Category Archives: Blog

07 Dec

Paleo child care

The other day my 7 yr old grandson began a conversation/debate with “in my opinion”.  Blessings upon whomever taught him that.  It’s a necessary preamble.

Which made me think about how, in my opinion, we have not traveled very far out of the box when thinking about how to re-create or restore child care for parents who are working.  The nerd in me was intrigued and thrilled with the quick cultural adoption of the Paleo Diet and the rationale that surely thousands of years would have insight and wisdom into how we eat and how we raise our offspring.  Limitations of the Paleo Diet notwithstanding, I think we should be curious about how we raised our ‘offspring’.

I think anthropology has assured us that we didn’t group offspring into the same age groups, like a litter of pups, and “manage” them all day.  And at the same time if no one cared for them – even only casually – we wouldn’t be here. (think tigers).

My research into the literature suggests we ceded protection and entertainment of children to a perhaps fluid group  of trusted adults until children returned to the care of their parents.  I doubt we assigned that responsibility to the group member we trusted the least (or “paid the least”) or that we expected that one individual would spend all sunlight hours only chasing children.  This gem of an article sent by my fellow ponderer of such things, suggests that children’s young brains  are wired to form a number of relationships, all of which need to be secure and kind, if not fond, and presumably with group members who liked children, not to control freaks or warm bodies or bullies.  (Since I am a teacher of young kids I can say that.. I bet big sisters and cousins were likely recruits and mothers of other youngsters, already engaged in the preservation of the offspring.  And for goodness sakes, fathers!

My point here is that, in my opinion, we have stubbornly stuck to the Industrial Revolution model in care and education and I am thoroughly alarmed at the results.  We can wrap our minds around the legitimate craving of an occasional Paleo steak but we can’t integrate the science that tells us that our offspring thrive when they play?

That is pretty far out of the box for us, but if we can entertain Paleo, we can entertain re-imagining how best to care for, protect and “educate” our children.  Because we are doing a terrible job at it.  Turns out you don’t even need the tiger.

https://phys.org/news/2023-11-hunter-gatherer-approach-childcare-key-mother.html#google_vignette

29 Sep

children going over the child care “cliff”

As federal dollars supporting child care during the pandemic dry up at the end of September, we are all watching, noting and bemoaning the serious impact it will have on employers, parents, child care businesses and teachers. Yet, woe is the society that treats its families as financial commodities only. There are children in there – who learned to say goodbye to Mommy and Daddy every morning by connecting with Miss Mary, or Kashama or Claudia (all real teachers I know). But those children who will see teachers leave because of this event are set to suffer disruptions in one or more of their primary relationships. We like to think kids are resilient (and of course many are by nature or in the right circumstances), but breaks, especially abrupt ones, in the relationships that are the building blocks of trust and interactions, erode and complicate young children’s sense of safety and predictability in the world. We grown ups complain about change and stress, but its a biological event and it effects early brain development (see https://developingchild.harvard.edu/) if you need convincing.

The reason that the adults in child care are worthy of professional wages and compensation is that their skills and knowledge about this important relationship have a profound effect on young children. But when predictable, kind adults disappear abruptly, it sends a biological message to the brain and influences responses and other relationships. Efforts to mitigate that will help – other familiar teachers, visits, talking about it. But the continued callousness and self-centered attitudes of our society and government will impact young children – who will become adolescents – and eventually just and trusted adults (or not).

23 Sep

“How are the children?”

“How are the children?”

Saturday, September 23, 2023

11:53 AM

Many years ago this was a common way we would have opened an early childhood policy conference or training conversation.  A reference to a Masai greeting among travelers, it prioritized the welfare of children as the important indicator that it is.  But we have moved a far piece from this wisdom, for a variety of pressing issues. It seems from here that there is more interest in how to convince people to come care for children than whether they are any good at it.  Of course both are necessary efforts but I take the frequent absence of the word “quality” from the conversation about accessibility and affordability as an obvious hint as to where our real efforts are going.  Corporate America wants their money makers (parents) back to work and children are “resilient” anyway. 

I despair at what this means.  We used to spend hours debating what kind of puzzles were developmentally appropriate for 3 yr olds so teachers would score well on environmental rating scales. I have a lot of opinions on the matter actually, so I am talking about myself.  Now I wish we had seen that, in the future, puzzles would become pretty irrelevant and that what we really needed to pay attention to were how the adults were supported to relate – or not – to children.   We apparently went for the “low-hanging fruit” (always a mistake, a misdirection, an easy distraction) and gave less intellectual, policy and emotional energy to the health and strength and wisdom of the teacher her/himself.  Too late, throwing money at them alone will not really nourish them.  When will we realize that the answer to “how are the children” is not really related to “how much does their teacher make”? 

On the other hand, as a dastardly underpaid ece educator for my adult life, believe me, I know how important salary is.  But it is not the only thing – apparently we can think about policy for compensation band-aids (apologies) but not about funding for teacher education, professional development, better working conditions (see actually implemented Model Work Standards) and, finally, professional acknowledgement, sometimes meekly referred to as, respect.

Please lets put ALL the needs of the teachers on the table – not just break times, and bonuses, but child development science and how to tend each child with informed attention and understanding.  Fostering those skills benefits teachers commensurate with their responsibilities, while also helping to inform the answer to “How are the children?”

We can’t be entranced by the very mention of “compensation”. Lets demand what is good for us and the children.

10 Mar

brain research and change

As long as we have been trying to improve the quality of children’s experiences in child care, with limited success, we should be looking in every corner for insight and inspiration. Here is some that I have encountered in a few places, most recently in the BUILD archives, that specifically addresses some of the specific barriers that we don’t, in my opinion, talk about enough.

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10 Feb

Quality Improvement needs improvement?

After 20 odd years of participating in the very well-intentioned field of quality improvement specialists/coaches/consultants I have come to a new sentiment about what works, what doesn’t, and why. Maybe it’s just me, but I find that people don’t really like to be told to change their behavior, even when asked nicely. They may – and often do – smile and say thanks, now I get it – but in fact that changed behavior isn’t going to stick and likely fades along with the smile.

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16 Feb

Testing a “recipe” for quality

Marcy Whitebook at Center for the Study of Child Care Employment http://www.irle.berkeley.edu/cscce/ has a project called No Single Ingredient.  Based on that suggested metaphor, I have tried to visually represent the collection of considerations that go into supporting/improving quality child care experiences.  I want to get a “systems” image that many of us can relate to so that we have the beginning for the systems-building we are undertaking with the addition of mentoring and coaching.  I would really appreciate your comments!