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?

A recent report in Academic Pediatrics found that, "Promoting the health of young children, before five years of age, could save society up to $65 billion in future health care costs." The study examined four health factors: early life tobacco exposure, unintentional injury, obesity and mental health.

Why before age 5?
There are several reasons that the first five years constitute the most opportune time for promoting life-long health.

1. Environmental factors have life-long effects. A growing body of literature suggests that maternal smoking during pregnancy is associated with "increased activity, decreased attention, and diminished intellectual abilities" in children.
2. Parental supervision lowers risks. All kids have slips, trips and falls growing up. The supervision that parents can and should provide reduces the risk of major injury or fatality. For example, putting gates at the top and bottom of stairs prevents crawlers or early walkers from tumbling down the stairs.
3. Routines, habits and "normal" are define in early childhood. A child learns to eat from her parents. She learns what to eat and when to eat from the direction of her parents. Those norms and routines of eating and activity can set a child on a life-long trajectory of obesity, or of health.
4. Children develop emotional stability during these critical years. During the early years of life, experiencing affection and nurture is critical for healthy development. In order to explore, learn and take appropriate risks, a child needs the support and love of adults.

The report does not touch on parental use of language, which is closely tied to language development, which is foundational for other areas of development.

"[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." (Whatever it Takes p43, emphasis mine)

Why parents?
Parents are responsible for the nurture, health and education of their children. We recognize this as a society by requiring parental consent for enrollment in child care services, mandating parental consent for medical treatment of a child, and permitting parents to educate their children at home, in public schools, or in private or parochial schools. Consequently, any public health initiative aimed at promoting health between birth and age five must engage those primarily responsible: the parents. The social cost of not treating parents as responsible is far greater than the $65 billion in lifetime health costs for their 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.

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?

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?

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?

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?

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?

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?

 

In a recent study of an initiative called Parents as Teachers, released in the March issue of Journal of Primary Prevention confirms that enabling parents during the first four years of a child’s life measurably improves school readiness.

[A]ccording to the researchers, kindergarten readiness is the most important significant predictor of third-grade achievement and far outweighs other demographic variables such as age, gender, poverty and minority status in predicting subsequent third-grade performance. (PR Newswire)

Researcher Dr. Edward Ziegler of the Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy at Yale University states:

“Brain development research shows you get the biggest payoff the earlier you start. The first nine months are the most critical. By starting at birth, Parents as Teachers starts at just the right time…” (ibid)

Tumblon shares Parents as Teachers’ conviction that parents are the key players in education, and that the first five years of life are the most important time to shape school readiness. That conviction has driven our content selection and site design - in order to equip parents to engage their children appropriately from birth.

The Journal of Primary Prevention research reinforces tumblon’s position that equipping parents is critical, regardless of the socio-economic or educational level of parents:

The study also refutes views that such services should be limited to high-poverty children, by showing that school readiness scores of non-poverty children were also enhanced through Parents as Teachers participation. (ibid)

So, our hats are off to Parents as Teachers for their excellent work, and we hope to join them in making a significant contribution to the parents, families and schools - not just in the United States, but around the world.