than doubled from 0.9 percent in 1999 to...

The more children are spanked, the more likely they are to defy their parents and to experience increased anti-social behavior, aggression, mental health problems and cognitive difficulties, according to a new meta-analysis of 50 years of research on spanking by experts at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Michigan. The study, published in this month's Journal of Family Psychology, looks at five decades of research involving over 160,000 children . The researchers say...