Essential Questions

Why does age matter?
According to Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, the authors of Nurture Shock, the conventional wisdom has been that in a given grade, the older children score better than younger students. As a result as many as one in five parents "redshirt" their children in kindergarten by waiting to enroll them so that they will be the eldest in the class rather than the youngest.

Family, not age, is what matters
According to UC Santa Barbara’s Kathy Bedard and Elizabeth Dhuey, "the oldest kids in eighth grade in the U.S. were ranking 4 to 8 percent higher than the youngest children in that grade." However Bronson and Merryman point to the work of scholars from the National Bureau of Economic Research, Kasey Buckley and Daniel M. Hungerman, who discovered slight differences in the seasons of the year that poor women and wealthy women give birth. Bronson and Merryman conclude:

So it turns out those fourth and eighth graders aren’t doing better just because they’re a few months older. They’re doing better because more of them are born to mothers who are affluent, college-educated, married, and white.

Combined, the seasonal birth pattern explains at least half the achievement gap between the oldest and youngest kids in class. That 4-point advantage is more like a 2-point advantage. (Should Children Redshirt Kindergarten?)

The Nurture Shock authors further cite researchers Todd Elder and Darren H. Lubotsky who "found the driving variable wasn’t how old the kids were, but how prepared the kids were by their preschool, day care, and home environment. The better-prepared kids learned more."

The Bottom Line
What does all of this mean in a single sentence? How well a child performs in school depends on the family into which she was born and how well her parents prepare her for life-long learning. Is it possible that we should spend less time poring over research, and more time talking, reading, exploring, and playing games with our kids?

Three approaches to parenting
In a thoughtful article in the Los Angeles Times, Dale Russakoff presents a parable told by Phyllis Hunter, former director of reading for Houston's public schools.

Hunter's first mother wheels her shopping cart down the produce aisle of a supermarket, where her kindergartner spots an eggplant and asks what it is. The mother shushes her child, ignoring the question. The second mother, faced with the same question, responds curtly, "That's an eggplant, but we don't eat it."

The third mother seizes the moment: "That's an eggplant," she says enthusiastically. "It's one of the few purple vegetables." She picks it up and encourages her child to put it on the scale. "Oh, look, it's about two pounds!" she says. "And it costs $1.99 a pound. Let's round it to $2. That would cost just about $4. That's a bit pricey, but you like veal Parmesan, and eggplant Parmesan is delicious too. You'll love it. Let's buy one, take it home, cut it open. We'll make a dish together."

Russakoff concludes, "Hunter's parable makes clear why an attentive, engaged parent is one of life's greatest academic advantages." The trouble, Russakoff argues, is that although there is widespread agreement of the power of families' influence, it is difficult to find intervention strategies that work with the families that need it most.

Why is it so hard?
If you walk through a grocery store, it is easy to spot the three types of parents Hunter identifies. Not without reason, interventions have focused on encouraging the behaviors exhibited by the third mother because they are so beneficial to her children. The trouble with focusing on the behaviors is that they cannot be separated from an entire way of seeing the world. The attentive mother engages her children because she sees her role as important and her children as responsive to her direction. 


What is needed?
The pressing question is not how to get certain parents to change their behavior. The pressing question is how to precipitate a paradigm shift - a new vision - that undergirds nurturing action. How can you help parents to see that they play the most important role in the nurture and education of their children? How do you help them to see that they are not only influential, but responsible for the nurture and education of their children? Only when these questions are answered will there be meaningful change in parent engagement.

If having loving parents constitutes opportunity . . .
Parents create opportunities and advantages for their children by the conversations they have, the questions they ask, the books they read, and the heroes they extol. Growing up in a home full of love and language is an advantage in every way - regardless of what other resources are scarce. It is the absence of appropriate affection and meaningful two-way conversations which is disadvantage.

Then parents' values and actions define disadvantage
James Heckman won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on the economics of early education. In treating the question of disadvantage, he writes:

"The returns to early childhood programs are the highest for disadvantaged children who do not receive substantial amounts of parental investment in the early years. The proper measure of disadvantage is not necessarily family poverty or parental education. The available evidence suggests that the quality of parenting is the important scarce resource. The quality of parenting is not always closely linked to family income or parental education." (The Case for Investing in Disadvantaged Young Children, emphasis mine)

This is a world-renowned economist saying that parental education and family poverty are not the proper measure of disadvantage; in fact, they may not always be closely linked to quality parenting. Why? Because even minimal education and modest means, parents can provide a loving, language-rich environment. Conversely, parents may have education and wealth and yet fail to invest time in loving and talking with their children. "The quality of parenting is the important scarce resource."

Is this good news or bad news?
States and schools are scrounging and begging for money to run their programs these days. They feel that their resources are few. The bad news is they have bigger problems than monetary resources. Quality of parenting is the important scarce resource, not money. 

However, there is good news. If parenting quality, an intangible, is the important scarce resource, then it may be addressed with modest financial resources, and deliver a tremendous "bang for the buck." The parents who presently are the cause of disadvantage can become the source of opportunity and advantage for their children and their community. 

Drawing a line
There exists a powerful logical progression from parent involvement to social opportunity. 
In fact, parent involvement is the single best predictor of academic achievement. Academic achievement is, in turn, one of the best predictors of social opportunity. How many high-school drop outs have opportunities to create and perform meaningful work - as compared to high school graduates, college graduates, or those with advanced degrees?

So what constitutes educational opportunity?
Having parents who love you and love learning is educational opportunity. The crucial elements of early learning are love and language. Parents who talk with their children (not just correcting and directing, but engaging in dialogue) and provide verbal and non-verbal affirmation lay a solid foundation for a life of learning. 

What about schools!?
Someone will surely say, "Yes, but schools are important too!" and there is no question that they are. So the question is: Who chooses where to send children to school? And the answer, quite obviously, is parents. Parents choose among private, parochial, charter, public and home schooling. In fact, many parents choose where to live based on the local educational opportunities available to their children. 

Parents who love learning make sacrifices
Parents who cherish learning often make many sacrifices for the sake of education. Some live in a small house in order to be in a neighborhood with good public schools. Others invest time every day in a long commute to bring their children to an excellent school. Still others invest the times and lives in home schooling. And many parents are willing to pay for education in private or parochial schools.

Parents are the key
This is why having parents who love you and love learning is educational opportunity. It matters more than income or parental education. Not only do they cultivate a love for learning in daily family interactions; they also choose and support formal educational opportunities that set a trajectory of learning. They both complement and supplement learning that happens in school. If you want to affect the most powerful context of education, you need to look to the home and then the schools.

Journey to the end of the world
Near the end of C.S. Lewis' great adventure The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the crew of the small Narnian ship bound for "the end of the world" encounters a crisis of leadership. Many of the ship's sailors are tempted to stay on a comfortable island rather than complete their quest to sail to the end of the world.

"At this point [King] Caspian jumped to his feet. 'Friends,' he said, 'I think that you have not quite understood our purpose. You talk as if we had come to you with our hat in our hand, begging for shipmates. It isn't like that at all. We and our royal brother and sister and their kinsman and Sir Reepicheep, the good knight, and the Lord Drinian have an errand to the world's edge. It is our pleasure to choose from among such as are willing those whom we deem worthy of so high an enterprise. We have not said that any can come for the asking. That is why we shall now command the Lord Drinian and Master Rhince to consider carefully what men among you are the hardest in battle, the most skilled seamen, the purest in blood, the most loyal to our person, and the cleanest in life and manners; and to give their names to us in a schedule.'" (p181)

Parenting "isn't like that at all"
Although it may feel at times that parenting is the business of begging our children to behave, it isn't like that at all. It is, on the contrary, doing precisely what King Caspian did by clarifying a great vision, inspiring allegiance, and raising expectations. If we feel that we are simple bound to bring our bedraggled entourage of children with us through life, that is exactly what it will be - a pitiful and bedraggled entourage. Great literature - like the Chronicles of Narnia, fulfill exactly that role. It is difficult to read the Voyage of the Dawn Treader without feeling inspired by Reepicheep's valor - and quite ashamed of my own cowardice. I defy anyone to read Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series, without being inspired by the tenacity, creativity, and resilience of her pioneering family.  

The role of great children's literature
Great literature enables us to lead. It commends virtue and honor in a way that no amount of nagging ever has or will. Yet it is not only for our children's sake; it does the same thing to us! There are a very few people who are born leaders, who can cast vision and inspire contribution without any assistance. For the rest of us, there are tomes of fantastic literature that can lead us there - and enable us to inspire our children.

Why is it that parents play such an important role in education? The following summary of research captures the answer in three areas:

Brain Development

1. A child's brain grows from 25 to 90% of its adult size from birth to age 5; and that growth is activity dependent.
2. Impoverished children (who have fewer books, conversations and opportunities) are more likely to have stunted growth of the prefrontal cortex, which is critical for creativity and problem-solving.
   
3. Kindergarten readiness is the most reliable predictor of third grade achievement.
4. A significant achievement gap exists before children enter kindergarten.

Parenting

1. Parent involvement is the single most accurate predictor of student performance.
2. Parent involvement is associated with higher student achievement - across various measures, and across ethnic groups.
3. Good parenting lays the foundation for later school achievement, economic productivity, responsible citizenship, and successful parenting.

Engagement&Intervention

1. A child's experience of language matters more than socio-economic status, race, or anything else.
2. Discipline and hard work matter more than "intelligence" in student achievement.
3. Early intervention saves $4-$7 (some argue up to $17) for every $1 spent  in early diagnosis and treatment.

Children need a loving, nurturing home environment in order to develop in healthy ways. The absence or neglect of that support can damage a child's ability to learn in school and beyond.

We live in an age of information overload. The problem is not that we don't have information, but that we need reliable guides to help us understand and apply it.

Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University
Harvard University, one of the most prestigious research universities in the world, has established the Center on the Developing Child to address precisely this need. In their policy framework document, they summarize the current situation:

For the first time, researchers are now able to present a unified framework that can guide priorities for science-based early childhood policies and practices that are grounded in a combination of cutting-edge neuroscience, developmental-behavioral research, and program evaluation. Drawing on the best and most widely accepted evidence from all of these fields of study, we can confidently articulate the following findings.

Early experiences determine whether a child’s developing brain architecture provides a strong or weak foundation for all future learning, behavior, and health.

Building Strong Foundations
It is not difficult to conclude from this research work that parents play the most important role in society. In the same framework document, the researchers note:

Because brain architecture and skills are built continuously over time, policies that promote healthy development throughout the early years create a foundation for later school achievement, economic productivity, responsible citizenship, and successful parenting.

Those early years build the foundation for virtually every sphere of civic life. And while the wording of the document is clearly focused on policy, it is significant to note that parents, not policy makers, wield the most influence in the nurture of children. Policy, when well designed and implemented, simply engages and empowers parents to fill their critical role.

If you ever feel that by parenting, you're not doing something "important," you're wrong. You are laying the foundation for ALL future learning, behavior and health.

There are are two ways to preserve and build capital. One is to invest in something that is growing; the other is to do something that reduces your future costs. Investing in early childhood is one of those magnificent investments that accomplishes both.

Chicago Parent-Child Centers
One of the most powerful studies that demonstrated the power of investing in quality early education is highlighted by The Ounce of Prevention Fund.

"Conducted by Dr. Arthur Reynolds of the University of Wisconsin, this study followed 989 students enrolled in the Chicago Parent-Child Centers until the children reached eighth grade, and a comparison group of 550 children who did not participate in the program. The study shows that young children who receive high-quality early education do better in school academically, are less likely to drop out of high school, less likely to be arrested, and less likely to repeat grades or be placed in special education services. What's more, the study shows that, in addition to the program participants’ increased earnings capacity, society saves over $7 for every $1 invested in preschool."

Two Kinds of Returns
Just as there are two ways to preserve and build capital, there are also two ways to measure returns. The first is the quantitative: the money we can count, the GPA, graduation rate, incarceration rate, etc. In each of those areas, early investment shows a tremendous return. However, there is also a qualitative return on investment that is often overlooked. These children are real people who have families, dreams and feelings. An enormously important part of early education is nurturing the most essential of all relationships with parents, fostering healthy relationships with others, and good, purposeful dreams. Quantitative measurement is important, and early education shows outstanding returns. However, when you invest in a children and their families, you are not just putting money in the bank. You are investing in something that is growing - people, who have far greater contributions to make to their families and communities than can be measured in numbers.

Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund, made a powerful statement this week that has significant consequences for education and society:

"Parents are their children's most important teachers and mentors, and they bear primary responsibility for nurturing their sons and daughters while keeping them safe. Yet parenting is one of the most undervalued and least prepared for roles in America." (emphasis added)

Primary Responsibility

Being responsible means being answerable for the thing with which you are charged. That parents bear primary responsibility for the nurture and health of the children means that they are answerable for using the tangible and intangible resources at their disposal to nurture their children. The two most critical factors for the healthy development of a child are love and language. In the presence of appropriate parental affection, and the respectful, loving use of words, children develop normally (unless there is an underlying disability, in which case love and language are even more important).

Most Undervalued Role in America

Parents play the most important role in any society. Period. They have greater influence over the character, competence, creativity and health of their children than anyone else. Failing to recognize this fact is to undervalue the role of parents, and as Edelman rightly notes, parenting is the most undervalued role in America.

That has two consequences. First, it means that we as a society don't hold parents responsible. We hold schools responsible for the behavior and education of children rather than those who 'bear the primary responsibility.' Second, it means that we don't support parents in their critical role. (Happily, there are excellent exceptions to this generalization, including Parents as Teachers.) Instead, we look for ways to shift the responsibility of parents to programs and institutions. Yet however well a program can perform, it cannot replace a child's most important relationship: the relationship with her parents.

Moving toward responsibility

Parents bear the primary responsibility for the nurture and health of their children. The decisions that we make have far-reaching consequences for the character, competence, creativity and health of our children. To fulfill that responsibility, we need wisdom. We need good information, and we need to use it wisely. If we are wise, we will not only use that information not only for ourselves, but for other parents, which is precisely how the network of support and accountability can and should function. And finally, we need to be prepared to give an answer for our parenting. Apart from this, the word 'responsibility' has no meaning.

In Whatever It Takes, Paul Tough asked many difficult questions like, "Why are some people poor?" and "Why do they stay poor?" In his research, the role of parents plays a prominent role in the explanation of cycles of poverty. He writes:

"The middle class families [Annette Lareau] observed followed a strategy that she called 'concerted cultivation.' The parents in these families considered a child's development to be a parent's responsibility, and so they planned and scheduled countless activities to enhance that development - piano lessons, soccer games, trips to the museums. They engaged their children in conversation as equals, treating them like apprentice adults, and encouraged them to ask questions and challenge assumptions and negotiate rules. They taught them how to navigate institutions and get what they needed from professionals like doctors and teachers." (p49)

Why does concerted cultivation matter?
Perhaps the most important word in Lareau's analysis is the word "responsibility." There are two premises that underlie the idea of responsibility. First is that actions have consequences. (Although that may seem painfully obvious, it needs to be stated.) Second, is that nurture matters. If either of these are not true, then "responsibility" in the sense that Lareau is using it is meaningless.

Actions Have Consequences
It is utterly essential that parents understand that they play the most important role in their child's life. Parents' actions have consequences for themselves and their children. The parent who chooses to turn off the television in order to sit on the floor and build a tower with his child is nurturing a relationship that will last a lifetime. The parent who sets a routine of reading children's literature together before bed demonstrates a value for stories, imagination and meaning that is contagious. Parents' actions - particularly the daily repeated actions - have consequences.

Nurture Matters
What parents have known intuitively for generations, science is now confirming. A recent study found that "kids from lower socioeconomic levels show brain physiology patterns similar to someone who actually had damage in the frontal lobe as an adult." In other words, where parents provide loving nurture, the brain develops in normal and healthy ways. Where loving nurture is lacking, brain growth can be stunted. More than that, in the absence of loving nurture, relationships are impoverished - regardless of income level.

Opportunity and Practice
The consequences of concerted cultivation are not surprising. How many people have been able to play a Bach concerto the first time they sat at a piano? How many children have ridden a two-wheeler on their first attempt? Virtually every skill depends on opportunity and practice. Concerted cultivation is intentionally providing age-appopriate opportunities to try new activities, and providing the opportunity for practice. When parents consider their children's development to be their responsibility to nurture, providing these opportunities is both natural and fun.

Considering the consequences of concerted cultivation, the pressing question is: How do we persuade parents of all social strata that nurturing their children is their responsibility?

If you want to solve a problem, you need to begin with the right questions. With respect to education, one of the most essential questions is:
What is the most accurate predictor of student achievement?
If it can be identified, and can be influenced, then you can begin to focus on truly transformational solutions. So what is the most accurate predictor of student achievement? According to a report covering 66 studies, reviews, reports, analyses, and books:

"[T]he most accurate predictor of student achievement is the extent to which the family is involved in his or her education."

Family involvement can be influenced, which opens the door wide to real educational change - starting with families.

Are you concerned about social justice? Are you concerned by the "achievement gap"? If you are, then a recent study in brain research may help focus the way forward. Researchers at the University of California Berkeley found detectable differences between low- and higher-income kids in the response of the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that is critical for problem solving and creativity.

"Kids from lower socioeconomic levels show brain physiology patterns similar to someone who actually had damage in the frontal lobe as an adult," said Robert Knight, director of the institute and a UC Berkeley professor of psychology. "We found that kids are more likely to have a low response if they have low socioeconomic status, though not everyone who is poor has low frontal lobe response."

That means that poverty itself cannot be the only issue. There are variables within low income groups that affect brain development.

"This is a wake-up call," Knight said. "It's not just that these kids are poor and more likely to have health problems, but they might actually not be getting full brain development from the stressful and relatively impoverished environment associated with low socioeconomic status: fewer books, less reading, fewer games, fewer visits to museums."

The "impoverishment" is strongly related to language use, problem solving and creativity. That means that the answers are not far away:

"In work that we and others have done, it really looks like something as simple and easily done as talking to your kids" can boost prefrontal cortex performance, [study co-author W. Thomas] Boyce said. . . . "[C]hanging developmental outcomes might involve something as accessible as helping parents to understand that it is important that kids sit down to dinner with their parents, and that over the course of that dinner it would be good for there to be a conversation. . ."

Silvia Bunge, UC Berkeley assistant professor of psychology reflected, "The study is suggestive and a little bit frightening that environmental conditions have such a strong impact on brain development." It may be frightening, or it may be exciting. Since environmental conditions have such a strong impact on brain development, it means that the way to address the roots of educational inequity and poverty is to inform, engage and empower parents. Parents really do matter. The nurture that they provide, particularly during the first five years does have a significant influence on their children's brain development - and therefore on education and social opportunity. The question now is: Do we have the courage to change?

Perhaps more than any author to date, Paul Tough has brought together early childhood research and educational reform history in a way that is accessible for those who are not experts in either of those two fields. Surveying the history of education reform in its primary contours, Tough notes that the Equality of Educational Opportunity report (which came to be known as the Coleman Report, for its lead author, sociologist James S. Coleman), though mandated to demonstrate that educational opportunities in the United States were racially unequal, arrived at further conclusions.

"Coleman and his coauthors determined that a school's financial resources were not the main contributing factor to a child's educational success. It was the child's family background, they said, that made the more significant difference." (Whatever it Takes)

This finding is both common sense, and a political hot potato. Of course the child's family background matters. If you look at a group of families from the same income group, some with a strong value for education and others without, whose children would you expect to excel in school? Not surprisingly, Tough notes that the Coleman report was "greeted mostly with silence or dismissals." Who wants to deal with that hot potato?

An African-American friend who lived through the Civil Rights movement, and attended an educational equity conference with me (and one of the authors of the Coleman Report, Dr. Edward Gordon) pointed out the dynamic that makes this issue so potent. He said, "If parents don't lead, then environment takes over. For the white kids in suburban schools, if their parents are deadbeats, the strong educational environment may sweep them along with the tide. For black kids in urban centers, if their parents aren't involved, their environment is only going to make things worse."

That is why the Coleman Report could be valid in its findings, while not being racist or denying the continuing educational inequities. Funding, while important, was not the main factor. The main factor was the family and the environment in which the family lived. In that respect the findings of the Coleman Report remain both valid and important for addressing the ongoing educational crisis. Do funding inequities continue? Yes. Are they important? Yes. Should they be remedied? Yes. Are they the most important factor? No.

So when are we going to set our eyes on engaging and inspiring parents?

Educators and policymakers throughout the nation are deeply concerned about the achievement gap between white students and their minority counterparts (which in fact falls more along class lines than race/ethnicity lines). In a paper to be presented at the Campaign for Educational Equity Symposium, three education researchers point to a paradigm change:

The achievement gap is present before children enter school. Thus, school interventions are necessarily compensatory – catch-up efforts to offset pre-existing inadequacy. An alternative, and more effective approach would be to prevent the achievement gap from emerging in such magnitude in the first place.

That means starting early, and empowering parents to provide the supportive learning environment of early childhood that enables children to thrive in school. The authors cite Nobel Laureate James Heckman's work on the economics of early learning:

"[S]kills beget skills, success breeds success, and the provision of positive experiences early in life is considerably less expensive and more effective than the cost and effectiveness of corrective intervention at a later age."

Success begins with parents. Informed, engage parents can provide the loving, supportive environment that begets skills, breeds success, and shapes a child's experiences in the education system.

For educators and policy makers, the essential question is: How do we inform, engage and empower parents from birth?

Parents have choice

School choice is important - and so is every other decision that parents make with regard to the education of their children. The real question is: Do parents value learning in all their choices, and not merely in their choice of schools?

In Whatever it Takes, biographer Paul Tough examines a number of perplexing questions: "Why are poor people poor? And by extension: Why do they stay poor? And what would it take for them to get out of poverty?" The answers that he found through research and experience in the Harlem Children's Zone make a powerful case for the importance of parents, and particularly the way they use language in the home. In one study he found the following:

"[Betty] Hart and [Todd] Risley were able to demonstrate strong correlations between the amount and kind of language that children heard in infancy and their IQs and abilities in later childhood. They found that a child's experience of language mattered more than socio-economic status, more than race, more than anything else they measured." (p43, emphasis mine)

Clearly, then, language is the key in all social groups. It molds the way a child experiences and understands the world.

Early Language Influence

What are the the keys to early language development?

• Affirmation: Positive speech encourages children to try, to take appropriate risks, and to build trusting relationships.
  
• Questions: Asking questions and encouraging questions cultivates curiosity, creativity and new ways of understanding the world.
• Dialogue: Language is more meaningful in conversation than in monologue. Children learn to be active participants in learning by being real partners in conversation.

With such tremendous influence, why not nurture those three patterns of speech?

Policy makers and activists agree that we want to create a world-class educational system. And almost all of them agree that we're not there yet. So the question is: How do you build a world-class education system?

Planting a Forest

Building an education system is like planting a forest. It starts small, requires personal attention and care, and grows slowly. In reforestation efforts, planters don't simply scatter seeds in areas where they have cleared the land; instead they transplant sapplings that were cultivated in a nursery so that they would survive and thrive in a new forest. The early nursery period is absolutely critical for the success of replanting a forest.

Building the Nursery

The purpose of a nursery for trees is to provide the ideal conditions for growth. In the wilderness, the same seed may - or may not - germinate and thrive. In the nursery, botanists provide the necessary conditions for germination, growth and flourishing. When the tree is well-established in the nursery, it is ready to transplant. The home functions as the "nursery" for a world-class educational system. If parents provide in the home the ideal conditions for growth in the critical early years, then a child can flourish in a variety of social and educational settings. The ideal conditions for child development or for nurturing trees, do not happen by accident. They are the result of purposeful, diligent care.

Forests grow slowly

While young trees show measurable growth every year, they don't become a forest overnight - or even in a decade. Planting a forest necessitates taking a long view. There simply are no shortcuts to a forest, and particularly hardwood forests. The same is true of a great educational system. There will be measurable growth every year, but a truly great system will take effort, time, and perseverance.

If we want a world-class educational system, now is the time to cultivate the "nursery" of the home.

If you want to understand a cultural artifact, like a book or a web service, asking the right questions will help you get started.

What does this cultural artifact assume about the way the world is?

At tumblon, we assume that parents play the most important role in society because they exert responsibility and authority in the most powerful unit of culture: the family. We believe that parents set the horizons of possibility and impossibility for their children by the books they read together, the experiences they share, and the expectations that they communicate and enforce. For example, for my daughter, it is possible to learn about places far from our home because we read together; and it is impossible to leave the dinner table without saying, "May I please be excused?". This is true precisely because my wife and I exert responsibility and authority.

We also assume that parents have the greatest influence in creating family culture during the early years of their children's lives. The routines and rules parents establish in early childhood set the tone and trajectory of family life. Furthermore, since most of a child's brain growth happens before age 5, parents' influence on their children in those early years has a profound effect on every area of their development, and their future abilities.

What does this cultural artifact assume about the way the world should be?

We assume that the family should be the context in which loving, responsible, reciprocal relationships are nurtured. In these relationships character is formed, competence is developed, creativity is cultivated and collaboration flourishes. In the words of Lesslie Newbigin:

"Human beings find fulfillment not in the attempt to develop themselves, not in the effort to better their own condition, not in the untrammeled exercise of unlimited covetousness, but in the experience of mutual relatedness and responsibility in serving a shared goal."

The purpose of informing, inspiring and engaging parents is not to create a super-economy (or a race of child geniuses), but to invite families to experience the joy of mutual relatedness and responsibility in serving a shared goal. The character, competence, creativity and collaboration that parents cultivate in the context of the family enrich the experience of family life, and the family's contribution to the wider community.

Is it true?

Of course, the question that should permeate all other questions is, "Is it true?" that is, "Does it fit with reality?" Do our assumptions (or yours, or whatever is being considered) fit with the way things really are? Is this the way the world in fact is? Does this vision of the way the world should be resonate deeply with what it means to be human?

Jim Goodnight, the CEO of SAS, cares about education. He has invested in education by "developing teaching and school administration courseware, helping seed schools with computers and other interactive learning tools, starting a prep school that ingrains those tools, and pushing for education reforms at the state and national levels," as noted in Information Week. Goodnight, like others, recognizes the perils of an unqualified workforce.  The real question is: Are there even more strategic places to put the weight, wisdom and investment of heavy hitters like Goodnight?

Paradigm shift in education reform

It is time for the education debate to shift. For too long it has focused nearly exclusively on better teachers and more resources. In fact, it would be hard to do more here than has been done. Teach for America recruits top graduates from Ivy League schools - arguably some of the brightest, most motivated and best connected graduates in the world - to work in neediest schools, but struggles with retention. The funding picture is even more dramatic:

Since 1985, real fed­eral spending on K–12 education has increased by 138 percent. On a per-student basis, federal spending on K–12 education has tripled since 1970. Yet, long-term measures of American stu­dents' academic achievement have not seen similar increases. (Heritage Foundation)

Quality teachers and funding are important, but they aren't the whole story.

The Parenting Paradigm

It is hard to find an investment that has a better ROI than helping parents to understand and engage their children during early childhood: $4 to $7 in savings for each $1 spent. Why is that investment so effective? The reasons are numerous:

• Cultural: Parents set the horizons of possibility for their children by the opportunities and encouragement they provide.
  
• Scientific: The vast majority of brain growth occurs before a child's fifth birthday, and is activity dependent. Parent engagement predicts a child's intelligence test scores and verbal ability, as well as social development and school performance.
• Public health: Parents set the trajectory of a child's health through nutrition habits, oral hygiene, and activity levels.
• Sociological: Children who are diagnosed for delays and receive early intervention before age 3 have dramatically better outcomes than those who are diagnosed and treated later.
• Societal: When parents take responsibility for nurture from birth, they become partners in education throughout the educational process.

Business Investment

So, if I could bend Jim Goodnight's ear, what would I say? I applaud your investment in education, and your commitment to reform. So why not look for creative ways to engage and inspire parents of young children? Why not look for paradigm-shifting movements like the Harlem Children's Zone, that start from birth (and have outstanding metrics)? Why not look for ways to leverage technology like tumblon to inform and inspire the parents who stand to gain the most from it? Why not look for creative ways to use existing infrastructure like computer labs in schools, libraries and community centers to foster early childhood parenting? Instead of moving the chairs around the room, why not knock out the walls?

In tight economic times, it is wise to ask where tax money is best spent. What investments have the greatest return on investment (ROI)? In a presentation at the University of Delaware, Audrey Noble, professor of education and director of the University of Delaware Education Research and Development Center made this compelling claim:

“Early education is one of the best investments we can make. Each dollar spent on early education saves society about $4 to $7 down the road in other costs, such as incarceration and Medicaid.” (UDaily)

The savings are not limited to incarceration and Medicaid. Early intervention for developmental delays that occurs before a child's third birthday can dramatically influence the extent - or even need for - special education in the school years. Consequently, the social benefits for children who receive early intervention can be even greater than the cost savings.

Since this conference was directed at policy decisions, it was considering governmental expenditures and savings. However, the benefits to parents are similar. Time (and sometimes money) invested in understanding and nurturing healthy development during those critical first years has a better ROI than almost any other investment you can find.

So, if you could spend $1 that would save you $4 to $7 in the future, would you do it? If you could invest a few minutes a week in understanding your child's development to provide appropriate engagement, would you do it?

If you want to create social change, set your eyes on the family. Why? Andy Crouch captures it brilliantly:

"A basic unit of culture is the family, where we first begin making something of the world. . . It can take us decades to appreciate all the ways in which the culture of our families set our horizons of the possible and the impossible. Until we leave our families and venture into the homes of our neighbors and friends, or perhaps the family home of a future spouse, we are likely not even to realize all the ways that our family sets our horizons. . . . Family is culture at its smallest - and its most powerful." (Culture Making)

Family is culture at its most powerful because parents have such tremendous responsibility - and authority - to set the "horizons of the possible and the impossible."

What can parents make possible?

Parents can make dreaming, creating, building, inventing, listening, and helping possible. They can make achievement, encouragement, and opportunity possible. By the same power they can make laziness, disrespect, lying, littering, and destroying possible. They can make possible the degradation of human society.

What can parents make impossible?

Parents can make it impossible to say you're sorry with a sassy attitude, to do a half-way job, to treat grades as a sufficient measure of learning, or to leave the house without making your bed. They can make it impossible to get away with disrespecting your elders, or to enjoy the benefits of family without the responsibility. However, they can also make it impossible to get to school on time, to develop respect for the environment, or to cultivate creativity.

What are you making possible, and impossible, for your children? Are these possibilities and impossibilities well-chosen, or perhaps defined by the horizons of your own family of origin?

As parents, we love to praise our children when they do something well. But are there ways of praising that are wiser than others? Carol Dweck of the Scientific American contends that extolling hard work is better for children than praising their intelligence because hard work has a significant impact on both intelligence and achievement.

The logic is pretty simple: If, when your child succeeds you tell her that she is smart, she gets the message that "intelligence" is a static trait that influences her success. So when she encounters something in which she doesn't succeed, there comes the inevitable question: "Why didn't I succeed?" It is quite understandable that she might answer, "Until now everything was easy because I was smart. I must have found something that is beyond my reach." If, on the other hand you praise the hard work of your successful child, he hears that hard work and achievement go together. So when he encounters something in which he fails, it is a more natural posture for him to ask, "How is another way that I can attack this problem?"

Dweck's research supports that logic. She found that in various environments with diverse student populations that students who were told they were smart were more likely to give up when they encountered challenges than their peers who were told that their success was the result of hard work. Not suprisingly, those who kept working at the problems developed further mastery and confidence that led them to greater acheivement. Consequently the achievement gap between the "smart" and the "hard workers" widened as time went on.

Where the story gets interesting is how beliefs about fixed intelligence versus a mastery orietation impact the brain itself:

The helpless ones believe that intelligence is a fixed trait: you have only a certain amount, and that’s that. I call this a “fixed mind-set.” Mistakes crack their self-confidence because they attribute errors to a lack of ability, which they feel powerless to change. They avoid challenges because challenges make mistakes more likely and looking smart less so. . . The mastery-oriented children, on the other hand, think intelligence is malleable and can be developed through education and hard work. They want to learn above all else. After all, if you believe that you can expand your intellectual skills, you want to do just that.

The author participated in a study that taught a group of junior high students about how effort affects brain development as an intervention to encourage hard work.

They were taught that the brain is like a muscle that gets stronger with use and that learning prompts neurons in the brain to grow new connections. From such instruction, many students began to see themselves as agents of their own brain development. Students who had been disruptive or bored sat still and took note. One particularly unruly boy looked up during the discussion and said, “You mean I don’t have to be dumb?”

That is precisely the point. Intelligence, though in some measure innate, is malleable, and is shaped by the perseverance and attitude children show in learning. Parents, in turn, play a critical role by telling stories that highlight the importance of hard work, praising their children for perseverance, and modeling persistent problem solving. After all, if they can influence their intelligence, can't you too?

Children are obviously affected by the way their parents nurture them. But to what degree? And who else is affected outside the family? The Harvard Family Research Project provides the beginning of an answer:

The results of the meta-analysis indicate that parental involvement is associated with higher student achievement outcomes. These findings emerged consistently whether the outcome measures were grades, standardized test scores, or a variety of other measures, including teacher ratings. This trend holds not only for parental involvement overall but for most components of parental involvement that were examined in the meta-analysis. Moreover, the pattern holds not only for the overall student population but for minority students as well.

Parenting affects a child's educational opportunities any way you cut the data. But by how much? The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry published the following:

It is concluded that environmental effects on IQ are relatively modest within the normal range of environments, but that the effects of markedly disadvantageous circumstances are very substantial. (emphasis mine)

Parenting affects child development so profoundly that the lack of a loving nurturing environment has a "very substantial" impact on IQ, to say nothing of social and emotional development. Since children almost invariable end up in school together, parenting has a profound social impact on education and civil society. Indeed, parenting is the very foundation of a just society.

The nature of scientific inquiry is to focus to ask a specific question and answer it with respect to a specific population. So, whenever one reads statistics, it is important to ask, "If it is true for the group studied, is it also true in other contexts?" That is precisely the question that the Harvard Family Research Project asked about parenting behaviors as they studied Latino families with young children. This was their conclusion:

Children's cognitive and motor development skills in the first year of life are associated with parents' reports of the frequency of their language and literacy activities with their children, as well as with observations of parents' responsiveness to their children's emotional cues. In other words, children whose parents read and talk with them more and are emotionally responsive have more developed cognitive and motor competencies. These two types of parenting behaviors—frequency of language and literacy engagement and parental emotional responsiveness—are important parenting behaviors that influence development for all children, across cultural, social, and ethnic groups. (Source, emphasis mine)

The foundations are simple: love and language. They apply to all parents. So the pressing question is: How do we help parents to understand their crucial role, and assist them to fulfill that role?

Since the first five years play such a critical role in child development, parents often start to panic, wondering, "What am I supposed to do to nurture healthy development?" The answer is remarkably simple: love and language.

Love

Affection and security (sometimes called attachment) are extremely important for healthy child development. In answer to the question, "What role do parents play in a baby's brain development?" Zero to Three, a research and advocacy group, finds:

Normal, loving, responsive caregiving seems to provide babies with the ideal environment for encouraging their own exploration, which is always the best route to learning. (Zero to Three)

Risk-taking is an extremely important part of child development because in the early years children are constantly learning new skills. When parents provide loving encouragement and appropriate boundaries, children thrive.

Language

In the context of a loving parent-child relationship, language has a cascading effect in stimulating child development.

The one form of stimulation that has been proven to make a difference is language: infants and children who are conversed with, read to, and otherwise engaged in lots of verbal interaction show somewhat more advanced linguistic skills than children who are not as verbally engaged by their caregivers. Because language is fundamental to most of the rest of cognitive development, this simple action—talking and listening to your child—is one of the best ways to make the most of his or her critical brain-building years. (Zero to Three)

Language helps children make sense of the world, and to express their curiosity, perplexity and feelings in a way that others can understand.

That's all there is to it?

Does child development really just boil down to loving your children, talking to them and reading with them? Yes and no. Yes, these are the basic foundations of healthy child development. If a child has loving, language-rich relationships, and begins to miss milestones, then a parent knows that it is time to seek professional help from a pediatrician or early intervention specialist. And no, there is more to it. At each stage of development, there are unique and appropriate ways of engaging children. That is where tumblon adds value: letting parents know what to expect, how to provide developmentally appropriate nurture, and when to seek help.

Every child starts out home-schooled. Only later do parents decide whether their children will continue their education at home, or enter a public, private or parochial school. What happens in the home environment in those early years has a profound effect on a child's development because of the nature of brain development, and the nature of learning.

The first five years comprise the most rapid period of brain growth outside the womb.

"[A] newborn's brain is only about one-quarter the size of an adult's. It grows to about 80 percent of adult size by three years of age and 90 percent by age five. This growth is largely due to changes in individual neurons, which are structured much like trees. Thus, each brain cell begins as a tiny sapling and only gradually sprouts its hundreds of long, branching dendrites. Brain growth (measured as either weight or volume) is largely due to the growth of these dendrites, which serve as the receiving point for synaptic input from other neurons." (Zero to Three)

That means that 86% of the brain growth that occurs after birth transpires within the first five years of life. This remarkable, rapid growth occurs in response to stimuli:

"Brain development is "activity-dependent," meaning that the electrical activity in every circuit—sensory, motor, emotional, cognitive--shapes the way that circuit gets put together. Like computer circuits, neural circuits process information through the flow of electricity. Unlike computer circuits, however, the circuits in our brains are not fixed structures. Every experience--whether it is seeing one's first rainbow, riding a bicycle, reading a book, sharing a joke--excites certain neural circuits and leaves others inactive. Those that are consistently turned on over time will be strengthened, while those that are rarely excited may be dropped away. Or, as neuroscientists sometimes say, "Cells that fire together, wire together."" (Zero to Three)

The ways parents engage their children during those early years affects the physical structure of the brain, shaping the capacities that they will have for the rest of their lives.

The first five years are equally as critical to the development of character because of the nature of learning. In the early years of life, a child learns from his parents how to make sense of the world by exploring the answers to these questions.

• What is real? Is what we can see all that really exists? Are germs real even though I can't see them?
  
• What is true? Do my actions really have consequences? What if I take a cookie when Mom isn't looking?
  
• What is good? Does it matter what I do? Why do my parents teach me not to throw litter on the ground?
  
• What is beautiful? Is it better to look good, or be good? Is sharing your lunch with a friend who is hungry foolish or beautiful?

The answers that a child settles on during this critical window become the lens through which she sees the world. For example, if Dad frequently warns, "If you throw sand again, we're leaving the playground," but never follows through, the child learns that Dad's words don't match with reality. By contrast, if Dad models and expects polite language like "please" and "thank you," the same child will learn that these are the norms for respectful conversation.

Since the first five years have such a profound influence on brain development and character formation, the question is inescapable: Can any vision of education be successful without regarding parents as primarily responsible for the education of their children?