Mind in the Making: A Recap of Tuesday’s Event

 

Fifteen years ago, a book came out that got people talking about how much the home environment – the way parents talk to their children and the number of novel vocabulary words they used – was connected to a child’s later outcomes in school. That book was Hart & Risley’s Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children. 

 

Ten years ago, another book arrived that provided a large-scale scan of what brain science and developmental psychology research was telling us about how children learned in their earliest years. That book? Neurons to Neighborhoods – a huge and daunting volume from the National Academies of Science.

 

Both of those books are cited often in early education circles. They, along with good research on high-quality preschool programs and their impact — lasting up to age 40 – are the foundation of research upon which many policy recommendations have been built over the past several years.

 

Today we are here to hear about another book with the potential to have a significant impact on the policy conversation: Mind in the Making. It’s exciting to read Ellen’s synthesis of the latest research on what we know about how young children learn and the skills they need. She has synthesized the research into seven essential skills, from #1 (focus and self control) to #7 (self-directed, engaged learning). I am struck by her ability to make this research accessible to those who don’t read developmental psychology journals for a living. It’s not so easy to write a three-sentence paragraph about a complicated experiment in a baby lab that may have taken years to design and that is often summarized in what look like indecipherable statistical charts.

 

I was drawn to this book for many reasons. Many of the experiments that Ellen writes about are ones that have informed my book Into the Minds of Babes on how children interpret media – and they are just mind-boggling experiments. I think we’ll get to see some videos of them today. But I was also drawn to this book because of the marshmallows. For those who don’t know – one of the experiments that Ellen writes about is the now-classic study on delaying gratification using marshmallows. My youngest daughter LOVES marshmallows. A few months ago, we bought a bag of them and she wanted to have one right away. “Later,” I told her. A few days later I went to the pantry and happened to find the bag with a little hole torn in the side – big enough for a sneaky kid to slide one marshmallow through. Hmm. Was this some warped version of focus and self-control (skill #1) or critical thinking (skill #5)? Or did I need to work on my own skill in #3 – communicating and skill #6 – taking on challenges?

 

What this book does is present, chapter after chapter, a rock-solid case for the idea that children are learners from the day they are born – and that the people around them, their mother, their father, their daily care-givers, are constantly shaping their learning environment by interacting with them in different ways.

 

This speaks to several areas of public policy that should be getting more attention:

 

1.     Public policies must do more to support parents. Parents have a critical role as children’s first teachers. But if parents are not there – if they are having to go back to their job a week after giving birth – they miss so many bonding opportunities, so many moments of swaying and singing and making eye contact with their children. As our Workforce and Family Program has repeatedly argued: We need stronger work life balance policies like flexible work arrangements, extended time off support and career flexibility that enable parents to be with their babies without losing their jobs. We need to look closely at the impact of programs like the newly passed federal Home Visitation program and Early Head Start. Both of these programs are using federal dollars to help young, low-income parents (mostly mothers) get mental health counseling, advice on child development and nutrition and access to programs that can help them become better parents.

 

2.     We need to prepare and fairly compensate the people who are teaching young children in their earliest years. Those who work in home visitation programs, family home care and child care centers, preschools and pre-kindergarten programs, kindergarten classrooms, and schools of all kinds, should be provided opportunities to learn about research like that from this book – on how to help children develop their abilities, on how a 12 month old looks at things differently than a 18 month old, who is exploring and learning from the world differently from a 3-year-old, etc. And we have to find a way to provide the respect and status that is due the teachers and care-givers who are helping to shape the next generation.

 

3.     We need to zoom in on ways to detect and intervene early when children are falling behind, whether it is in their ability to look at an object that their mother is looking at, or whether they are able to delay gratification and hold back their immediate impulses. This means not being afraid to screen and assess where young children stand and then provide them with immediate support that matches their individual needs. Teachers, school counselors, pediatricians and other health care providers, in addition to researchers who are developing better screening tools, have a big role to play here. Public policies should be supporting their work. 

In other words, the science of children’s learning is exposing more and more need for sound public policies that support families, care-givers, educators and children. These three are just the tip of the iceberg. 

For more information, see the site for Galinsky’s book, including information about the vook (video+book) that can be read and viewed online or downloaded to an iPhone, iPod or iPad.