Services and Returns: How to talk to young children can help them thrive

For child care programs, the intensity and frequency of these numerous interactions between caregivers and children are at the heart of quality. Infants need to speak frequently and respond to their own voices and prompts to caregivers. Experts say older children need thoughtful inquiries and answers to help develop critical thinking skills and vocabulary.

A growing number of urban, state and individual programs, including Texas, Virginia, Mississippi and Washington, D.C., are pouring resources into training teachers and evaluating programs about teachers’ enthusiasm and responsiveness, including how they meet their children’s needs. Trends cross the traditional political gap. Cities including Providence, Rhode Island; Virginia Beach, Virginia; Birmingham, Alabama remitted money to a program used in a Carter class created by Lena, a nonprofit, focused on improving responsive relationships between early conversations and caregivers. Large child care chains like KinderCare have improved their teacher training programs to place greater emphasis on teacher interaction. A Louisiana state has gone all out to make interaction the only focus in assessing the quality of child care.

“All things that are crucial in the child experience in the classroom are nothing more important than their relationships and interactions with educators and other children,” said Bridget Hamre, an associate professor of research at the University of Virginia. She added that other quality elements of quality, such as teacher education and ratios, “are only important to the extent to which they change the way teachers interact with their children.”

The type and amount of speech and play between teachers and children is crucial because during the years of parenting, infants, toddlers and preschoolers have brains faster than any other time in their life. Researchers at Harvard University say these brains create services and return through scientists when caregivers and a child engage in “live tennis games.” This joke is so powerful that it helps strengthen the brain’s circuitry and creates the foundation for language, social skills, and other cognitive abilities. High-quality parenting and quick responsive interactions through parenting can positively impact children’s school preparation, working memory, behavioral, academic development, and social and emotional skills.

Nationally research has found that many caregivers have difficulty providing adequate response interactions. For example, state data compiled by Lena found that even in programs with high overall ratings on state quality scales, about a quarter of children have little attention. In the classrooms of babies and toddlers, one-third of the children in the classroom experience so little interaction per hour, essentially spending most of their time in isolation.

In Birmingham, Professor Carter, the city has invested more than $1 million in the nonprofit Little Magic, which runs a program using Lena Petometers, called Birmingham Talk. Since 2019, the program has coached more than 400 teachers in more than 60 child care programs in the region, including centers and family settings.

Educators who participated in the program said this had a profound impact. Many people think they are interacting with all their kids, but realize that it is not the case when seeing data from Lena devices. Educators say that in particular, those quiet, may not receive more attention as much as those who speak naturally or act as behavioral challenges.

Many child care providers view relationships with children as their favorite job, but the reality of engaging in child care programs in the United States often leads teachers to invest their best efforts in fostering one-to-one relationships.

Childcare teachers are usually responsible for large amounts of children and paid poverty levels. Many people are more struggling to disrupt children’s behavior than before the pandemic. “The reality of being a kindergarten teacher now is so incredible stressful,” Hamre said, adding, “It’s hard to prioritize this interaction when… you’re supporting a child who faces many challenges.” “Stress does reduce everyone’s ability to invest in the relationship that matters most.”

In many communities, the situation is getting worse and worse, not better. As pandemic relief aid is exhausted, many states have turned to deregulation efforts to address parenting shortages, introduce less experienced workers, reduce training requirements and increase the number of child employees to watch on their own. Although Republicans, usually at the state level, advocate for relaxation measures, they have received some conservative impetus. “The important aspects of early education and parenting cannot be abandoned. Toddlers need close adult supervision,” Frederick M. Hess and Michael Q. of the conservative American Corporate Academy “Removal of regulations can certainly help you with profit margins, but this requirement won’t change unless we want AI to read stories and robots to monitor game time.”

In Mississippi, which has the highest proportion of staff to young children in the country, Jackson Regional Child Care Director Lesia Daniel said that relationships have become more challenging as the number of children increases. “Can you imagine that every day is not in a 12-year-old room, they are not training potty every day?” Daniel said. “I mean, literally, all you have to do is change your diapers and try to keep them alive.”

Daniel provides her staff with training to help them understand the nuances of how to interact with young children the most meaningful. Rather than asking a question: “What color is your car?” Daniel said that questions should develop vocabulary development and critical thinking skills. The teacher can ask, “Who rides in your car? Tell me these people.”

In the Early Learning Program in Southwest Birmingham, it is an inclusive early learning center where children with and without disabilities and developmental delays are thorough and intentional.

On an autumn morning, when teacher Kayla McCombs helped her preparatory students settle down in various activities around the room, one of the children called her to the little game kitchen at the corner of the classroom. It’s an opportunity to introduce vocabulary with him and help immerse him in a game that deeper imagination.

“What are we doing?” McCombs asked as he slides into a small gray chair. “Do you want to cook some food?”

“Yes,” he replied.

“Oh, I’m very hungry,” she said.

“So too,” he replied.

“Oh, are you going to the microwave?” McComes asked the child because the child carefully placed a plastic cup in the pretend microwave.

“Yes,” he replied.

“Is it hot?”

“Yes.”

“Beware! Don’t burn your hands,” she replied.

McComes and her colleagues benefit from smaller employee-to-child ratios – at this age range of 1 to 6, well below the state’s set 1 to 18 years old. This morning, two teachers in the class, along with an assistant teacher and an occupational therapist, worked with 16 students. This means McCormes can focus on these interactions.

Skylar Yeager, McCombs’ joint teacher, said data they obtained in their Lena devices revealed that some kids have much less time to talk to teachers than others. Now employees are more purposefully prioritizing one-on-one interactions with each child.

Nationally, states including Georgia, Arkansas, Texas and Vermont are trying multiple ways to teach early educators about interactions and to add or expand the component of teacher interactions on the national child care quality rating system. All of our relatives, nonprofits focusing on family nurseries, bring coaches to Connecticut and New York programs to support these providers’ relationships and interactions with children.

Virginia has taken further action. In 2020, state officials created a law requiring any early learning program to receive public funding to participate in the state’s child care improvement system, which includes the Teacher Interaction Scale. Teachers of all types of courses are now observed twice a year to understand the meaning of their conversation and play with their children. Jenna Conway, associate director of early childhood care and education in Virginia, Virginia, said the data enables program officials to zero in classrooms where children have no good experience and provide intensive consultation for these teachers.

Advocacy plans face challenges. It involves what Conway calls a mindset change, especially those who work with babies. Jill Gilkerson, chief research and evaluation officer at Lena, said some teachers are worried that they will face more classroom management challenges if they encourage more conversations. “A lot of times, child care can focus on behavior and try to make sure there isn’t too much revelry and keep the sound level,” she said. “I think a lot of teachers will be associated with a more controlled environment.”

Many programs also have high turnover with high teachers, which undermines relationships with children. Then, new employees need to train how to engage most effectively.

Research conducted in Louisiana is designed to prioritize interactions, and it offers hope that despite challenges, a shift in mindset among childcare teachers can improve quality. Ten years ago, under Conway’s guidance, Louisiana abandoned its complex quality rating system in favor of the rating scale, which focused solely on the interaction between children and teachers. The state also increased the number of monetary providers when they served children from low-income families who subsidized and funded new educator certificates and preparation programs. In the four years following these changes, researchers found significant improvements in measures such as the warmth and sensitivity of teachers and the language development support they provide to children in child care programs in the state.

Conway said the attention looks like a small, trivial interaction that has been positively affecting other aspects of child care. “The directors and others are getting smarter and more strategic about who they are hiring,” she added. This includes recruiting educators with the right temperament to the classroom and educating new employees on important quality scales. For example, for the baby teacher, it means: “You are talking to the baby. When you feed them, you are talking. You are talking on the diapers,” Conway said.

“I think these are those little things.”

Contact the worker Jackie Mad at (212) 678-3562 or make@hechingerreport.org.