Information About the National Head Start Programs

The following information about Head Start Programs is taken from the U.S. Department of Health and Social Services.
Head Start is a national program that promotes school readiness by enhancing the social and cognitive development of children through the provision of educational, health, nutritional, social and other services to enrolled children and families.
The Head Start program provides grants to local public and private non-profit and for-profit agencies to provide comprehensive child development services to economically disadvantaged children and families, with a special focus on helping preschoolers develop the early reading and math skills they need to be successful in school. In FY 1995, the Early Head Start program was established to serve children from birth to three years of age in recognition of the mounting evidence that the earliest years matter a great deal to children's growth and development.
Head Start programs promote school readiness by enhancing the social and cognitive development of children through the provision of educational, health, nutritional, social and other services to enrolled children and families. They engage parents in their children's learning and help them in making progress toward their educational, literacy and employment goals.
I am proud to be a part of the 39th Anual Head Start Convention in Nashville Tennessee.  I will be speaking about Infant and Toddler Development and promoting the importance of proper stimulation  of our children in their crucial first few years of life.
Next week I will report to you about the convention.
SEE YOU IN NASHVILLE!!!!!!!!

How Developing a Trusting Bond with Your Baby Effects His/Her Brain Chemistry and Why this is Such an Improtant Part of Your Baby's Development

 You’ll learn to understand how your baby communicates with you with smiles, coos, and varied types of cries. When you respond to your babies needs, she learns to trust you.  A strong bond of trust between you and your baby will help to foster the security that she needs. It’s through the development of trust that your baby will form an attachment with you.  Attachment is a necessary component for the emotional development of your baby.

When your baby is first born, she’s bombarded with new sounds, sights, movements and feelings. The world can be a scary place.  While in the womb all your baby’s needs were taken care of. Now she must rely on the environment to have her needs met. Consistently responding to your baby helps build trust. Your baby uses her trusting relationship with you, her attachment, to keep herself regulated through you. Her immature brain and body cannot do this alone.  When your baby is not feeling safe, her sympathetic nervous system will kick in. Her heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure will increase.  Her brain chemistry will change.  Her adrenaline increases and the stress hormone cortisol is released.  This is a defense mechanism for your baby. She will become agitated and cry.  In the beginning this is your baby's way of communicating her needs to you. Conversely, when you soothe your baby or respond to her needs, her limbic system kicks in.  Now the hormones of oxytocin and vasopressin are released to calm her baby system.  As you well know, being stressed or panicked is not the optimum time for learning.  Stress or panic can lead to confusion raising your stress level even more. Your baby is learning about you and her world every day and needs to be in a calm state to conquer this awesome job. She needs to make sense of what she sees. She must learn to communicate. She must learn about every new item in her environment.  Keeping your baby calm and relaxed will aid her in this process. 
Three ways to keep your baby clam and relaxed are:
1) Following a routine and schedule your baby can count on and learn to expect.
2) Making sure your baby's environment is not overly stimulating especially when she/he is tired.
3) Reading your baby's cues and soothing her in the consistent manner that you have learned works best for her/him.

When to Start Reading to Your Baby

Why are we as parents encouraged to read to our children way before they have all the skills that are necessary for them to see, pay attention, and understand the story? Reading is actually an activity that can be experienced with our children at any age.  Each age and stage will provide its own unique learning opportunity for your child.  As a newborn your baby will love to hear your familiar voice.  Your voice will soothe and calm your baby.  Your voice is the first voice your baby recognizes and responds to. Listening to the different tones of your voice, how you pause and start at different points in the story will help train your baby in the finer points of language use. At a few months old, your baby will be relying on his sensory system to figure out the many things in his environment.  At this point your baby will want to look at, touch, and taste the books.  This is a good time to have plastic and cloth books handy. Don't be discouraged if your baby appears disinterested, crawls, walks away, or rips a book.  This just means that your baby is not interested in the story at this moment. Keep trying and eventually your baby will develop the interest in books that you have been anticipating. Introducing sensory books with varied textured pictures to feel, movable parts, and shiny interesting pictures are a great way to cultivate initial interest in books. Once your child has learned what a book is through his senses he will develop an interest in the book as a story.  Your toddler will now start to recognize the book’s pictures and learn to label them increasing his vocabulary. With repeated reading your toddler will begin to anticipate seeing items and people that are familiar helping build his memory and attention. You can help build your Toddlers language skills by using songs and sounds in the story that he can anticipate and eventually participate with. I have found that rather then having a great variety of books to read to babies and toddlers they actually prefer the same books over and over again.  Give your toddler the opportunity to turn the pages of the book and "read" the book him self when he is feeling comfortable and familiar with the story. As your toddler's attention and interest in books increases you can use the books to have your toddler look for and find various pictures and items on a given page or answer questions related to the story. So reading to your child at every age and stage has its benefits. The younger you start reading to your children the sooner you will help them build the skills they need for independence with literacy.

How important is crawling?

How important is crawling? Very!  There are some children that skip crawling or scoot on their backsides rather then crawl before they walk.  I can't stress enough how important it is for you to try to encourage your baby to crawl. Crawling works on coordination of the upper and lower limbs preparing the body for improved balance in walking. Crawling further trains the balance system by giving your baby a new opportunity to learn to move his body against gravity. Crawling also helps to develop shoulder girdle strength that will help facilitate fine motor skills and hand function as the child transitions to upright. Crawling also provides visual training and eye hand coordination for future learning.  The distance of a babies head to their hands on the floor is the same distance they will eventually use, when older, to see a book that they are trying to read. One way to ensure that your baby crawls is by giving him ample tummy time when he’s first born.  Another way to encourage a baby that is a few months old to learn to crawl is by giving them many opportunities for play while on their stomach….such as with bright and musical toys or getting on the floor with them.  If your baby starts to scoot, don’t assume that it’s too late to teach him how to crawl. You can help him by placing him in the crawling position and using your hands to help him along.  Another great exercise for training your baby to crawl is teaching him to crawl up the steps.  You can complete this activity carefully, and when your baby finally gets the hang of it he can practice this fun activity over and over again.  Place a fun toy at the top of the steps for him to retrieve. Always make sure you are behind your baby in case he loses his balance.  After you have practiced on the steps follow up with a few minutes of encouraged crawling time on the floor. If your baby skips the crawling stage you can still encourage crawling games like crawling through a tunnel or crawling under a table to retrieve a toy.  Activities such as these even once a child has already learned to walk will help your baby develop the skills that crawling facilitates.

Mirror Neurons; What are They?

The concept of mirror neurons, brain cells that fire when you see someone doing an action, was first described by scientists in 1992. It is believed that humans learn language, facial expressions, physical actions, and even empathy through the brains ability to send signals to the appropriate brain area by merely watching an action take place. Through understanding this concept of mirror neurons and how they operate we can help train and teach our children new activities, games, language, and appropriate social interactions. When helping children learn new skills watching the task completed will aid in the learning process. This reinforces the importance of "face time" with our children, and making sure that our babies and toddlers see our physical expressions and watch the movements of our mouths as we speak in order to facilitate their language development. Seeing our physical expressions along with hearing speech will help our children develop understanding of language and the emotions that coincide with our words and tone of voice.

On a practical level, one way that I use mirror neurons with my children is during feeding time. To help a distracted eater, I would present a spoonful of food while I show them my own open mouth. The usual results are a copying of the open mouth position and a renewed interest in the food. Before teaching your toddler a new activity, such as kicking a ball for example it will help him to learn if you show him how you do it and then assist him in copying you. Keep the concept of mirror neurons in mind when you attempt to teach your toddler or child a new activity.

Technologies Effect on Your baby and Toddler Development

There are many television programs and videos that are designed to catch the eye of babies and toddlers and keep their attention for quite some time.  Some of these shows are educational and are developed to help your child learn colors, numbers, language, and concepts.  How can we know if the technology that is available for our children is beneficial or detrimental? There are many studies that show that too much television, DVD watching, and computer game playing can negatively impact a child's attention and can increase the risk of  other related learning issues.  There are other studies that contradict these results claiming that the right programs can encourage language development and other cognitive skills.  It can be confusing to parents who want to do what's best for their child.  Well the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children two years of age and under do not watch any television at all.  Here is what I do know.  When a baby is watching television he is not being actively engaged in conversation which is essential for the development of language skill.  When a baby is in a room with an adult that is watching a program that adult is not actively engaged in conversation with her.  When a baby or toddler is watching television they are losing precious time that they could use exploring and learning from their environment and their experiences   When a baby is watching television she is not using  her body to move and practice her motor skills. It is for all these reasons that I feel that babies and young children should avoid or be exposed to as limited television and related technologies as possible. 

Let me know what you think.

Ways to Build Your Baby's Attention

Your baby will be interested in things that are different, therefore when stimulating learning and attention you should create an environment with many differences. Some examples of differences are: sounds that can be high or low and items of contrasting colors or size such as things that are very big or very little.  Provide your baby with new and different things to look at, feel, taste, and listen to.  Provide things to engage with that you know that your baby is interested in, such as certain songs or objects you have observed that he enjoys or is curious about. Other ways of stimulating your baby's interest are using his favorite toys or including his name in play such as when reading a story or telling a nursery rhyme.  You can help train your baby to stay alert and shift attention by your interactions with him through your facial expressions, voice tone, and games that facilitate visual tracking.