Authors

  1. Fenichel, Emily MSW

Article Content

HAVE YOU READ NtoN YET?

NtoN is my nickname for From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development,1 the 588-page, 4-lb, 21/2-years-in-the-making report of the Board on Children, Youth and Families' 17-member multidisciplinary Committee on Integrating the Science of Early Childhood Development published in October 2000. Jack Shonkoff and Deborah Phillips, NtoN's editors, have crafted several "take-home messages" from the report for professionals, general audiences, and the media, including the following:

 

* Nature and nurture are inextricably intertwined.

 

* Early environments matter, and nurturing relationships are essential.

 

* Society is changing, and the needs of young children are not being addressed.

 

* Children's emotional and social development are as important to school readiness as their cognitive and language development.

 

 

NtoN is quickly becoming a standard text in undergraduate and graduate courses on early childhood development. Equally important, policy makers, such as Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy, have been using NtoN's findings about the importance of young children's emotional and social development as the rationale for proposed legislation to support early childhood programs, and federal grant makers are crafting requests for proposals based on the report.

 

The photograph on the cover of NtoN features an exuberant-looking man, woman, and baby at the seashore. If I ruled the world (or directed a foundation with billions of dollars in assets), I would send every practitioner who works with infants, young children, and their families in multidisciplinary groups on a week's paid vacation with NtoN as beach reading. Time to read, reflect, and talk with each other about what our field really knows and how we can learn more would be a sound investment in professional development. But in the real world, my guess is that more infant/family practitioners have been intending to read NtoN than have actually done so. And that's a pity.

 

The April/May 2001 issue of Zero to Three2 introduces core content from NtoN as a way of encouraging infant/family practitioners to explore the abundance of the full report on their own. In this column, I'd like to highlight three sections of the report that, to my mind, have the most powerful implications for the infant/family field. These sections are: (1) a reconceptualization of the nature and tasks of early development, (2) attention to contextual influences on early development, and (3) a discussion of the evidence for the effectiveness of early intervention.

 

THE NATURE AND TASKS OF EARLY DEVELOPMENT

For many of us in the infant/family field, the notion of "developmental milestones" has become a millstone around our necks. The conventional charts and checklists reflect fragmented rather than integrated knowledge, ignore individual differences among children, and are oblivious to varying cultural expectations of development in the early years. In addressing early development, the NtoN committee saw its task as identifying and discussing "early developmental tasks that, if mastered, appear to get children started along adaptive pathways and, if seriously delayed or problematic, can lead a child to falter."1(p91) They chose to emphasize three domains among the many accomplishments that characterize the years from birth to age 5:

 

1. Negotiating the transition from external to self-regulation, including learning to regulate one's emotions, behaviors, and attention.1(pp92,121)

 

2. Acquiring the capabilities that undergird communication and learning, including the early development of language, reasoning, and problem solving.1(pp92,161-162)

 

3. Learning to relate well to other children and forming friendships, including the emerging capacity to trust, to love and nurture, and to resolve conflict constructively.1(p92,180)

 

 

The committee's strategy and choice of these three domains to emphasize seem inspired for several reasons. First, these domains integrate knowledge from many disciplines and many ways of knowing. Second, the focus is on development emergence, acquiring capabilities, and learningrather than on developmental milestones. This emphasis on "foundational capabilities"1(p5) encourages exploration of both commonalities and differences in cultural expectations of early development, and of the many pathways to competence. Finally, NtoN's articulation of the scientific evidence for the developmental importance of these domains validates both a functional approach to developmental assessment of individual children and a focus on these domains in program design and evaluation. Attention to the three NtoN domains is a powerful way of linking "developmental science" to "intervention science."

 

THE CONTEXT FOR EARLY DEVELOPMENT

Early interventions are premised on a belief in the power of environmental influences on early development.1(p219)

 

This is the opening statement of the five chapters of NtoN that discuss contextual influences on developmentnurturing relationships, family resources, child care experiences, neighborhood and community, and interventions designed to promote healthy development. Some brief quotes from these chapters suggest one of the pleasures of spending time with NtoN the chance to discover clear, quotable sentences that elegantly summarize a body of research. Some examples follow:

 

* From Chapter 9, Nurturing Relationships: "An appreciation of the broad range of circumstances in which parents rear young children brings with it tremendous admiration for those who do it well."1(p249)

 

* From Chapter 10, Family Resources: "One of the most consistent associations in developmental science is between economic hardship and compromised child development."1(p275)

 

* From Chapter 11, Growing Up in Child Care: "The positive relation between child care quality and virtually every facet of children's development that has been studied is one of the most consistent findings of developmental science."1(p313)

 

* From Chapter 12, Neighborhood and Community: "The combination of family poverty and neighborhood poverty poses double risk to a substantial minority of black children and, to a lesser extent, to Hispanic children, who are much more likely than white children to grow up in these circumstances."1(pp335-336)

 

 

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF INTERVENTION IN PROMOTING HEALTHY DEVELOPMENT

The central professional concerns of infant/family practitioners, program developers, and intervention researchers are addressed most directly in Chapter 13, Promoting Healthy Development through Intervention. The committee identified five features of intervention as essential to effectiveness in improving developmental outcomes for both children living in high-risk environments and children with biologically based disabilities. NtoN recommends paying much closer attention to these features in program design, implementation, and evaluation as follows:

 

* Individualization of service delivery: "Extensive research from a variety of service system perspectives converges on the principle that effective intervention demands an individualized approach that matches well-defined goals to the specific needs and resources of the children and families who are served. Thus, there is scant support for a one-size-fits-all model of early childhood intervention."1(p360)

 

* Quality of program implementation: "The quality of the intervention that is actually delivered and received by target children and families is of fundamental importance[horizontal ellipsis]. The premature assessment of an intervention impact before one is confident that it can be faithfully implemented is likely to be both a waste of money and a demoralizing influence on those who are trying to develop promising new programs."1(p362)

 

* Timing, intensity, and duration of intervention: The Committee notes that the research literature on service intensity (usually defined as the amount of professional time spent with families or children), duration, and age of initiation is perhaps the most complex and inconclusive aspect of the early childhood intervention knowledgebase. In addition, questions about intensity and duration must always be considered in the context of assessing the ratio of costs to benefits, but the data needed to assess this issue are quite limited.1(p363-364)

 

* Provider knowledge, skills, and relationship with the family: "In many if not most programs serving young children and families, the ultimate impact of any intervention is dependent on both staff expertise and the quality and continuity of the personal relationship established between the service provider and the family that is being served."1(p365)

 

* Family-centered, community-based, coordinated orientation: "Although the empirical evidence for these concepts is thin, the theoretical and experiential support is strong[horizontal ellipsis]. [There is a] critical need for more descriptive, exploratory investigations in this area, including both qualitative and quantitative research."1(pp366-367)

 

 

Not surprisingly, these are the elements of early childhood intervention to which the infant/family field is devoting its most concentrated attention. Evidence from classic longitudinal studies and decades of professional experience with infants, toddlers, and families remind us repeatedly of the uniqueness of every child and family, the importance of continuity of care by competent providers, and that "how you are is as important as what you do." Our challenge is to rigorously and appropriately evaluate our current "best practice" and, using what we learn from these evaluations, improve on it.

 

KNOWLEDGE INTO ACTION: CALLING FOR A NEW NATIONAL DIALOGUE

The Committee on Integrating the Science of Early Childhood Development was established to "update scientific knowledge about the nature of early development and the role of early experience, to disentangle such knowledge from erroneous popular beliefs or misunderstandings, and to discuss the implications of this knowledge base for early childhood policy, practice, professional development, and research."1(p3) In its final chapter, NtoN offers 11 scientific conclusions to inform the public as well as the following summary of its findings:

 

[T]he well-being and "well-becoming" of young children are dependent on two essential conditions. First is the need for stable and loving relationships with a limited number of adults who provide responsive and reciprocal interaction, protection from harm, encouragement for exploration and learning, and transmission of cultural values. Second is the need for a safe and predictable environment that provides a range of growth-promoting experiences to promote cognitive, linguistic, social, emotional, and moral development. The majority of children in the United States today enjoy the benefits of both. A significant number do not.1(p413)

 

The committee calls for "a new national dialogue focused on rethinking the meaning of both shared responsibility for children and strategic investment in their future" and shaping a shared agenda that will involve families; communities; and local, state, and federal governments in enhancing the quality of children's caregiving environments and early experiences, ensuring "both a rewarding childhood and a promising future for all children."1(p413)

 

Read This Book

My copy of NtoN bristles with tangerine-colored flexible plastic tabs that mark my favorite passages. In time, some of these markers may become unnecessary-like a well-loved cookbook, From Neurons to Neighborhoods will fall open, at the slightest touch, to pages I consult regularly. But I expect that I'll continue to add new tabs, as I discover (or have brought to my attention) paragraphs and pages overlooked in earlier readings and skimmings of NtoN. Readers of Infants and Young Children are fortunate indeed that Michael Guralnick, one of the members of the Committee on Integrating the Science of Early Childhood Development, will become the new editor of this publication and has recruited a number of fellow committee members to serve on its editorial board. We can all look forward to much thought-provoking discussion in these pages as researchers, practitioners, and the public grapple with the implications of NtoN's findings and challenges to the field.

 

Meanwhile, a closing line that I used in an essay for the first time more than half a century ago once again seems appropriate: "Everyone in the class should read this book."

 

References

 

1. Shonkoff JP, Phillips DA, eds. From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development. Washington, DC: National Academy Press; 2000. [Context Link]

 

2. Zero Three. 2001;21(5): 1-. http://www.zerotothree.org. [Context Link]