Self-Esteem and Early Learning

Key People from Birth to School

Rosemary Roberts

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9781412922814, 9781412922807
• eBook ISBN: 9781446236277
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Early Childhood Education

Focusing on the period from birth to school, this book is about babies? and young children?s feelings, their learning; and the ways in which the adults in their lives can support their emotional, social and cognitive development. Looking at the perspectives both of the child and the adult, it presents thought-provoking ideas and questions on how adults can make the most of opportunities to support the children with whom they live and work. A story, in episodes embedded throughout the book, makes this an accessible and enjoyable read.

In this third edition, there are new and updated chapters on:

• Young children?s transitions, with a particular focus on starting school

• Young children?s positive ?learning dispositions?

• Brain research and its possible implications

• Further reading, signposting some enchanting children?s books as well as important new texts.

The book explores the basis of the ?key person? relationship, looking at attachment ?in practice?, and linking developmental issues with the early development of self esteem.

Written for students on early childhood courses and staff in early childhood care and education settings and integrated Children?s Centres, the book will also be of interest to parents and carers.

PART 1

BABIES FIRST

1

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Children learning to be lovable

– INTRODUCING JOE –

‘‘What do you want?’ Mum often mutters this to herself while she watches one of them with that friendly puzzled look. I like hearing her say that, I think it makes them feel safe. All the time I’ve been living with Mum and their dad, she’s been watching them; not in an interfering way but because she loves them and wants to know about them. That’s why they feel so safe. Sometimes I think she watches me a bit too. I hope so.

Once Joe and Lily (she’s his sister) were sitting in the big bath upstairs having a great time playing. I love the way Joe looks in the bath. His curls go even tighter; and his skin is lovely and dark like his dad’s. Mum was holding the towel and looking at his hair – it always looks like it’s a bird’s nest at the back these days.

‘Joe, what shall we do with your hair?’ He stopped playing and looked back at her. ‘What shall we do?’ she asked again. He filled the little pot he had in his hand with water and lifted it towards his head as if he was going to pour it over his hair.

‘Oh no, don’t get it all wet as well!,’ Mum said hastily. Joe watched her anxiously holding the back of his head with his other hand.

‘Mum?’ he said, doubtfully. ‘Mum?’ ‘We’d better wash your face,’ she said. Joe screwed it up to be ready for the horrible moment, knowing it would make her laugh. When she laughs, he knows she loves him.

The kids’ dad was really upset last week. I heard him telling one of his friends how awful it is when your baby doesn’t want you. I know Joe does love his dad, and they play lots of games, but Joe had been really miserable. Mum and their dad sometimes call him ‘Double Trouble’, and that day he was. The others were fed up too; Lily said she wouldn’t be so naughty. (Wouldn’t she just?) Mum said she’s never caught up on sleep since he was born, but he always used to be so good in the daytime that she managed the nights somehow. Mum said she can’t keep feeding him all night, but that’s what he wants, and now he’s being furious and miserable all the time. I saw him really hurt himself the other day when he wanted another biscuit, and Mum said, ‘No’. He was in such a rage that he banged his head on the washing machine by mistake and cried and cried.

Today was better; though. Mum and Joe and I were in the kitchen, and Mum was telling me about her friend who is having a new baby. I think Joe thought Mum was smiling at him, and he gave her a great big grin. When she noticed, she stopped talking and grinned back at him. The kitchen was really quiet, and Joe crawled over to where she was standing by the sink. He bent right over and rested his forehead on her feet and he looked so loving and helpless. After that, he looked up at her; and he was still grinning! So Mum picked him up and gave him a big hug.’

Babies and young children need to be accepted by their important people

Mothers and other important people

Who are babies’ and young children’s ‘important people’? Of course, parents are important, and also – if there are any – are brothers and sisters; then there are other members of the family, friends, key people in day-care, teachers … and so the circle gradually widens. But let’s start at the beginning – the very beginning. For nine months, the baby has been completely surrounded by the mother, and, although we are only beginning to find out about the baby’s life in the womb, there can be no doubt that, when a baby is born, the baby and the mother have already learned things about each other through their bodies that no one else can possibly know. This makes the mother the first ‘important person’ (Winnicott, 1964, pp. 19–24).

The first important person usually, although by no means always, continues to be the mother (Holmes, 1993, pp. 75–7). But what about fathers? And what about other key people? Many fathers would say that their baby knew them right from the start. We cannot be sure of the reasons for this, although it is certainly often the case (Brazelton, 1992, p. 35). Whether the answer is to be found in nature or nurture or a combination of both, one thing is clear: a baby must come to know someone before he or she is able to see that person as ‘important’. In attachment theory, as the mother is the first important person, she acts as the mediator for the baby’s subsequent important people, who are, initially, substitutes for her, and who may sooner or later come to be just as important. This attachment often happens with fathers who share much of the childcare and take over the role of the mother in many ways.

Early brain development: some tentative messages

Awareness of the importance of development in the earliest years of life has risen dramatically over the period 1975–2005, especially in relation to brain development. Various factors have fed this awareness of the importance of the earliest years. In her Fulbright Lecture (2000) entitled ‘The Brain Debate’, Dr Anne Meade wrote:

There is a convergence of findings from neuroscience, cognitive science, development psychology and early childhood education research. Generally, there is agreement that enriched environments such as are found in high quality early childhood settings facilitate the adaptive changes to children’s brains. The enrichment of social relationships – of adult–child interactions – is especially important, remembering of course that the brain is malleable and the changes in response to relationship experience can be both positive and negative for the child.

Meade suggested that brain research does validate and explain many observational/clinical findings, and that imaging research is showing where, when and what is unusual in brain functioning in people with learning and behavioural disorders. While emphasising that behavioural neuroscience is still in its infancy, she draws some tentative conclusions from research about appropriate early experiences for brain development which include the following:

• The quality of interpersonal relationships, i.e. adult–child interactions, is very important. An adult tuning into and responding to the child’s mental state allows his or her brain to develop a capacity to balance emotions and thinking skills.
• Experiences for young children need to address their need for stimulation of all the senses and the associated brain regions. Multi-modal activity – involving the senses, motor skills and thinking – is important.
• Play addresses the brain’s need for multi-sensory, multi-modal experiences. Animal studies suggest that the play needs to include social, complex and challenging experiences.
• Provision for the development of implicit memories is likely to be more fruitful than direct instruction, as the brain circuits for explicit memories do not mature until the age of 3 or 4 years. Implicit memories are built by diverse exposures to an array of inputs in naturalistic settings.

The authors of How Babies Think (Gopnik et al., 1999), in a compelling opening paragraph, describe a newborn baby through the lens of our new perspective:

Walk upstairs, open the door gently, and look in the crib. What do you see? Most of us see a picture of innocence and helplessness, a clean slate. But, in fact, what we see in the crib is the greatest mind that has ever existed, the most powerful learning machine in the universe. The tiny fingers and mouth are exploration devices that probe the alien world around them with more precision than any Mars rover. The crumpled ears take a buzz of incomprehensible noise and flawlessly turn it into meaningful language. The wide eyes that sometimes seem to peer into your very soul actually do just that, deciphering your deepest feelings. The downy head surrounds a brain that is forming millions of new connections every day. That, at least, is what thirty years of scientific research have told us. (p. 1)

Certainly our perception of how children develop has shifted in important ways. Shore (1997, p. 18) offers a fascinating glimpse into how our understanding of young children’s development has changed.

OLD THINKING	NEW THINKING
How a brain develops depends on the genes you are born with	How a brain develops depends on the complex interplay between the genes you are born with and the experiences you have
The experiences you have before age three have a limited impact on later development	Early experiences have a decisive impact on the architecture of the brain, and on the nature and extent of adult capacities
A secure relationship with a primary caregiver creates a favourable context for early development and learning	Early interactions don’t just create a context; they directly affect the way the brain is ‘wired’
Brain development is linear: the brain’ scapacity to learn and change grows steadily as an infant progresses towards childhood	Brain development is non-linear: there are prime times for developing different kinds ofknowledge and skills
A toddler’s brain is much less active than the brain of a college student.	By the time children reach age three, their brains are twice as active as those of adults. Activity drops during adolescence.

What does all this mean for child development, and is there a straightforward message for parents and practitioners? One researcher says that there is such a message, for parents, practitioners and for government policy:

The bottom line message from research on the early years is that quality matters. This leads to a clear policy conclusion: policies should aim to support parents in providing good-quality care themselves, and in arranging good-quality child care. (Waldfogel, 2004, p. 25)

And drawing on a range of studies and reviews (Blau, 2001; Shonkoff and Phillips, 2000; Smolensky and Gootman, 2003; Vandell and Wolfe, 2000) Waldfogel says:

For young children, what defines quality is that the care they receive – whether from a parent or a non-parental caregiver – is sensitive and responsive to their individual needs. (p. 6)

These findings – focusing on the importance of close relationships in the earliest years – are clearly reflected in very many excellent summaries of recent brain research, together with strong acknowledgements of their implications for parents and practitioners. The first four principles underpinning the UK’s ‘Birth to Three Matters’ framework (Sure Start, 2002, p. 3) also emphasised the importance of young children’s relationships:

• Parents and families are central to the well-being of the child.
• Relationships with other people (both adults and children) are of crucial importance in a child’s life.
• A relationship with a key person at home and in the setting is essential to young children’s well-being.
• Babies and young children are social beings, they are competent learners from birth.

Focusing further, it is the third principle, ‘A relationship with a key person at home and in the setting is essential to young children’s well-being’, which has particular practical relevance for parents and carers of the youngest children – those key people who make such a difference.

In The Learning Brain: Lessons for Education (2005) Sarah-Jayne Blakemore and Uta Frith look at what is known now about the developing brain, and examine implications for the wider sweep of education policy and practice. This book takes in a range of issues (for instance the resilience of the brain beyond the age of three, numeracy and literacy, the brain in adolescence, learning and remembering) that are relevant both to primary and to secondary schools. In contrast to the view that birth to three is the most influential period of the developing brain, this book emphasises the brain’s plasticity; and in relation both to the environment in the first three years and to nutrition, the authors point out that ‘in both cases … too little is damaging, but we know very little about the effects of too much’ (p. 186). In summary they argue that ‘learning is not limited to childhood … learning can be lifelong’.

However, a robust review of the research and its implications from the US (Shonkoff and Philips, 2000) has been enormously influential in its conclusion that ‘what happens during the first months and years of life matters a lot … early pathways, though far from indelible, establish either a sturdy or fragile stage on which subsequent development is constructed’. (p. 384)

Nurturing relationships is clearly the stuff of home life in a baby’s first year (see the anecdote about Joe and his mum in ‘Introducing Joe’); but what if Mum is at work and Joe is in day-care? This question has generated much of the emphasis that is now placed on the importance of the ‘key person approach’ in day-care, described by Elfer et al. (2003, p. 19) in Key Persons in the Nursery as ‘an emotional relationship as well as an organisational strategy’. Edwards (2002) in Relationships and Learning offers a framework to support caring for children which also focuses on relationships.

Finally Sue Gerhardt, writing incisively about the implications of the research on early brain development, emphasises the importance of parents. Here she flags up the need for a sea change:

To provide more children with the optimal start for being emotionally equipped to deal with life, we need to invest in early parenting. This investment will be costly. To bring about conditions where every baby has the kind of responsive care that he or she needs to develop well means that the adults who do this work must be valued and supported in their task. This in itself would involve a sea change in our cultural attitudes. (Gerhardt, 2004, p. 217)

Now that we know more about children’s brain development from birth to school, we still need to ask what it means. What are the implications for parents and practitioners, the ‘essential key people’ referred to earlier? What do w...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Preface for the 0–8 series
• Introduction
• Prologue
• PART 1 BABIES FIRST
• PART 2 FUNDAMENTAL FEELINGS
• PART 3 ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE
• PART 4 LINKING WITH LEARNING
• PART 5 REAL SELF-ESTEEM
• PART 6 NEW JOURNEYS
• Key statements
• Bibliography
• Index