Parents of Young Children Tell What They Think, Know, and Need

A child’s experiences in the first three years of life shape a child forever. Help Me Grow cares about babies and toddlers, therefore we care about, listen to, and meet the needs of parents too. ZERO TO THREE, with support from the Bezos Family Foundation, undertook a comprehensive research effort to go directly to parents of young children to gain a clear and in-depth understanding about different challenges they face, the help they seek, and how satisfied they are with the support and information they receive. Any effort to set young children up for success in the long term is strengthened by helping their parents put valuable brain science into action.

There are many important findings from the National Parent Survey. Our first highlight is a video showing how parents answered the questions, "How Do Your Children Learn From You?"

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Alabama: 46th in Nation for Child Well-being

Mike Cason from AL.com reports, "Alabama's national ranking on well-being of children fell to 46th in the latest annual report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

It was the second straight year for Alabama to drop in the Kids Count Data Book, which lists 16 indicators of child well-being in four areas: economic, educational, health and family and community.

Alabama had ranked 44th in 2014 and 45th in 2015."

Read more about this here and find more information in the 2016 Kids Count Data Book.

Starting Ahead is Better than Catching Up

Checkout the newest video from the Heckman Equation. More information is available at heckmanequation.org.

AL Baby Facts

Have you ever wondered how Alabama's early learning compares to other states? Here is ZERO TO THREE's Alabama Baby Facts for children ages 0 – 5 years old. Alabama is below the nationwide average for parents or family who read to their child each day, but above the nationwide average for parents or family members who sing and tell stories to their children. Our state is below the nationwide average for developmental screenings to detect developmental and behavioral problems. One in four Alabama children are at a moderate or high risk for developmental behavioral problems.

According to ZERO TO THREE, infants and toddlers are always learning whether it's in "the home, child care centers, Early Head Start, family child care homes, and family, friend, and neighbor care. High-quality care that promotes positive early learning can have lasting effects into adulthood, particularly for children who are at risk for starting school behind their peers. For more information on these programs, go to www.zerotothree.org/earlylearning."

What Is Epigenetics?

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According to KidsHealth.org, epigenetics is the idea that environmental factors (such as diet, lifestyle choices and behaviors, and stress) can change the health not only of the people who are exposed to them, but also the health of their descendants. Help Me Grow connects children and families to the services they need to ensure that children are developing with the best set of environmental factors possible. Help Me Grow is dedicated to providing parents with helpful information about healthy living that can be passed down from generation to generation. Knowing the facts about how to help children grow and develop is vital. KidsHealth.org is full of free and reliable information for children, teens, and parents about general health, growth and development, infections, diseases and much more.

Are We Asking the Proper Question?

Dr. Dworkin of the Help Me Grow National Network has written a blog post discussing the recent US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) draft of a report, Screening for Autism Spectrum Disorder in Young Children. The draft report states that it cannot presently make a recommendation either in favor of or against autism spectrum disorder screening, and calls for more research to better determine risks and benefits.

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The draft report may come as a surprise, and Dr. Dworkin acknowledges that "when insufficient research is available, the Task Force acknowledges the lack of evidence, neither recommends nor discourages the activity, and calls for more research." Dr. Dworkin supports the call for more research, and also explains why he still supports developmental screenings. Read more from Dr. Dworkin here.

Little Kids, Big Questions

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The National Center for Infants, Toddlers, and Families has developed a series of 12 podcasts titled Little Kids, Big Questions that addresses common and often challenging issues parents face when caring for their infant or toddler including picky eating, sleeping through the night, and problem behaviors. The series also highlights an infant’s amazing ability to comprehend and learn from interactions with their caregivers in the first three years of life that can influence their social-emotional development, the ability to develop self-control and self-esteem, and the development of healthy eating habits into adulthood. The podcast series is hosted by Ann Pleshette Murphy and each topic includes interviews with experts who help parents translate current research into their everyday lives. For more information and to download the podcast series, visit the ZERO TO THREE website.

Tips on Toys

The holidays are a great time to play with your child, no matter how young they are! If you’re still looking for some last-minute gift ideas, NAEYC shares a few insights with us on what makes a good toy for a young child. You might be surprised to learn that “basic is better” when it allows for a child’s imagination to take over! Of course, if you do get a young child toys, you may be confused when your baby loves the box and wrapping paper more than the toy you excitedly wrapped. Check out these insights on why babies loves boxes and other sensory items. Regardless of how big or small your gift-giving is, remember not to overthink the power of play. When children play, they learn and grow emotionally. Just “trust your own playful instincts” and enjoy your child today!

To read more about play and how it affects your child’s development, follow these links from NAEYC:
What the Research Says: Impact of Specific Toys on Play
Why do Babies Like Boxes Best?
10 Things Every Parent Should Know About Play

Myths and Measures: The Importance of Getting It Right

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Dr. Dworkin has posted on the Help Me Grow National blog, this time about making sure Help Me Grow gets its research right. He says, "The danger of asking the wrong questions and adopting the wrong outcome measures is an important consideration in our efforts to evaluate the efficacy of Help Me Grow. Our crucial task is to assure that we ask the right questions and adopt the right outcome measures for Help Me Grow as it promotes children’s healthy development." Read more here as he ties in schools and Strengthening Families.

The Magic of Everyday Moments

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ZERO TO THREE has done it again! Another great resource is available. Anyone who has a young child, knows one, or wonders about why children do what they do, should definitely check these videos out.

"The Magic of Every Moments" is a series of four videos that explore key aspects of early childhood development, including: 

Brain Wonders: Nurturing Healthy Brain Development From Birth
Literacy Skills: The Roots of Reading Start at Birth
Power of Play: Building Skills While Having Fun
Temperament: What Makes Your Child Tick?

The videos are professionally made, engaging, and just around six minutes each. Watch them and share far and wide!

Screen Sense

Check out this fantastic new resource from ZERO TO THREE regarding children and screen time!

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"Babies today are born into a world of digital devices. And parents are trying to navigate this new reality—specifically figuring out what role these new gadgets should play in the lives of their young children...

To fill this critical gap, ZERO TO THREE has developed Screen Sense: Setting the Record Straight—Research-based Guidelines for Screen Use for Children Under 3 Years Old. This new free resource, written in partnership with leading researchers in the field of media and young children, is an authoritative review of what is known about the effect of screen media on young children’s learning and development. It is designed to serve as a tool for guiding parents and professionals in making informed decisions about screen media use.

In addition to Screen Sense, there is a summary of the key findings, tips for how to use screen media with children under 3, and an infographic about 5 common misconceptions related to children and screen media."

Follow the link to download these tools and share!

Infant Healthy Development & Nurturing Relationships

We all know infants need parents, but what impact do caregivers have on social and emotional health? Check out this post from Too Small to Fail on infant mental health:

“When a baby cries for attention or smiles for the first time, he is communicating with the people around him so that they can help him meet his physical and emotional needs. But how his parents respond to those early communication attempts—as well as the security he feels from these early interactions—will help shape his mental health and social skills for years to come…”

Also, watch “Connecting with Babies: The Power of Parent/Child Interaction” here.

Early Childhood Mental Health: We Must Address the Most Vulnerable Population Now

This month's FOCUS from the Alabama Partnership for Children is mental health. When most people think of mental health they don’t think about babies, toddlers and preschoolers, but infant and early childhood mental health (ECMH) is an important topic we need to be discussing. 

ECMH is defined by Zero to Three as healthy social and emotional development of children 0-3 years. It includes the ability to: experience, regulate and express emotions, form close and secure interpersonal relationships, and explore the environment and learn.

Addressing early social-emotional development through prevention and early intervention is important to a child’s future mental health and well-being. According to Dr. Jack Shonkoff of Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child, “nurturing and responsive interactions build healthy brain architecture that provides a strong foundation for later learning, behavior, and health.” When positive relationships and interactions are missing due to circumstances such as extreme poverty in conjunction with continuous family chaos, physical or emotional abuse, chronic neglect, severe maternal depression, substance abuse, or family/community violence, there is interference in the way the brain’s neural circuits mature and form. This affects the brain’s stress management systems, which in turn often leads to difficulties in school, relationships, jobs, and may lead to criminal activities.

To address ECMH, we should build and strengthen communities and homes that promote and facilitate:

• Nurturing/protective relationships 
• Extended family support
• Access to resources/learning 
• Neighborhood safety
• Early learning opportunities/vocabulary
• Parent training and support
• Quality child care
• Health care (including early screenings)

We already have systems, agencies, and initiatives, such as Help Me Grow and others, in place to address child development and family support. By being attentive to social/emotional development in infants and young children just as we are to speech and motor development, and by being vigilant in our efforts to support the child’s relationships and environments, we can give our youngest, most vulnerable children a better chance to grow up emotionally healthy.

-Jane Duer, Early Intervention Coordinator

Alabama Department of Mental Health

10 Things to Know about the New Autism Data

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You might remember from the beginning of the month that April is Autism Awareness Month and there is new data from the CDC's Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network which shows that the estimated number of children identified with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) continues to rise. The following are based on information collected from health and special education records of children who were 8 years old in 11 states in 2010:

1. About 1 in 68 children were identified with ASD. 
2. This new estimate is roughly 30% higher than the estimate for 2008, roughly 60% higher than the estimate for 2006, and roughly 120% higher than the estimates for 2002 and 2000. We don't know what is causing this increase. Some of it may be due to the way children are identified, diagnosed, and served in their local communities.
3. The number of children identified with ASD varied widely by community, from 1 in 175 children in areas of Alabama to 1 in 45 children in areas of New Jersey.
4. Almost half (46%) of children identified with ASD had average or above average intellectual ability.
5. Boys were almost 5 times more likely to be identified with ASD than girls. 
6. White children were more likely to be identified with ASD than black or Hispanic children. 
7. Less than half (44%) of children identified with ASD were evaluated for developmental concerns by the time they were 3 years old.
8. Most children identified with ASD were not diagnosed until after age 4, even though children can be diagnosed as early as age 2.
9. Black and Hispanic children identified with ASD were more likely than white children to have an intellectual disability. 
10. About 80% of children identified with ASD either received special education services for autism at school or had an ASD diagnosis from a clinician. The remaining 20% of children had symptoms of ASD documented, but had not yet been classified by a professional in a school or clinic.

Check out the full report and get more information here.

Register for the Alabama Public Health Training Network's upcoming satellite conference and live webcast, "Developing Alabama's System of Services and Resources for Children With Autism: Lessons Learned and Taught." This program will be broadcast on Wednesday, May 7, 2014; 12:00-1:30 p.m. (Central Time). To see the conference flyer for this program click here (pdf). To register for this program click here.

What's in a Nap?

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Child care providers and parents know that naps are an essential part of a young child’s life. However, there isn’t a huge body of research available to back that up. Recently the National Institutes of Health conducted a study that shows naps reboot energy and aid healthy development. In a preschool classrooms study, taking a nap helped with memory and supported learning. These results may help educators make informed decisions about naps.

Research was done on forty preschoolers by Dr. Rebecca Spencer and her team on exploring the relationship between early childhood naps and memory formation. The researchers taught the preschoolers a game called Memory. The objective of the game was for them to learn and remember 9 or 12 cartoons located on a grid. During the research, the children either took a nap or were kept awake. Researchers found that the children who took a nap recalled 10% more of the cartoon images and children who regularly took naps saw the most benefit.

So, not only do naps help young children’s health, but also with their learning. This study affirms that routine and the opportunity for rest is crucial for healthy early childhood development.

For more information on the study, follow this link.

Comprehensive Screening - "The Earlier the Better"

Age-appropriate developmental screening and surveillance is a gateway for at risk children to receive services. “The Earlier the Better” is a recent report from the Child Health and Development Institute of Connecticut which highlights the role of screening as part of a comprehensive approach to school readiness. In the report, we are reminded that identification of delay and subsequent intervention prior to kindergarten saves society between $30,000 and $100,000 per child in academic and social service costs. The report reasserts our understanding that parents are their child’s best caregivers, and that parents are effective and reliable when administering developmental assessments. The authors recommend that all children are screened within an integrated system, screening results are available across services, children are connected to services they need, and all involved providers are engaged in developmental promotion in partnership with families.

Visit http://www.chdi.org/devscreen-IMPACT for the full report and learn what strategies are being implemented in Connecticut.

Plan for the Future to Have a Future

This 5-minute video depicts a theory of change from Frontiers of Innovation for achieving breakthrough outcomes for vulnerable children and families. It describes the need to focus on building the capabilities of caregivers and strengthening the communities that together form the environment of relationships essential to children's lifelong learning, health, and behavior.

HMG National: Importance of Research

For those of you out there who are interested in the research behind Help Me Grow's model, you should definitely read HMG Founder Dr. Dworkin's latest blog post. He describes the importance not just of collecting data, but analyzing and presenting it in a way that is useful for discussion about policy formation and implementation. Visit his blog and learn more about why we do things the way we do them.

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Social Needs are as Important as Medical

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation published a report that supports the idea behind last week’s post. We discussed that poor health outcomes are often not solely rooted in poor health inputs, but that there are frequently social influences which heavily impact wellness. In “Health Care’s Blind Side” it becomes clear that physicians frequently encounter health problems that are caused by unmet social needs. In a survey of 1,000 American physicians:

- 85% say unmet social needs are directly leading to worse health
- 85% say patients’ social needs are as important to address as their medical conditions
- 80% say they are not confident in their capacity to address their patients’ social needs

The physicians reported that if they had the power to write prescriptions to address social needs, such prescriptions would represent 1 out of every 7 they write. This study clearly illustrates that we cannot fix America’s overwhelming health concerns such as obesity, heart disease, respiratory disease, and diabetes without also addressing social concerns that play a factor.

Health Care’s Blind Side demonstrates why programs like Help Me Grow can be vitally important to bridging the gap between health concerns and social needs. A Help Me Grow care coordinator can spend time identifying a child’s physical needs and make appropriate referrals, and can also get an idea of a family’s possible social needs and help make connections to relevant services. While a Help Me Grow care coordinator’s priority is to address a child’s needs, we know that typically cannot be accomplished separate from the needs of the family. Help Me Grow and other partners are working to progressively address concerns of the health care system’s blind side.

Adverse Childhood Experiences

Early childhood obesity has been and continues to be an important issue (see our recent posts). We’ve received feedback that while improving nutrition and activity in children and adults is part of the solution, it may not be all there is to it. No one would argue that it’s easy to change a person’s lifestyle, but evidence points to the fact that we need to start earlier to better prevent obesity.

The CDC’s Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study started in 1995 with 17,000 participants and these individuals continue to be studied over time. The study asked individuals about their childhood experiences and analyzed their health. Adverse Childhood Experiences include child abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction. Ten different subcategories of traumatic stressors were identified and the results demonstrated that as an individual’s number of ACE increased, their risk for numerous health and lifestyle problems increased. One of the health problems that correlated with ACE is obesity.

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The ACE Study shows us that while we’re sending messages to parents, community leaders, politicians, and health care providers to get moving and eat well, we must also consider the very basics of family life. Our anti-obesity measures and overall health strategies need to include ways to strengthen families and nurture very young children. No social or health problem is isolated, and we must consider the entire family if we wish to grow young children into healthy adults.