WHY THE EARLY YEARS ARE SO IMPORTANT

How do children develop?

To encourage children’s best development, we need to understand the various ways they grow.

• Children's physical development includes learning large muscle skills like jumping and running, and small muscle skills like cutting and pasting.
• Intellectual development involves children's increasing ability to think and solve problems.
• Emotional development is about learning to experience, identify, express and control feelings.
• Social development means learning how to relate to others.

What do children need for healthy development?

• To thrive, children need a healthy physical start, enough to eat, and warmth and affection.
• To help their intellectual development they need a safe and stimulating environment where they can play, learn and explore.
• They need encouragement and guidance from adults.

Why are the early years so important?

The earlier children experience good care, the longer their developmental gains last.

• Early childhood experiences have powerful effects on the development of children's physical and emotional abilities and influence their abilities in math, logic, language and music.
• New research indicates that infant brain development during the first years of life depends on that infant’s environmental experience.
• The brain develops according to the quantity and quality of the stimuli it receives.
• Daily exercise increases nerve connections in the brain. This makes it easier for children to learn.
• There are periods of time known as windows of opportunity in the child’s brain development when it is especially open to certain kinds of learning.
• The more words a child hears by age two, the larger his/her vocabulary will grow.
• Research indicates that toddlers taught simple math ideas, like bigger or smaller, and more or less, do better in math when they are older.
• Early music lessons help develop skills which later improve a child’s ability to think things through and make decisions.
• The brain continues to develop and mature in many areas, but patterns of behaviour and emotional response set in the early years are very difficult to change or make up for in other ways.

What are the effects of high quality child care?

High quality child care and early childhood education can improve children’s chances for success in later life.

• The care that children receive in the early years influences whether or not they will succeed when they begin school.
• Children who do not get good care when their parents are not available have decreased language and social skills.
• Readiness to learn in kindergarten is the best indicator that children will do well in school. The care that children receive helps them to:
  • understand and use language
  • control aggression
  • play and work with other children
  • accept adult direction
  • focus attention and do things independently.

Why should we care that all children get the best care?

• The social and learning skills children need for success in school and work begin to develop in early childhood
• Several studies show that good pre-school programs can improve how children do in school, especially children who face such disadvantages as poverty, poor housing and food, parents with mental illness or other problems.
• Good early child care can reduce later anti-social behaviour, delinquency and crime.
• Recent research links trouble-making behaviour in young boys with later anti-social behaviour. It has found that good early education programs have a strong, long-term impact on decreasing anti-social behaviour in teenage boys.

Why is high quality child care a good investment?

The benefits from early childhood care and education programs far exceed their cost.

• A four year Swedish study found that children entering daycare at an early age did a number of important learning and social tasks significantly better than children who were older when they started daycare.
• Money spent on Head Start early education programs in the United States has decreased the need for spending on special education, welfare, teen pregnancy, delinquency and crime.
• Comparing the costs and benefits of the Perry Pre-School project in the United States for children at high risk for school failure and delinquency shows that total benefits to taxpayers was nearly seven times greater than the initial cost of the one year program.
• Further research into both these U.S. programs found a big improvement in the quality of community life as well as in the quality of individual lives.
• These programs contribute employees to the future work force who are better educated, with skills and abilities to make them better employees.

TO THINK ABOUT

"Early life experiences have disproportionate importance in organizing the mature brain and are directly connected to children's optimal development."

B.D. Perry, M.D.

from: Incubated in Terror: Neurodevelopmental Factors in the

‘Cycle of Violence’,"

Children, Youth and Violence: Searching for Solutions

The quality of caring a child receives in the first three years of life is the single most important factor other than genetics influencing that child's development.

Paul. D. Steinhauer, M.D,

Chair, Voices for Children

from: Kaleidoscope Magazine, Hospital for Sick Children

"The interest in ‘early education as prevention' is coming from those in industry who are concerned about the quality of the future work force, from families searching for adequate child care, and from private citizens who are concerned about the quality of life."

D.P. Weikart,

from: Early Childhood Education and Primary Prevention,

Prevention in Human Services