Guest Author, positiveexperience.org/blog, 11/12/20
More and more evidence points to the important role positive childhood experiences play in child development. Today's blog post is based off of an interview with Dr. Ron Ferguson, founder and president of The Basics (a public health approach to supporting social, emotional, and cognitive development of children from birth to age three). In this post, Dr. Ferguson walks us through The Basics and several experiences that benefit child development. Click on the questions throughout the blog post to watch video snippets of the original interview with Dr. Ferguson.
Can you introduce yourself and your work to our blog readers?
I've been teaching at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government since 1983. I became an economist to improve conditions in the types of neighborhoods where I grew up. For 20 years, I taught state and local economic development. About halfway through that period, I learned that racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic gaps in reading and math scores measured at the end of 1970s in a national study of adolescents predicted most of the hour earnings gaps 10 years later within the same sample when they were young adults.
That got me interested in education. Then after about a decade of research and consulting on achievement gaps, I came across a nationally representative study showing that cognitive skill gaps are established by the time children are two years old. I set out to find a way to reach parents with the knowledge and supports they need, to give their children the early experiences necessary for preventing such early gaps.
What are the effects of that gap on health and well-being?
Life is very different for people with more of the academic and self-management skills that high achievers tend to develop. It’s easier for them to find and use expert advice to sustain a healthy lifestyle. They find it easier to find friends who have healthy lifestyles and to avoid hanging out with friends who set bad examples. For a variety of reasons, including more stable work schedules, they can organize their lives to have more routines, including for personal health care and self-maintenance. In general, they develop the knowledge, the self-control, the friendship circles, and general lifestyle that promote healthy outcomes.
We’re talking about the child, the parent, the grandparent, sometimes the great grandparents and extended family members. If we can intervene in ways where entire family clusters develop not only skills, but also a sense of hope and optimism that makes them invest time and energy in healthy behaviors for themselves and their children, then there's a payoff to all of society.
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