Boost Your Child's Brain Power/Cheat Sheet-Sneak Peek!
We can create something new. Let's start today.
Science shows that if every child received abundant love and attentive care before age two, humanity would experience a profound generational shift toward greater emotional resilience, less mental illness, and deeper social empathy.
Why not work towards that goal?
If we could enhance lives, save lives, and even save a lot of money, what's standing in our way?
One obstacle to providing very young children with the care and attention they need is cognitive dissonance. Society pays lip service to prioritizing the experiences infants and toddlers receive while deprioritizing the people who provide them.
We're starting to see the importance of the early years and creating programs for children ages 3 and up, but we're still ignoring the period when the capacity for everything human is formed: Birth-3. Here's a true story that illustrates the problem.
At a state-licensed, city-accredited child care center that's well-known and well-liked in the community, the number of children enrolled dropped so much during COVID that they had to lay off teachers. The infant teachers were the first to go, since they probably had less education than the "preschool" teachers.
The center became a mixed-age group, but the preschool teachers, who were not parents, weren't trained or educated in infant care. They pretty much ignored the babies, except for necessary feedings and diaper changes.
In the first few years of life, more than 1 million new neural connections form every second. After this period of rapid proliferation, connections are reduced through a process called pruning, which allows brain circuits to become more efficient. In light of these findings, focusing on early childhood only makes sense. -Center for the Developing Child, Harvard University
What happened at this child care facility isn't uncommon, and it isn't OK. Infant teachers in a typical child care center have less education and experience than preschool teachers. This is just the way it is, not the way it should be.
This is an enormous lost opportunity, but it's not lost on us.
At Early Childhood Rocks, a nonprofit organization, we're creating something new. It's an intervention that could reach millions of people and could change how people interact with children before they reach age 3. It's a book that people can read to their babies often.
It's designed to work with both the infant and the caregiver, providing the language and care young children need to thrive in a society that isn't always safe or caring.
If you're a member of our community, you can help us get started by reading your weekly email each Saturday and giving us your ideas about the page we're working on. Your input matters to us.
When the book is ready to present to funders, we'll seek endorsements of its concept from our loyal members. Members will also be the first to receive a free digital copy when it's ready.
Here's a sample of what a page might look like.
If you're not a member, what are you waiting for? It's free, and we need your brain power to make it unbelievably awesome.
Nanci J . Bradley is an early childhood and family educator, author, teacher, family aerobics instructor, and an all-around fun-loving person. She believes in the power of sleep, healthy eating, lifelong learning, and most of all, PLAY! She studied early childhood ed at Triton College and received her BS in education in 1986 from NIU. She received her MA in human development from Pacific Oaks College in 2011. She lives and teaches in Madison, WI, and founded Early Childhood Rocks, a nonprofit org dedicated to creating change through early childhood education.
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