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Pages 1-17

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From page 1...
... Professional service providers continue to search for new knowledge to inform their work. Consequently, one of the distinctive features of the science of early childhood development is the extent to which it evolves under the anxious and eager eyes of millions of families, policy makers, and service providers who seek authoritative guidance as they address the challenges of promoting the health and well-being of young children.
From page 2...
... increasing cultural diversity and the persistence of significant racial and ethnic disparities in health and developmental outcomes; 4) growing numbers of young children spending considerable time in child care settings of highly variable quality, starting in infancy; and (5)
From page 3...
... 1. Human development is shaped by a dynamic and continuous interaction between biology and experience.
From page 4...
... 6. The broad range of individual differences among young children often makes it difficult to distinguish normal variations and maturational delays from transient disorders and persistent impairments.
From page 5...
... Redressing these disparities is critical, both for the children whose life opportunities are at stake and for a society whose goals demand that children be prepared to begin school, achieve academic success, and ultimately sustain economic independence and engage constructively with others as adult citizens. · Early child development can be seriously compromised by social, regulatory, and emotional impairments.
From page 6...
... · Recommendation 2 School readiness initiatives should be judged not only on the basis of their effectiveness in improving the performance of the children they reach, but also on the extent to which they make progress in reducing the significant disparities that are observed at school entry in the skills of young children with differing backgrounds. · Recommendation 3 Substantial new investments should be made to address the nation's seriously inadequate capacity for addressing young children's mental health needs.
From page 7...
... Yet the recent focus on "zero to three" as a critical or particularly sensitive period is highly problematic, not because this isn't an important period for the developing brain, but simply because the disproportionate attention to the period from birth to 3 years begins too late and ends too soon. · Abundant evidence from the behavioral and the neurobiological sciences has documented a wide range of environmental threats to the developing central nervous system.
From page 8...
... This calls for expanding coverage of the Family and Medical Leave Act to all working parents, pursuing the complex issue of income protection, lengthening the exemption period before states require parents of infants to work as part of welfare reform, and enhancing parents' opportunities to choose from among a range of child care settings that offer the stable, sensitive, and linguistically rich caregiving that fosters positive early childhood development. · Recommendation 5 Environmental protection, reproductive health services, and early intervention efforts should be substantially expanded to reduce documented risks that arise from harmful prenatal and early postnatal neurotoxic exposures, as well as from seriously disrupted early relationships due to chronic mental health problems, substance abuse, and violence in families.
From page 9...
... The consequences of the changing context of parental employment for young children are likely to hinge on how it affects the parenting they receive and the quality of the caregiving they experience when they are not with their parents. · The developmental effects of child care depend on its safety, the opportunities it provides for nurturing and stable relationships, and its provision of linguistically and cognitively rich environments.
From page 10...
... However, interventions that work are rarely simple, inexpensive, or easy to implement. The critical agenda for early childhood intervention is to advance understanding of what it takes to improve the odds of positive outcomes for the nation's most vulnerable young children and to determine the most cost-effective strategies for achieving well-defined goals.
From page 11...
... · The elements of early intervention programs that enhance social and emotional development are just as important as the components that enhance linguistic and cognitive competence. Some of the strongest long-term impacts of successful interventions have been documented in the domains of social adjustment, such as reductions in criminal behavior.
From page 12...
... ·As the rapidly evolving science of early child development continues to grow, its complexity will increase and the distance between the working knowledge of service providers and the cutting edge of the science will be staggering. The professional challenges that this raises for the early childhood field are formidable.
From page 13...
... Integrating Child Development Research, Neuroscience, and Molecular Genetics Enormous potential exists at the intersection of child development research, neuroscience, and molecular and behavioral genetics to unlock some of the enduring mysteries about how biogenetic and environmental factors interact to influence developmental pathways. These include: (a)
From page 14...
... Integrating the Basic Science of Human Development and the Applied Science of Early Childhood Intervention There are currently few avenues for integrating knowledge gained from basic developmental science and from evaluations of early interventions. Yet both enterprises ultimately seek to improve children's early outcomes and life opportunities.
From page 15...
... The charge to this committee was to blend the knowledge and insights of a broad range of disciplines to generate an integrated science of early childhood development. The charge to society is to blend the skepticism of a scientist, the passion of an advocate, the pragmatism of a policy maker, the creativity of a practitioner, and the devotion of a parent and to use existing knowledge to ensure both a decent quality of life for all of our children and a productive future for the nation.
From page 17...
... 1 Setting the Stage


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