- [Announcer] Support
for What Matters Most: Your Child's First Five Years is provided by the
Herzfeld Foundation and the Terri and Verne
Holoubek Family Foundation. (soft piano music) (applause) - Hello. How nice
to see all of you. I'm Portia Young, the
host of Milwaukee PBS's 10:36 program. As a mother of two
wonderful, kind, and I think smart
young children, I know that what we teach our
children and show our children at a very early age will impact them for
the rest of their lives. And I know that all of you
care and love for your children and that's why you're with
us today, so thank you. You'll be hearing from
a panel of experts whose knowledge we hope
will be really helpful to all of you. Dr. Dipesh Navsaria, Ms. Toshiba Adams, Ms. Ivelis Perez, and Ms. Lana Nanide. And later on, you'll
have the chance to ask them your questions and that's why
they're here today, to share their knowledge
and their advice. Our first guest is
Dr. Dipesh Navsaria, and Dr. Nusaria is the founder of the Pediatric
Early Literacy Project at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, and he's also the founder
of the Wisconsin Affiliate of the nationally recognized
program Reach Out and Read. Dr. Navsaria also has been
involved with Wisconsin chapter of the American Academy
of Pediatrics campaign to address the health
effects of child poverty. He cares deeply about the
development of young children and that's why we are
delighted to have him with us this afternoon. Please welcome Dr.
Dipesh Navsaria. (applause) - Thank you very much
for having me here today. I'd like to thank our hosts and
our sponsors for this event, it's really a
delight to be here. And really, to be able to speak as a primary care pediatrician who works with
underserved populations, about the important
role of parenting and about the projects
that are out there is really fantastic. So, one of my degrees is
actually in library science, I'm actually trained as
a children's librarian, so I thought we'd
start off with a story because I think even
adults deserve story time. And what I wanna do is
start off by reading to you from The Dot, which is a
book by Boston based author Peter H. Reynolds. "Art class was over, but
Vashti sat glued to her chair. "Her paper was empty. "Vashti's teacher leaned
over the blank paper. "'Ah, a polar bear in
a snowstorm,' she said. "'Very funny!' said Vashti. "'I just can't draw.' "Her teacher smiled. "'Just make a mark and
see where it takes you.' "Vashti grabbed a marker "and gave the paper
a good, strong jab. "'There!' "Her teacher picked up the
paper and studied it carefully. "'Hmm.' "She pushed the paper toward
Vashti and quietly said, "'Now sign it.' "Vashti thought for a moment. "'Well, maybe I can't draw,
but I can sign my name.' "The next week when Vashti
walked into art class, "she was surprised to see
what was hanging above "her teacher's desk. "It was the little
dot she had drawn. "Her dot, all framed
in swirly gold. "'Hmm. I can make a
better dot than that!' "She opened her never before
used set of watercolors "and set to work. "Vashti painted and painted. "A red dot. A purple dot. "A yellow dot. A blue dot. "The blue mixed with the yellow. "She discovered she
could make a green dot. "Vashti kept experimenting, "lots of little dots
and many colors. "'If I can make little dots,
I can make big dots too.' "Vashti splashed her
colors with a bigger brush "on bigger paper to
make bigger dots. "Vashti even made a dot
by not painting a dot. "At the school art
show a few weeks later, "Vashti's many dots
made quite a splash. "Vashti noticed a little
boy gazing up at her. "'You're a really great artist! "'I wish I could draw,' he said. "'I bet you can,' said Vashti. "'Me? No, no, not me. "'I can't draw a straight
line with a ruler.' "Vashti smiled. She handed the
boy a blank sheet of paper. "'Show me.' "The boy's pencil shook
as he drew his line. "Vashti stared at
the boy's squiggle. "And then she said, "'Sign it.'" So, we'll come back to that
story a little bit later, there's a reason I chose that and I think there's some nice
things that come out of it. But I wanna point out
something that was said earlier and that I think the
science really supports. That parents already
have their resources, the knowledge and
so on that they need in order to be good parents and help build
their child's brain. There's sometimes this
idea that the brain just develops on its own and actually, it doesn't. Some things are in
our genes, okay, so that the blueprint's there. But what we need is
the right stimulation to be able to take those
patterns, those blueprints and really have it come
out as good, useful skills. We don't want children to only
be born with survival skills, alright, because then
that's all they'll know. If they're constantly
exposed to violence and noise and yelling and
those sorts of things, but if they're given loving,
nurturing interactions, relationships that are coming from caregivers, then what will happen is they will flourish. Their brain circuitry will
really come out there. And we all have the
same genetic potential for these rich learning skills. Okay? It's not that
certain people have them or don't have them or
anything like that, we all have them, the question is whether
they actually come out. So, there's sort of
a three legged stool that you can think
of for developmental and health trajectories
that play out over time. So, one of the things
that we look at are the biology, right? We look at this all the time
in medicine and the sciences and those things
are important, okay, we need to make sure
everything happened right. You know, pre-term babies
we know are at higher risk because their brains were
not quite ready to be out and so on. These are important things. But guess what? We
focus a lot on this, but there's something else
that's just as important, and that is a
socio-economic environment that children are born
and brought up in. Believe it or not,
a child's zip code matters more than
their genetic code when it comes to development. And a few blocks can
make a huge difference. And then we realized
it's not just a broad socio-economic
environment, but guess what? What matters is what's happening immediately around the child. The attachment, the relationship
patterns that go on. All of these things,
who's with them at home, who's with them in
their childcare center, how are these people
interacting with that child? They matter just as
much as the other two. And that's really
quite critical. So, it may sound a little
strange when I say to you that the main driver of
development in children is relationships. And that sounds a little
warm and fuzzy, doesn't it? That's great. But the fact is it's true. The only thing that
drives development is loving, nurturing,
reciprocal interactions, reciprocal meaning
back and forth, that young children have with those around them. And if you had to pick out
what is the key ingredient, what's the magic there
that makes a difference? It's that back and forth. So, when your child,
when your infant points at something and you say, "Oh,
yeah, you're right! "There's a red
balloon up there." You're doing a really
profound, important thing, even to that young infant. Your saying your action, your observation,
that pointing matters. It matters enough
that I'm looking at it and I'm commenting on it. What you're saying is that you can start to trust that
when you point at something, that I'm probably
gonna look there. And I'm probably
gonna validate that. And when a baby gets
this early on in life it is incredibly
affirming for them. Now, when you don't
have high quality, nurturing interactions,
it does affect the brain. And I want to show
you one image here, these are head CT scans. These are both three
year old children. The one on the left,
the image on the left is a typically developing child. The one on the right is
a child who underwent extreme emotional neglect, and this is really an
extreme circumstance, this is a child from one of the Eastern European
orphanages in the 1980s where they had too many
kids and not enough staff. Those staff were running
around trying to keep up with the basic needs,
so they were fed, they were bathed,
they were clothed, but no one talked to
them, or barely did. No one interacted, no
one responded to them when they commented on
the world around them. So, without needing
a radiologist, you can look at
those images and say, hey, that head on
the right is small. Right? It's much smaller
than the one on the left. That brain looks
kind of shrunken, it doesn't look as
richly developed. Now, this is an
extreme circumstance, but the environment, again, affects how the
brain comes together. I wanna show you one slide of
just three brain structures because I think it's
important to realize that there's such a rich
science behind this. There's the part of the
brain called the amygdala, this is our fear center, right? This is what keeps us alive when there's a bear in front of us. And when kids have
this constant barrage of these sorts of
things early on life, their amygdalae
actually get larger, this is work that's been
done right at UW-Madison by Professor Seth Pollock, to show that there's a
difference between kids who've been exposed to adverse
circumstances early in life versus those who haven't. But here's the good news: there's two other
parts of the brain that counter the
effects of the amygdala. One is what we call the
prefrontal cortex, okay? This is your reasoning,
your thinking, your long-term kind of planning, your ability to delay
gratification, right, this is what makes
you think months out, years out, and so on. This is part of the brain
that is not as well wired in teenagers,
actually, which is why teenagers are sometimes
impulsive and do crazy things. I have two teenagers
myself at home, so. You see that there's
less density of neurons in those kids who've had that
early adverse circumstances. And you see that part of the
brain is not as active as well. And then you have the
part of the brain called the hippocampus, big
role in memory and mood. The hippocampi are much smaller. Okay, so we've shown
this on imaging, so the reason I'm showing
you this is to say it's not just, oh, you know, this is something that
someone thinks or some theory, that we can actually show
correlates in the brain that explain some of the
behaviors that we see in kids who are struggling
in school, you know, and so on. And as a primary
care pediatrician who works at a
community health center, this is one of the
things that really gives me the most trouble. I see children at
ages six, seven, 12, 14, and they're
struggling in school, and their behavior's
really all over the place. And what I've learned to say is you go back pre-natally to when their mom was
pregnant with them and asked about
everything that happened, and I don't just
mean like, you know, their birth weight
and all that business, you know, were
you ever homeless? Did you always have
enough food to eat? And so on and so forth, and
what I started to realize is that young children
often have a huge pile-up of these things and then we see how things
are happening in school. So, the question we should ask, that we should ask in our
schools, our childcare centers, in any interactions we have, shouldn't be what's
wrong with you, it should be what
happened to you. Because it actually
explains a lot. The other thing is adversity
plays out in other ways and I'm gonna show you
just two graphs here. This comes from a large,
large study done in the '90s, it's been repeated
multiple times. This showed the number
of adverse events
in a child's life. The more adversity there was, the more likely the child was
to have developmental delay. Right? They were behind on
their speech, or their language, or whatever that may be. And guess what? It's
not just development, it's things like heart
disease as adults. 50 years later, we actually
see three times the risk of heart disease as an adult, this is like, in
their 50s and 60s. So, well away from
their childhood. So, these things are
playing out in our biology in many different ways. Now, here's the good news: here's what makes the difference when it comes to all
these sorts of issues I've just kind of
highlighted for you and you're getting a very
brief version of all of this. The thing that guards against
it, that acts as a buffer against these types of things is nurturing, loving relationships. Okay? And it needs to
only be, at most, one, one person. And that's really
critical to recognize, that even when things
aren't going so well, one nurturing, loving adult can actually counter so
many of these things. Because it reminds a child
that they're not alone in the world, it reminds them that
there is someone out there who's in their corner. And that one person
can provide so much of that back and forth. Now, don't get me wrong, I would love there to be many
people doing this, of course. But at least one person can
really make a key difference. We hope it's a parent, but it could also
be another relative. It could be an adult, you
know, older sister or brother. It could be even a neighbor. It might even be a teacher. You know, again, we
hope it's someone close and in their lives, but these sorts of things
make such a key difference. Because a few things about
that developing brain, so, you know, we used to think that learning began
at about age six, this was like,
over 100 years ago. And the United States did
something really amazing. We said everyone, irrespective
of their background, should be able to have an education, irrespective
of their ability to pay, their social class, anything, so we created free
public education. Then we realized it
doesn't start at six. Five, and we imported
this thing from Germany that we call kindergarten. Right? That's why
the name is so funny, right, it's German. And we called in this
innovation called kindergarten. And remember, where was
the first kindergarten in the United States? Watertown, Wisconsin, yes. We were one of the innovators. Now, here's the thing: we have not kept pace in
the last 200 hundred years because we've realized
the science is showing us learning starts at birth. And we have a lot of
people doing very good, rich learning out there. A lot of childcare
centers and headstarts and four year old
kindergartens and so on. I mean, it's kind
of a patchwork. And here's the other thing: really young children are often not necessarily
in early childhood settings. So, how do we get to them? How do we get to children
in the earliest days of life so they're getting these rich, nurturing, loving interactions? Well, what's one thing that
almost every kid out there like, 99.99% does? They go to the doctor's office. Alright, you can be the
richest person in the country and you take your
kid to the doctor. You can be living in
a homeless shelter and while it might
be challenging, you generally bring
your kid to the doctor, I see patients like
that all the time. So, maybe we can
use that network to try to connect with families and start this message that
will then be reinforced later through other early
childhood settings, through preschools, and
through the school system, and so on. Because we need to
recognize things like this. There are 700 new connections
between the neurons in the brain per second in infancy and toddlerhood. It's crazy fast, those neurons are wiring up and we want them to wire
in really good ways. And we want to take
advantage of that time. Because it is a lot easier to make those good connections in the first 1000 to 2000
days of life, so really, by age five or so,
than it is later on. This is why we don't
wait to fix speech delay until they're eight, because it's a lot
easier to do it at three than it is at eight. And it's a lot easier
to do it at 18 months than it is at three,
and so on and so forth. And long before we had
all these MRI scans and other studies and so on, Frederick Douglass said
something fantastic, "It is easier to
build strong children "than to repair broken men." So, how do we take the world
of the regular check up and say, what can we do here? Because here's something
I want to tell you: I think most parents, in the
last five years for sure, most parents have heard
this message about read to your child,
talk to your child, sing to your child, right? We put it on billboards,
we put ads on the bus, we have small ads during
TV spots, you know, telling us about this. It's not news to most of
the parents I work with. So, the issue is not
an information gap. So then, why isn't it
happening as much as we'd like? Because what we're seeing
is, sometimes, a skills gap. And here's the thing,
I've learned over time that it's very easy for
me to say to a parent, "Just talk to your child.
That's what they need from you." And guess what?
They listen to me. And they go home and they
sit down their six month old, and they look at
their six month old and they start to say something. Now, if people around
you haven't done this, you start wondering am I doing this right? Am I saying the right
words to my child? My child can't talk back
yet, they're only six months. This is hard. And you start to
get that self doubt. And hey, as a parent, you know, I'm filled with self
doubt all the time, my teenagers now tell me I'm
not doing the right thing, but you worry, are
you doing it right? And if you, yourself didn't do all that well in
school, you might wonder am I even the right
person to be doing this? But think back to, you know, what we said, the parent
is really what's key. The parent interacting
with their child is really what they need. So, what that parent
needs is skills. Right? It's not an information
gap, it's a skills gap. Now, how can we do this? We
can do it through coaching. We can coach that parent
and we can model things. But here's the thing, how many of you have ever
done peekaboo to a child? Okay, most of the room.
Good, I'm glad to hear that. So, peekaboo, you might
see a young infant and go, "Ah! Peekaboo!"
Without even thinking. Now, is that hardwired
into our brain? Does peekaboo happen on its own? Actually, it doesn't. Peekaboo is something that
we learn by watching others. Other people did it. And of course, when you do
peekaboo to a happy infant, what do they do? They smile, so you're
reinforced to do it more. But you haven't had
that modeled for you. You may not know, am I doing this right, what am
I supposed to do? And so on. So, we can model, we can coach, and we can do this in actually
relatively small ways. So, when I talk to parents,
what do I tell them? What's the advice
that I try to offer? I say read together daily. Okay, because if
you don't know if you're talking to
your child well, all those sorts of things, reading gives you
that scaffold, right? To sit and look at
a book together. And I want to be very clear that you don't have
to read every page. In fact, you don't even need
to read the words on the page. Toddlers, okay, 18 month olds, how long is their
attention span? Half a second, right? Right, and that's normal,
that is a normal thing. So, a parent might think, oh,
my child doesn't like reading. Because their child
is wandering off and they've just been
reading all the words. I coach them, I say, nuh uh. Let the child hold the book,
let them turn the pages. I don't care if
they go backwards. I don't care if they
pick out random pages. You don't have the
read the story, no one's gonna come
give you a test on it. Okay? What I want you to
do is just let them engage, so maybe they're
looking through the book and you can say, "Where's
Max in this picture? "Where's Max? Ooh, there
he is! And he's in a boat. "What color is that boat? "Yes, you're right,
it's a red boat." It turns it into this
dialogue, this back and forth. And parents get it, it's modeled for them in
just a couple of moments, and then they say, ah, okay, I understand what you're saying. And they're much more
likely to be successful in doing this back and forth
interaction at a young age. And I know it works, you
know how I know it works? I asked them the same
questions at 15 months, 18 months, 24 months, how often do you have a chance
to share books together? And most of them
look at me and say, "Yes, we do it every day,
because you told us to." Okay, and so I say
great, that's wonderful. I also recommend a bedside lamp and let your child
read for a few minutes, even if it's five
minutes at night. It sets up that habit
of nighttime reading and kind of helps
them to settle down. Limit screen time. So, children under two
should not be on screens. Okay, there is no evidence of any benefit from a
screen alone to a child. Zero benefit, I challenge
anyone to show that in any commercially
available product. And that holds true for DVDs,
it's holds true for apps, things like that. As, my saying that
I enjoy, says that there is no app to
replace your lap. Okay? So, limit screen time to
less than an hour a day. For those older kids,
none for the younger ones. No screens in the bedrooms. Audio books are fine
for those older kids. Use your libraries, they are one of our
great civic resources and have so much to offer. And again, have reading
be fun, and not a chore. Because we want this
to be something that is a nurturing, loving,
reciprocal relationship the child looks forward to. So, when they get to
preschool or kindergarten or whatever it is and the teacher pulls
out a book and says, "We're gonna read!" You
have a child who says, "Yes, a book!" And
they're excited about this and ready to learn than the child who
looks at it and says, "Oh, what is this? I'm
not sure what this is." It's not just enough
to focus on the child. It's not enough to focus
just on the parent. We can't view parents just
as a way to get to children, and we can't view
kids as an impediment to their parents doing better. What we need are truly
blended approaches that build the parents'
skills and well-being as well as the child over time. And that's really
what we talk about when we mean the two
generation approach. I want to end with a photograph, I took this myself,
this is my wife reading to my son years ago. And I caught them in this moment of being lost in
a book together. And this reminds
me of two things: children are made readers in
the laps of their parents. So, we need to encourage
that, we need to nurture that, we need to support that, we
need to build those skills. And number two: parents are their child's
first and best teachers. And they are completely
qualified to do so, they might just
need a little hand. We all do, I'm speaking
for myself as well, despite doing this
work, you know, we all just do the best
we can with our kids. So, I'll leave you with
those two thoughts there about children and all, so, thank you very much
and I appreciate it. (applause) - Thank you very much,
Dr. Navsaria, thank you. Thank you. I'd now like to introduce
our other experts. Ivelis Perez is an
elementary school teacher with the Milwaukee
public schools. (applause) Lana Nenide is the
executive director of the Wisconsin alliance
for Infant Mental Health. (applause) And finally Toshiba
Adams is an instructor in early childhood
education here at MATC. (applause) Welcome to you all. Let's go to the first question. In the fight against
childhood obesity, it's reached, now,
the preschool level, what are some
innovative strategies to try to combat this issue? - Well, obesity is
a rising problem and has been for
some time, although, I will say the two to
five year old age group is one of the ones that we've
actually seen some success with. A lot of it is really about being able to advise
parents and again, help them not just
have the information about healthy eating,
but also skills. You know, preparing healthy food is not necessarily automatic and being able to coach
parents and show them how can you do this
and do this well so that their family will
actually eat the food that they're preparing
is really critical. I think we need to make
better use of dieticians. You know, in my own
clinic we actually have a dietician that I
can get in the room immediately after
I see a family, just after we've had
a conversation about perhaps a rise in weight and about the health concerns
that might be connected. So, while this is
fresh in their mind, I can actually have
them see my dietician. There are other examples
out there as well. - I also just want
to add to that, this is not a very
innovative strategy, but just informing parents
that it's important for their children to not
have a lot of sedentary time. And so children need to
get up and be physical, get outdoor playtime to kind of combat
some of those calories that they're intaking on
a regular basis as well. - I like what you
said earlier, Toshiba, about being the role model too. I mean, if you're not
eating good things, they're not going
to eat them either. - It is important
for me to role model the best practices that I
want my children to exhibit in their life, so I
can't encourage them to be healthy eaters or to
exercise on a regular basis if I'm not also modeling
those types of behaviors, so, I try to make sure I'm
doing that on a regular basis. It doesn't always work, but I stick with it and
you just can't give up. - Right. Get those apples, get
those carrots cut up, and have them see
you eating them. - Exactly. - And also create good
experiences when you eat, right? So, it's not a power struggle. So, it's a joyful
experience together. - We have our first
question. Go right ahead. - My name is Yvette, and I have a goddaughter,
she's two years old, she never sits still. And she stays up late. What kind of tips
can I get for her? - First of all, it's probably
developmentally appropriate for your two year old to
move around a lot like that. If you're having issues with
that child during bedtime, I would suggest that you
develop a bedtime routine. Something that that child
can expect to happen on a day to day basis,
so, for example, you may start, if
bedtime is eight o'clock, you may start bathtime at 7:30, then you may offer the baby
or the young child more milk to kinda get them a
little bit, you know, into the mood of being relaxed, and I would also suggest
reading a book to your child in the bed and
kind of closing up with that type of routine and doing that on
a regular basis because then the child
will look forward to those opportunities
and engaging and interacting with you. - And having a routine
and expectation really makes a big
difference for them. And the other thing I'll say is you're not gonna cause
problems for your child by setting good limits. Sometimes parents worry, right, that if I don't give
my child what they want or what they need, am I
gonna harm my relationship with them? Am I being a bad
parent by saying no? Or not, you know, allowing
them to do something. It's okay, kids actually
need good limits set. I see more problems in kids who get no limit setting versus those who get reasonable
amounts of limit setting. - And they'll
never tell you that they want the limits to be set, but it does provide them
with a level of security, and it provides them with
something to look forward to, like they need a
safe environment and it's up to us as
parents and their caregivers to make sure that we set those
examples and those limits for those children. - Yeah, if it were up
to my five year old, it'd be dessert every day. And for every meal. - Yeah. - Okay, our next question,
let's go to this side. - Hi, my name is Barb. I'm wondering, I do child care, and I'm
wondering what kind of good experiences I
can give to the kids without spending a lot of money. - Well, I'm an educator
and there isn't, you know, a lot of funds,
a lot of money that we could, you know,
purchase anything, so you have a really
good question. So, it's a matter
of being creative, a matter of exposing them to, you know, simple
things, Play-Doh, you could even create
your own Play-Doh. There's recipes and
materials that you can find, even at home to create learning experiences and play-based
experiences for them. Movement, singing, there's a
lot of things that you could do throughout the day
with young learners that do not include
cost, that just, even just letting them
socialize and play throughout the day
in the child care, instructored activity centers throughout the child care don't necessarily need
to be fancy, you know. You could have an area where they're painting or an area where they're
using different activities throughout the day. - And singing and
dancing is always free. It's a free activity, so you can sing, you can
dance with the children throughout the day and include
them in your daily routines without having to
purchase a lot of gadgets. Again, through some
of Dr. Navsaria's work and some of the other research, the gadgets don't really matter
as much as the relationship and the building of that
relationship with the child, so, as long as you're there, as long as you're
engaged with them, that's going to have
a more lasting impact than a lot of toys. - And to be honest, sometimes you buy a
child an expensive gift and what they tend
to play with a lot is the box the gift came with. So, some of the best
things you can do, you know, some big box
that's from refrigerators or washing machines, that
could be recycled into forts and, you know, so there's
pillows, there are old boxes, there are cereal boxes that
could be made into blocks. So, creativity and presence is what
they really, truly need. - Right, thank you. Alright, our next question. - My name is Alya, my question is my daycare said I shouldn't let my child
have a pacifier or a bottle, is that right? - How old is your child? - Two years. - Two years. - Well, first of all, if
your child care provider told you that your two
year old should not have a bottle or a pacifier,
they should probably provide rationale for providing
you with those suggestions. I know that sometimes, you know, when kids start
to develop teeth, the pacifier or something
in their mouth constantly can force their teeth to kinda
not grow in appropriately. Now, we all know
that a two year old is gonna lose those teeth and they're going to get
their adult teeth eventually, but I also think that
it could have an impact on language development, because if the child always
has something in their mouth and maybe they're
not talking as much as you would like them to do. So, that would be my
feedback for rationale as to why maybe you
want to get rid of that, and then also,
sometimes at that age, they'll just let
the milk or whatever kind of sit in their mouth,
not really drinking it, and then it'll cause
tooth decay as well. So, but typically, they'll wean themselves, but that could be
some reasons why you might want to
work with your child, to start to take it
away on a slower pace but not just take it away. Say, it's gone and you don't
have your binky anymore, but, again, a
routine for maybe how you would want to start to
take that away from your child. But we have a pediatrician
here with us, so... (laughs) - But, if I might, I think it's also very important
that the child feels safe. And it appears that
it's helping him to regulate and feel calm, and so, I think as
Toshiba was saying, so, if that's something
that needs to happen, it probably has to
happen gradually. Right, so, it's not a cold
turkey kind of situation, right? 'Cause the most important thing for language to develop,
for everything to develop is for the child to
feel safe and regulated. - I agree with both
these comments. The pediatric dentists tell
us they're not as worried as much as they used to be about teeth issues and all. But the bottle has the
problem of allowing milk, sugars, and things like
that to sit on the teeth and I see a lot of
cavities as a result. But your point, Lana,
is fantastic that sometimes kids hold on to things whether it's a
pacifier, or a bottle, or a book, or a blanket,
or a stuffed bear because it makes them
feel comfortable. It's a security object, right? So, is there a way you
can replace that object with something else that
also helps them feel comfortable as well? - Hi, I'm Brandon, I
don't have any children but I am enrolled in the
early childhood program at MATC. In my experience in
the child care field, I've heard of stories of parents
struggling with separation between them and the child,
maybe when they're going to work or dropping the
kid off at daycare. So, my question is
what are some ways that the parents can help ease
or eliminate separation? - First of all, hooray
for being a male and being in the
early childhood field. (applause) And for being Toshiba's student. (all laugh) And second of all, I mean, things happen in
parents' life, right? And those things, those
events, of course, affect the child's well-being. So, if the adults can be adults and be pleasant with
each other and friendly and polite, right, for
the sake of the child, that's so important. It's
all about relationships and children learn
through relationships. So, adults need to remember how
to interact with each other, how to be good models for
the sake of the child, even if there is a
difficult situation within the couple. - So, you're asking for
like, strategies on how to separate? - Ways to allow the
child to be happier with the idea of separation
or not be so stressed out about the day of separation. - Yeah, I'm thinking also, depending on the
age of the child, kind of talk them through
what's going to happen, don't just abruptly leave
them in a strange environment and expect them to be okay. Because they may not be okay
anyway with the talking, but at least it kind
of reassures them, you're kind of walking
them through the process, this is what's going
to happen next, and I'm going to leave you but when you wake up
from naptime today, daddy or mommy will be
back to retrieve you from your daycare center. So, it's really important, also, for child care providers
to have schedules throughout the day, especially
for preschool aged children because that's how
they read time. So, they know, well, mommy
and daddy's gonna drop me off, and then I'm going
to have breakfast, and then we're
going toilet time, and then we're gonna
have free play, and then we're gonna go outside, and then we're gonna have nap, and when I wake up
from that, every day, mom and dad is gonna be there. So, again, it's really important
to establish those routines because that's how
children feel secure in their environments, so, kind of talking them through it, making sure that your
child care provider has established routines
so your child knows when you're going to come
back for them every day. - I do want to ask one question
that came from advance, so this one, if we can have
Ivelis please answer this one because if we speak a
different language at home but we want our children
to learn English, should I read to my
child in my home language or in English? - Well, research and I
would also recommend you continue to read to your
child in your home language. I mean, children will
learn English in school, they will learn English
in the community, so it's important for family, if they want to keep the
native and first home language, to continue the home language, children are capable to learn one, two, or many,
many languages. It's a matter of consistency, continuation, and exposure. So, they will learn English, it's okay to speak to your
child in your native language. My own children, we speak Spanish at home and they're in bilingual schools and they learn both languages, so the older kids are
bi-literate right now, so they read and write
in Spanish and English. So, it takes time
and commitment, and it's okay to
continue speaking your native language at home. - Okay, thank you. Please say your name and
the age of your children, if you have any. - Hello, my name's Nima Agbi and I'm in an early
childhood education program and I have two children,
the oldest is three and the youngest is one. And my question is for
today is what's one thing that you guys wish
parents should know about child development? - That relationships matter. Positive relationships
are impetus to a child's growth
and development and the connections that are
formulated within their brains, so, just to try to be present
and available for your child, speak with them,
read books to them, help to enhance their
language development, I think that's
really key because language development
for preschoolers have a lasting impact on
their educational achievement and how well they will fare
in the K-12 system as well. So, it's not just we're
doing it for today but we're doing
it for a lifetime because it really
matters over a lifetime for those children. - It's truly all
about relationships and one thing that I
would emphasize is that there is no such
thing as a baby, there is a baby
and somebody else and that somebody else
has incredible power and incredible influence
on everything that baby will experience, right? Like a diaper change could
be a marvelous opportunity for connection, right,
for play, for peekaboo. Or it could a mundane routine that's smelly and wet, right? And it's up to the parent,
or up to the caregiver to create what it
is for the child. And so, if parents could
realize their incredible power and their incredible
potential for the baby, for the whole new generation, that would be beautiful. - Our next question here. - I'm Raina, and although
I'm not a mother right now, in the future I hope to
be, and I'm also enrolled in the early childhood
education program, and I was just curious to know what are some ways that we
can encourage responsibility in children when they are young? - That's a tough one. - Well, in the classroom, we have helpers, you know, we have helpers who
pass out breakfast, we have helpers that
help clean the table, so, I mean, just
simple tasks that gives them responsibilities
and daily routines. Children love to help, I mean, we don't have to give them
the most difficult jobs but I think including them in the work that goes
on in the home and also in the classroom
as future educators, I think it's important to really include the children into
what goes on in the classroom and making them feel part
of the classroom community. You know, simple things
as passing out pencils or being the line
leader, you know, they love all that. - I think, also,
recognizing that what's developmentally
appropriate for children to do and how much they can take in. So, if you tell children here are these five or six
things we'd like you to do and they're two, they're not going to remember
anything past the first one. And then you get angry, right, "I told you to do
this and this." Not gonna happen
in a two year old. So, also setting them
up for success based on what their
developmental stage is. - Okay, thank you. Here's a question and
it's a pretty tough one: "I can't afford child care. "My son has to go with
whoever is available "when I need to work. "Is this hurting him? - I think a lot of
parents are unable to afford child care and that's why I've always been a proponent
of universal child care, so that it's not a financial
burden on the families. But I think it's
not going to have a real negative
impact on the child if the person who is
the caregiver is still utilizing the best
practices and again, these relationships and
playing with the child and getting on their level, introducing books and language. So, anyone can do
it, it's not... I mean, we're sitting up here and you all are stating
that we're experts but we, I don't consider
myself an expert at anything. I'm learning just
like many of you, I read and I research
and that's how I find best practices to teach
to my studentS and to... In my home environment as well, so I think it's like Dr.
Navsaria said earlier, it's all doable, it's
just making sure that people have access
to the resources and having access to
individuals that can help model the appropriate
behaviors for them. - Thank you. Our
next question here. - Good afternoon,
my name is Mynza. I am the mother of a nine
year old and seven year old, so not so much
little-little anymore. My question comes in in regards to a greater
community impact, I think, you know,
many of us who are a little more privileged, we are in professional
positions, we're educated, we understand the
significance of early childhood development. But for communities who are
still truly underserved, what can we do as
a bigger community to really get the
message into the homes, you know, into our
underserved communities that this is truly significant
to our children's future. You know, what are
some models out there where we really have
true community impact? - I think that's where
the concept of zip code comes in again. Because unfortunately,
in our city of Milwaukee and across our country,
your zip code matters and your zip code determines
the type of resources that you have access to, which determines the
type of quality programs that you have access
to for early education and also for K-12. And unfortunately, we don't
have enough those quality institutions within our cities and I'm not stating
that we don't have any, I have colleagues here
who run great programs for early education
and K-12 programs, but they're not able
to service enough. And so, I think we really
need to rally together and talk to our
political agencies within the city of
Milwaukee because we as a whole need to do
better for our society. We can't determine that because
you live in the suburbs, you deserve better or
because you live in the city, you don't deserve better,
that's really a gross reality that we're witnessing right now. So, we really need to
push forward policies that's going to actually make
a change within our society because otherwise, that
achievement gap that we see, it's not going to go away, it's actually gonna
continue to spread and research is showing that
it does continue to spread because children don't have
access to good nutrition, meals, and stuff like that
in their neighborhood. They have access to fast food or there's not employment
opportunities for their parents so they cannot break
this cycle of poverty. So, I think it's bigger than
just some of the parents, and the students, and
us here on this panel, it's a wholistic issue,
it's a societal issue and people need to come
together to make a difference for all families so that all
children have opportunities to greatness and success
in the long term. I don't know if you
have other suggestions, you're from MPS. - Yeah, in Milwaukee public schools
also offers headstarts but there's also a model
out there in Milwaukee, I know several
agencies offer them. They're called early headstarts or they work with the families from when the mothers
are expecting until, from birth until
they start school. I know Centres Hispanos
is one of the agencies and I know there's several
other organizations but like, you all have
mentioned it's a big need, there's a need for more programs and more families to
access those programs. - Sometimes there's
a tendency to say we don't know how
to do this, right? That we don't know how to
do this well and so on. The fact is we actually
do know what to do and there's actually great
examples from other countries including the United Kingdom, which is arguably
much closer to us societally than some
other countries. But here in the US, we
often do one pile-up program and we don't fund it well and we don't look out far enough and then we throw up
our hands and say, "Oh, well, it didn't work." Right? We need to be able
to substantially invest in multi-prong programs with
meaningful investment. And the other part of the
question you're asking is one about scale, you know? So, I love home
visiting programs. Home visiting programs
are fantastic, they have great
evidence and so on. We don't have enough
dollars to be able to get everyone who could
use a home visitor, and I would argue
that's perhaps probably most of the population, to get a home visitor
into their homes. So, what we need is a kind
of a multi-tiered approach. What is it that everyone gets that's not gonna
be heavy-hitting, but everyone gets it because
they probably need it? And for the folks who fall
through that first net, or that second net
that has smaller holes, that's a little pricier. And then once the smallest net. All of these levels, this is kind of a
public health approach, all of these levels
are necessary but none of them on
their own are sufficient. - Our next question. - My name is Mark, my youngest child is 22, hardly in preschool
at this point. But I have two nieces with
children under age one who are looking for guidance and I have a lot of
interest in education. There's a lot of
research now that identifies perseverance,
self-control, curiosity, optimism,
and conscientiousness as essential traits that
children need to have when they get to the
formal education system if they're going to have
success in that system for years to come and
even after they are graduates of the
education system. And so, my question
is how can parents teach those things,
in particular, parents who are in
the stressed lives of people living in poverty,
to their preschool children? - First of all, I
appreciate your asking about such important things
as curiosity, right, conscientiousness,
and so, as a society, we should really start
focusing on teaching children emotional literacy, not
just literacy, right? So, just like we teach
children alphabet and calendar and colors, we should teach
children emotion words. Sad, disappointed, frustrated, these words allow them,
when they're a little older, preschool age, to
also feel regulated, because they can then understand
that they're experiencing many emotional states and they
have labels for those states. So, I think it starts
with teaching children emotional literacy, right? And exhibiting
emotional literacy. So, there are such programs
as emotional coaching, we talked about
coaching a little bit, that teach adults to
notice their own states and notice their
children's states and just giving them labels
at the beginning, right? Name it to tame it approach. So, little things like that. - I think this is a great
segway to a question that we got beforehand. This is great, "My two year
old does a lot of pushing "and hitting," not mine,
this is the question. (all laugh) Although, she's
getting there, no, no. "When he is with
the other children. "So, I make him say sorry "but it doesn't seem
to change anything. "What else can I do?" - You know, children
at that young age are naturally what we call
egocentric, right? They think only
about themselves and yeah, the sorry can seem
half-hearted and kind of rote because they have a hard time taking the
perspective of others. And I agree, this
is a nice connection to the previous question, a few of my pediatric
colleagues and I recognized that there was a lot of things parents were
struggling with, with current events really
in the last few months. But how do they teach
kindness in their children? How do they teach a
lot of these qualities that you're discussing? And upper response, actually, was to come up with a book list. High quality children's books often teach exactly
these sorts of things. And do I expect the two year
old to get it, you know, about really being
sorry? Of course not. But if they're at least
hearing the words, they're hearing the
themes, and all that, and sometimes it's
a little bit easier for a child to be able to
relate to someone in a book, or to even reference
a character in a book, and say, you know, "Oh,
I feel like so-and-so," rather than say I
feel like whatever. And use that as a way to
communicate and connect, so this is, again, where
high quality children's books actually do make a difference. - You could say, I feel like Max when his mom sent him
to bed without dinner. - Yes, exactly.
- Alright. Okay, we are almost at the point where we're going to
have to wrap things up, but I do want to get
to our next question. - Hello, my name is Heather
and I am first time mom of a now five month old. I have a couple questions
about baby sign language. One, is there any
evidence that it can aid in speech development? And two, what age is it
for me to start practicing signing with my baby? - I think baby sign language
has been very useful and I've actually recommended
it to some patients and some families where their baby may actually
be speech delayed because one of the things
we often see in those kids is frustration. They want to express
something and they can't, so we can give them another
route to doing that. It makes a difference, I mean, suddenly the only sign
they know is more, but that's a pretty big one
in most toddler's worlds. And so on. I don't know that there's
evidence that says you should start at this age and it will work by this point, I don't know that
anyone's trialed that, I don't know if any of
you have seen anything, but it can't hurt. And they may not pick it up
initially at a very young age, but they may
eventually get there. - Thank you. - Our final question. - Hi, my name is Rothita, I'm a parent to an
almost three year old and an almost five year old, and I'm also an early
childhood provider. I was a former MPS
teacher for 11 years and I had to go back
into the early childhood because I found that the
children that I was working with kind of already, kind of to this last question, they were masking their,
you know, capability and I felt like we really
needed to get back to birth through five in
order to help make changes. And it seems like there's a
real push in higher education for this relationship based
and experiential learning and we're maybe starting
to catch up to our, the people in the Netherlands
who have kind of done all of that research
and have proven that that's, you know,
really where it's at. Do you feel that there's
hope for the United States, that we're gonna
move out of that in a systematic way? Or do you think
that there's really a long battle ahead? - I just think that we have to feel like
there's hope otherwise, what we're doing every
day doesn't matter, right? So, we have to continue
to feel hopeful, we have to continue to
collaborate and network with individuals that we
feel can make a difference. And just, like,
I'm a proponent for universal education, I am not a proponent for
these standardized tests because I feel like
they create barriers for certain types of kids. If you're not that type of child that fits into that mold,
that can be successful and you know how to test
well, then guess what? When you take that standardized
test in third grade, you're going to be
labeled a certain way and then when you have to
take those standardized tests for ACT and SAT recognition, that's gonna cause a barrier based on what type of
college and university you have access to. That's going to determine
the type of career and profession you're
able to have access to. That's going to determine
the type of income and neighborhood
you're able to live in. And then that system
just recycles once again. So, and yes, I'm hopeful,
there's some issues but I have to remain
hopeful to be here and to do the work
that I do every day. I don't know if that
answers your question, but be hopeful, that's
what I'm saying. But just believe that we can
make a change eventually. - I think I also agree with
you and as an educator, I think we need
to be an advocate. I teach four year olds
and a lot of times, I have to be the
voice in the school, say, hey, this test is not developmentally
appropriate for my students or for their language needs. Or you know, even their
right for them to play because the focus is,
you know, pre-academics. In my classroom, you
know, it's a balance of social-emotional
learning and pre-academics and if they're not ready
emotionally and cognitively, they're not going
to be successful in their further careers. So, I think, as
educators and parents we need to advocate
and be the voice and spread the best practices, and we know what's
right, we just have to push for it harder. - I'd like to thank everyone
for their wonderful questions and the audience, give
yourselves a round of applause. (applause) And thank you to our
panelists for your expertise, your wisdom, and also your
hope, thank you very much. And I'd like to ask Dr. Navsaria to help close out
our program, doctor. - So, we've shared a lot
of different material with you today, a lot of
different concepts and ideas ranging from brain
science and imaging, all the way out to
parent coachings, that's very much from
the evidence-based to what I call
the reality-based. I'd also like to point out I
started out by reading from a book, The Dot. There's
a reason I chose that book and it's because ultimately,
it's about a relationship. It's about a
relationship between a teacher and a
child in that case, it's about a story where
that teacher took that child and really celebrated the
capabilities that she had and understood that she
was having a bad day and that she was frustrated. And there was something else
important that happened, which was that that child
then took those skills and turned around and
mentored another child. And that really is
the hope and promise of really so much of this work. There's a researcher
who, when asked, what is it with all
of these studies? Like, when you look at
all of them, the research, the models, the
problems, all that stuff, what's the one
thing that comes out that makes the
biggest difference? And I think the questioner
was asking about is there a technique or
a method or something. And he stopped and thought
for a second and he said, "You know, what
every child needs "is someone who is
caring, consistent, "and is absolutely
crazy about them." And they said,
"Really, that's it?" Yes. And I leave you
with that thought, that if every child has
at least one caring, consistent adult who
is crazy about them, then really, our society can
accomplish amazing things. Thank you. (applause) - Thank you all, I really
hope you've enjoyed hearing from our panelists
as much as I did. Let's give them another
big thanks for sharing their expertise and their
information with us today. (applause) Thank you, Dr. Dipesh Navsaria, Ivelis Perez, Lana Nanide, and Toshiba Adams. I'm Portia Young, and on
behalf of everyone here at Milwaukee Area
Technical College and Milwaukee PBS,
thank you, and goodbye. (applause) (soft ambient music) - [Announcer] Support
for What Matters Most: Your Child's First Five Years is provided by the
Herzfeld Foundation and the Terri and Verne
Holoubek Family Foundation.
