By Sarah Merrill
When we tell others we work with infants and toddlers, we sometimes hear “Aw, you get to hold babies!” or “What fun – you get to play all day.” There is truth in these statements. However, people often don’t realize how important the things we do with the youngest children—and their families—are to their development and learning. Our work impacts their daily lives and their future experiences.
The first years of a child’s life are critical for building the early foundations needed for success in school and later in life. During the first three years, children’s brains are developing rapidly. They are influenced by the richness of their experiences, including day-to-day interactions with their caregivers.
Throughout the first three years, young children pursue the following three key developmental tasks: acquiring self-regulation, communicating and learning, and getting along with peers. Because infants depend completely on their caregivers, all areas of infant development unfold within the context of relationships. Children develop their self-concept through caring and nurturing relationships. They also develop confidence, curiosity, motivation, cooperation, self-control, and relatedness. This dynamic explains why Early Head Start (EHS) programs focus on relationships as the central component of early childhood experiences that support developmental competence and school readiness.
Too many young children miss high-quality early learning experiences that build this foundation and prepare them to succeed in school. With disparities between families with lower and higher incomes1, high-quality early learning programs for infants and toddlers are critical to closing the opportunity gap. They level the playing field and make sure all children can thrive in school and in later life.
Stable and Nurturing Relationships Buffer Against Traumatic Experiences
Research documents the high rate of exposure to trauma among infants and toddlers, particularly children living in high-poverty communities. Beginning life in the context of trauma places infants and toddlers on a compromised developmental path. When EHS programs help parents and staff provide stable and nurturing caregiving approaches that respond to children's general developmental needs, they promote children's sense of safety and security. This may reduce or provide a buffer against infants' traumatic experiences.
Infants and toddlers benefit when everybody understands importance of comprehensive and high-quality services. Use the following messages with your community partners and early childhood education colleagues, including K–12. Share them at a school board meeting to emphasize the potential of EHS services and staff to influence dramatically the future of our most vulnerable children.
- Healthy children are ready to learn. Healthy children are better able to learn than children who have untreated medical, developmental, or dental conditions. EHS helps children and families access health services and, when necessary, intervention services.
- Families are engaged in their children's development and learning. EHS sees parents as equal partners in supporting their children's development and learning. EHS programs partner with parents to plan and individualize services, teaching, and learning, boosting parent’s sense of confidence and competence in supporting their children.
- Stable and nurturing relationships promote children's sense of safety and security. The EHS mission is to promote the parent-child relationship. This relationship is a child's first opportunity to experience trust, love, and nurturing.
- Stable and nurturing relationships support self-regulation development to promote resilience in the face of challenges. The ability to regulate thoughts, feelings, and actions predicts better performance in school, better relationships with others, and fewer behavioral difficulties. EHS staff co-regulate with infants and toddlers through warm interactions, creating a safe and secure environment.
- Meaningful learning experiences foster curiosity and a love for learning. EHS offers an organized and planned curricular approach through play, exploration, and meaningful interactions with trusted adults. Through playful experiences with caring adults, babies and toddlers learn foundational cognitive principles like early math concepts and scientific reasoning skills as they exercise motor, language, and social skills.
- Rich language experiences increase vocabulary and the desire to communicate. Infants and toddlers learn about letters and symbols in their home language(s) and English when they have access to books; are read to regularly; see adults enjoy reading; and experience a language-rich environment that includes talking, singing, and storytelling. These experiences are especially powerful when young children are being snuggled in the parent's lap, enjoying each other's company and sharing joyful or tender moments together. Through these experiences, infants naturally begin to appreciate the importance of letters and words (or word symbols) and will enter preschool—and, eventually, kindergarten—as eager learners who are ready for more sophisticated academic concepts.
- Bilingualism is developed and celebrated. Learning more than one language has cognitive benefits for infants and toddlers. When they listen to language sounds, they have higher activity in the part of the brain that is important for skills such as working memory, directing attention, and inhibiting impulses. These skills can lead to improved mental health and academic outcomes later in life.
- Partnering with Head Start and early childhood education community partners supports a birth-to-5 continuum of quality services. Two years after the end of the EHS program, prior to children entering kindergarten, positive impacts of EHS remained in areas of children's social and emotional development, parenting, and parent well-being. Furthermore, EHS participants who attended formal early childhood education programs such as Head Start or state pre-kindergarten tended to have the best overall outcomes at the start of school (EHS Research and Evaluation Project, 2006).
Learn more about how to support those messages on the Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center (ECLKC).
1 Halle, T; N. Forry, E. Hair, K. Perper, L. Wandner, J. Wessel, and J. Vick. Disparities in Early Learning and Development: Lessons from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Birth Cohort (ECLS-B). Washington, DC: Child Trends, 2009.
Sarah Merrill is the Infant Toddler Program Specialist for the Office of Head Start.