Small children in the U.S. are less likely to succeed in school and life than their counterparts in other countries. The distressing information came from a study of five-year-olds. The study of the academic achievement of 15-year-old students from around the world has been done by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Compared to other countries, American children had lower literacy and numeracy scores, poorer self-regulation skills, and engaged in less acts of cooperation, kindness, and other prosocial behaviors. The U.S. children were roughly equivalent to their international peers on some social-emotional measures.
The World Health Organization declared that COVID had become a pandemic a few days after these findings were announced. Recent research shows that half of American children are not on track in at least one important area of school readiness. Learning begins on the first day of life, and not the first day of class, as shown in the report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. The earliest years of a child's life are filled with opportunities. During this crucial time, a child's brain will be more receptive to experience, more plastic, than it is. The majority of brain growth takes place between birth and three. One million neural connections are formed during this time.
Two decades of child development research shows that small kids need protection from toxic stress and nurturing interaction to get off to a good start. Over the past five years, a new wave of neuroscience studies has highlighted the effects of early experience on the brain. It is possible to see what is happening in a child's brain. Studies show that environments and relationships are associated with higher levels of brain activity in parts of the brain that play a role in language and cognitive development.
One of us (Suskind) is a physician and early learning researcher who is interested in how emerging science on brain development can inform not just what we do as parents but as a society. Parents can take paid leave to nurture their relationships. Child allowances and tax credits can make a difference ineviating poverty. Quality child care provides young children with responsive, engaged caregivers when parents work outside the home.
There is a lack of understanding between what science tells us about children's needs and what we do to help them. The U.S. does not require paid leave for a parent after the birth of a child. Four in 10 children in the U.S. had families who couldn't afford basics. The child tax credit, which helped millions of families weather the Pandemic and cut the number of poor children, was allowed to lapse by congress. Half of Americans live in child care deserts, where there aren't nearly enough facilities or caregivers, and fewer than 10% of existing child care programs are considered high quality. These gaps were highlighted by the Pandemic. It showed how shaky our nation's support is for parents and their kids.
The science of brain development isn't included in public discussions of how to fix these gaps. It lays out a road map to improve national and local policies that can make children's lives better
Randy put his two-year-old son into his lap while he wore his Chicago Bulls cap.
He said that he wanted to play.
He started to stack some blocks. A tower stood in front of the father and son.
It's time to drop it. Randy encouraged the man to tip the tower. Randy added a few more blocks as he looked at his son. The tower fell when the stack reached 16.
There was a boom. Randy said something.
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There was a boom. There was a voice that echoed through the room.
Randy signed up for a home-visiting research program to learn more about child development after fully embracing his role as a responsive parent. The family's privacy is protected with only first names used. He was talking to his child and taking turns in their conversation even though he couldn't say much. The importance of nurturing relationships can be traced back to this type of rich language input. Researchers used to focus on the amount of words a child heard as the best indicator of language development. Quality of language exposure is more important than previously thought. It's not enough to hear conversation. Randy encouraged children to do so.
The first of its kind, researchers at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of technology put 36 four- to six-year-old children in a brain scanner and told them stories about playing hide-and-seek. Scientists looked at brain structure while the kids listened. The researchers used to record everything the children heard for a couple of days.
Children who typically experienced more language but more turn taking showed more brain activity when they heard stories. The connections between language areas that govern speech perception and speech production were shown by these kids. The study found that more conversation was related to more mature brain development.
Important connections between young children and caregivers can be found on a neural level. Their brains work well together. This was discovered by Elise Piazza and her colleagues at the Princeton University Neuroscience Institute. The scientists looked at people between the ages of nine and 15 months. The brain waves of the infants and adults synchronized when they were playing with the same object. They didn't sync when the adult talked to someone else in the room. Social learning, problem-solving skills and vocabulary development have been linked to this type of synchrony. The adult turned out to be following the baby's lead rather than following the other way.
According to Piazza, infant-directed speech is very important for babies' learning and that a variety of communicative cues could be important for them. Even before they're fully verbal, there are a lot of ways in which the baby's brain is picking up on different environments.
It supports the need for parents to have time with their kids. It shows why parents need access to high quality child care. There wasn't enough time to parent the way Randy wanted. He held down multiple jobs to make ends meet. Mayra also worked full time. For most of the day, Randy saw his kids. The only child care Randy could afford was a custodial position. The core adult-child interactions in the early years of life are important for brain development and social development. The best investment we can make in children's futures is creating an environment where relationships can flourish.
The nurturing interactions between children and caregivers include language. Babies start connecting on the first day of their lives. It is consistent with policy to give paid leave at the birth of a child. Most Americans don't have leave like that. They didn't have it. One quarter of mothers return to work within two weeks after the birth of a child, and Randy took only a day or two off each time.
The economic side of the equation has traditionally been the focus of research on paid leave. The effects of paid leave on the health of mothers and children have been found to include lower levels of depression, improved infant attachment, decreases in infant mortality and rehospitalizations, as well as increases in immunizations. When fathers took paid leave at the birth of a child, they were able to take care of themselves. Married parents who take leave are more likely to stay together.
Positive impacts of paid leave on infants' cognitive development have been added to the evidence. Some of the mothers and babies who were studied in the study had paid leave and some of them did not. The researchers asked the mothers to report on their children's language abilities and emotional responses when they were two years old. There was a correlation between paid leave and better language and emotional skills for toddlers at all SES levels. Brito says that paid leave may have an outsize effect on lower-SES families.
Brain activity is changed when paid leave is used. Brito and her colleagues usedEEG to eavesdrop on the brain waves of babies three months after birth in a second study. These waves are created by interactions between cells. Everyone has high and low frequencies. The amount of activity increases as children get older. Children with more high-frequency waves tend to have higher scores on skills needed for learning and thinking when they are older, according to previous studies.
Brito and her co-workers found that infants whose mothers were able to take paid leave had higher waves and lower waves than infants whose mothers did not. The sample was relatively small and not a random selection of babies, but the researchers did control for a number of variables, such as maternal relationship status, education and occupational prestige. The association between paid leave and brain-wave patterns continued.
Stress may be a factor in the differences. As psychological and physical stress accumulate, the levels of cortisol in the mother's hair go up. Cortisol levels were lower for mothers who had paid leave. They scored higher on tests of maternal sensitivity. Brito suggests that paid leave provides resources and financial stability, so it is likely to reduce stress and possibly impact the way that they interact with their kids. These are the first studies of their kind. Some of the dots have begun to connect.
Young children do best when their lives are stable and predictable. Some experts suspect that higher stress levels in mothers may be related to higher risks of developmental delays in babies. Children in families with lower incomes are more likely to face unpredictable and distressing situations.
What poverty does to a child's brain is being explored by neuroscientists. The correlation between cortical surface area and cognitive ability was found in a study of more than 1000 children. The areas of the brain that deal with language, executive function and memory have been found to have the biggest differences.
Noble and her colleagues used hair cortisol levels as a marker of chronic stress and found that higher levels were associated with smaller hippocampi. The young brain is waiting for instructions from the environment, and if a child grows up in an environment of toxic stress, that child's brain will organize itself to be highly reactivity to stress. Changes in education and employment can be costly.
According to a report by the National Academy of Sciences, tax credits for families with young children have the greatest potential to reduce poverty. The benefits of these credits became apparent when the tax credit was expanded. It was the first time that the credit was not dependent on earnings and it benefited those who were working and those who wanted to stay home with their kids. The vast majority of American children were eligible.
The Senate refused to extend the program at the end of the year. The child poverty rate went up from 12 to 17 percent after the credits ended. The number of children in poverty went up by over 3 million. The long-term effects of childhood poverty on adult employment, crime rates and population health cost the U.S. between $800 billion and $1.1 trillion annually.
We have a lot of knowledge about child care. The Department of Defense runs high-quality centers for military families in the U.S. Military child care was as bad as it is today. The people in the armed forces had to worry about who was watching their children, and this could affect their performance. The Pentagon completely revised these programs, increasing professional development and pay, as well as capping the costs to families and improving access. Quality care is a hallmark of Europe. The other countries in the study of five-year-olds have generous paid leave and preschool programs.
It will cost a lot to institute something similar in the U.S. Legislation that would have subsidized child care costs for most working families was not passed last year. $400 billion is how much it would have cost. It is not as steep as the price of action. Child care problems cost the US $57 billion a year in lost earnings, productivity and revenue, according to a report by ReadyNation. If American women stayed in the workforce at a similar rate to that of Norway, the U.S. could add over one trillion dollars to the GDP.
With no paid leave, no child care and limited child credits, there is a devastating divide between what science tells us children need and what U.S. policy actually does for them. We need to use our scientific evidence to guide our policies and practices. Our future is represented by healthy brain maturation. Foster and protection of the brain development of our children are the most important things we can do as a society.
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