Tag Archives: parents

Strong families, Strong Communities, Strong Nation

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Last night in the State of the Union address, President Obama highlighted the critical importance of early childhood for the well-being of children, their families, communities and the nation.

“Study after study shows that the sooner a child begins learning, the better he or she does down the road.”

It isn’t when a child begins learning, but how and what he or she learns. Learning begins before birth regardless of the choices parents make. What a mother eats and drinks (and smokes) while pregnant affects a child’s learning capacities. From their first moment out of the womb, all children are immersed into a learning environment. The emotional attachment that children form (or fail to form) to their parents in the first year of life has a lifelong effect on learning. The tone and number of words that they hear in the first three years of life furnish them with the tools with which to explore the world.

In short, the President’s call to make preschool available to all children is laudable. Preschool really can be a wonderful learning environment for children. But the really great gains are made in interventions with families (not just children) even earlier in life. After all, without intervention to support parents, preschool is not prevention; it is remediation.

How to engage parents without being condescending

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Yesterday I had an astute mother and educator ask a profoundly important question: “How can I engage poor parents without being condescending?”

This friend is a teacher in a thriving charter school; she is also the mother of a nine-month old and the member of a moms’ group. However, as she pointed out to me, all of the moms in her moms’ group are of the same social strata (and they’re not poor). She knows from experience – in the home and in school – that what happens in the home in the earliest years of life is critical for setting a trajectory of learning. So how can we engage disadvantaged parents without looking down on them?

Honor Their Virtue

The first step in not being condescending is realizing that honor is more appropriate than condescension. For whom is it more difficult to participate in a moms’ group: the articulate, college-educated mom, or the single, poor, poorly educated mom? The courage to put yourself in a situation where you know that everyone else has more of everything (education, money, power, connections, etc.) for the good of your child is a truly honorable act of humility and courage. It should be honored as such.

But what if they’re not making ANY effort?

It is easy enough to see the beauty of a poor parent who overcomes obstacles to love their children. But what about the parents who just don’t seem to care?

If I’m not mistaken, every person – no matter how disfigured – has a story. It may seem like they have nothing else to offer. But everyone has a story. Listening to the stories of parents is a powerful way to avoid condescension for several reasons. It validates that they have something unique and valuable to share. No one else has their story. When parents share their stories, my sympathy skyrockets. If I was looking down on them a few minutes ago, when I hear their stories my heart breaks for them because my previous perspective was so shallow compared to the depth of their pain. Once I have heard a parent’s story, I can truly admire and celebrate – without pretense – the steps that they take toward loving and nurturing their children.

The challenge is bringing parents together to share their stories.

Politics and Parenting

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On Saturday, Nicholas Kristof became the next op-ed thought leader (following David Brooks’ example) to engage Paul Tough’s new book How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character in his article Cuddle Your Kid.

He does it well by calling on our political leaders and candidates to recognize that nation-building hinges on family-building.

Yet the cycle [of poverty] can be broken, and the implication is that the most cost-effective way to address poverty isn’t necessarily housing vouchers or welfare initiatives or prison-building. Rather, it may be early childhood education and parenting programs.

It is not only the most cost effective way to address poverty; it is also the most pivotal way. If all other social institutions are restored, and the family remains in ruins, a community cannot thrive, because the family is the lynchpin of character formation, skill development, and cultural transmission.

But this isn’t just about poverty. It is about virtue. It matters no less what goes on in the homes of affluent children in early childhood. Indeed, it matters more because these children will grow to have even more cultural power to do good or harm to their neighbors. Indeed, they can be the ones who pioneer creative, merciful ways to strengthen and support shattered families.

I don’t hear anyone talking about that: neither of the presidential candidates; nor Paul Tough; nor Messrs Brooks and Kristof. Now is the time for that meaningful conversation to begin.

The Relational Approach

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A child’s early experiences affect every dimension of relationship, learning and health. In The Psych Approach New York Times columnist David Brooks highlights the correlation between adverse child experiences and long term life outcomes. Here’s the thirty thousand foot view: compared to those with no experience of childhood trauma, individuals who had suffered four traumatic childhood experiences were:

  • Seven times more likely to be alcoholics as adults
  • Six times more likely to have had sex before age 15
  • Twice as likely to be diagnosed with cancer
  • Four times as likely to suffer emphysema

“Later research suggested that only 3 percent of students with an ACE score [number of traumatic childhood experiences] of 0 had learning or behavioral problems in school. Among students with an ACE score of 4 or higher, 51 percent had those problems.” In short, your early experiences wire you for life, impacting your relationships, health, and ability to learn and thrive.

David Brooks calls this “The Psych Approach” because it turns attention toward the psychological impacts of “economic, social and family breakdowns.” In terms of treatment, the psych approach is probably a good description. However, with respect to prevention and restoration, The Relational Approach would be a more apt title. To break the patterns of family, social and economic breakdown, we must acknowledge that relationships are paramount – not least the relationship of a child to his or her father.

  • Children in father-absent homes are almost four times more likely to be poor.
  • Infant mortality rates are 1.8 times higher for infants of unmarried mothers than for married mothers.

Brooks concludes his column: “Maybe it’s time for people in all these different fields to get together in a room and make a concerted push against the psychological barriers to success.” It is indeed time for to bring people together to make a push against the relational barriers to human development and flourishing communities.

Improving the Odds for Children by Asking Better Questions

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In the introduction to How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character, Paul Tough frames the problem of improving the lot of poor children:

“We haven’t managed to solve these problems [how early experiences connect to adult outcomes] because we’ve been looking for solutions in the wrong places. If we want to improve the odds for children in general, and for poor children in particular, we need to approach childhood anew, to start over with some fundamental questions about how parents affect their children; how human skills develop; how character is formed.” (xxiv)

The answer those questions is that childhood – and early childhood in particular – is the apprenticeship of being human. Character is formed and skills are developed in the context of relationships – which is why the impact of parents in those early years is so profound.

There is another line of questions that needs to be pushed farther than Paul Tough ventured.

  1. Is it possible that qualities and skills that enable “success” in contemporary society may be acquired, and yet the person be bereft of real virtue?
  2. How can we cultivate in children the kind of virtue that enables them to persevere in pursuit of the good even, and especially, when pursuing the good means losing rather than winning? (Think of Martin Luther King Jr. receiving death threats and persevering until he was assassinated.)

These are the kinds of questions we must ask if we are serious not just about getting kids through high school, but about the pursuit of real virtue and flourishing communities.

The Rediscovery of Character and The Heretical Imperative

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In a New York Times op-ed yesterday, David Brooks highlighted the legacy of James Q. Wilson. Brooks argues that Wilson should be remembered not just for his “broken windows” theory on how to reduce crime, but for his emphasis on the importance of character for social well-being.

“At root,” Wilson wrote in 1985 in The Public Interest, “in almost every area of important concern, we are seeking to induce persons to act virtuously, whether as schoolchildren, applicants for public assistance, would-be lawbreakers or voters and public officials.

Character is formed, necessarily, in community; and therefore the beliefs, values, and habits of the community are of utmost importance. That truth makes our current situation all the more disturbing. Peter Berger, a sociologist, has described our time as being constrained by “the heretical imperative.” We are commanded to choose our own values, beliefs, and religion. The normative structures that were passed down from generation to generation through tradition (meaning ‘to hand down’ or ‘to hand over’) are now challenged. The new norm is to choose your own.

The rediscovery of character as important is important. However, it is only the first step. Wilson was raised in a nation and generation that had a rich an stable tradition handed down to it. Our children desperately need a rich, robust tradition that tells them virtue is a norm to which they must conform – not one which they may define as they so please. Our children will be bear the fruit of our character, as they are apprenticed to us in discerning and cultivating virtue.

Early Experiences Alter Gene Expression

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The nature vs. nurture argument has long captured the minds of those who care about child development. Which matters more: genetics, or a child’s early environment?

According to Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, nurture is key. Early experiences alter gene expression and shape development. In an interactive feature on their website, they tell the story of human development and how early experiences leave chemical “signatures” on the genes, which determines whether and how the genes are expressed.

In other words, even with good genes, early experiences can alter the expression of those genes – particularly the ones that affect brain development – in damaging ways. Consequently, “experiences that change the epigenome early in life, when the specialized cells of organs such as the brain, heart, or kidneys are first developing, can have a powerful impact on physical and mental health for a lifetime.”

The question is not nature or nurture. It is how can we support early nurture?

Video: Early Family Experiences Shape Later Success

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“There is strong biological evidence, strong neuroscientific evidence that suggest that early family conditions are powerful in shaping cognitive and non-cognitive skills, and that those determine – to a degree that we didn’t realize before – the later success of a person.”

It is for this reason that Nobel Prize winning economist James Heckman lobbies for investment not just in early childhood programs – but in families with young children.

httpv://youtu.be/NCeOBd4Simo

Social Mobility IMPEDES Social Mobility

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The New York Times recently carried an article by Jason DeParle titled Harder for Americans to Rise From the Lower Rungs, which highlights the current challenges of social mobility in the United States as compared to other places, and as compared to other times in history in the United States. Angela Glover Blackwell, founder and CEO of PolicyLink, responded with a letter titled Invitation to a Dialogue: Moving Up in America that develops her theme that: ““Movin’ on up” is especially hard for children born poor and black, or poor and female.”

Both DeParle and Blackwell have disturbing data to report. The long and short of it is that children born to parents in the bottom income quintile have poor odds of leaving that income strata. Furthermore, that quintile is over-represented demographically by women and blacks, who are statistically less likely to progress out of that quintile.

Yet both DeParle and Blackwell are shockingly quiet on what seems to be the obvious effect of social mobility. It is that people leave. Social mobility isn’t just about levels of income. It is about where you live, and with whom you choose to associate. Families that seek to leave cyclical poverty often leave communities of poverty to pursue greater opportunities. They move to a place with less crime, better schools, cleaner neighborhoods and more motivated peers; and if they can’t leave, they seek to send their children to schools outside of the community of poverty. The natural, and inevitable, consequence of social mobility is the increasing concentration of poor individuals and families in the communities they leave behind. In short, social mobility is part of the problem for those for whom social mobility is hardest.

This was clear in my experience teaching in Brooklyn in one of those communities in crisis. One of my African-American colleagues, who had taught in that school for 25 years, counseled any parent with the wherewithal to get their children into a different and better school. “No Child Left Behind” made that easier. Since we were a “school in need of improvement,” every parent had the right to request a transfer to a school-not-in-need-of-improvement. The net effect? The parents who wanted a better education and more opportunities for their kids got them into other schools. In other words, we lost the most exemplary parents and their children. Our school became increasingly concentrated with children who had many of the risk-factors for academic failure: father absence, parental drug abuse, poor nutrition, unstable home life, etc.

If we truly care about social mobility for the poorest Americans, we will have to face squarely these issues:

  1. Parent involvement is the single best predictor of a child’s academic achievement, which in turn is a significant factor in social mobility.
  2. Father absence, which is normal in the poorest communities, is a significant risk factor for health, educational attainment, crime, abuse and neglect, substance abuse, and poverty.

In their earliest years, children are apprenticed to their parents in learning to make their way in the world. If we care about their mobility, we need to care for and support their parents.

Serve and Return Interaction Shapes Brain Circuitry

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The Harvard Center on the Developing Child has produced a simple video that shows why parent interaction is so critical to early brain development.

httpv://youtu.be/m_5u8-QSh6A

“Ensuring that children have adult care givers who consistently engage in serve and return interaction, beginning in infancy, builds a foundation in the brain for all the learning, behavior and health that follow.”