The phrase early childhood care and development has three parts:
How these terms are defined and understood has important implications for project design from the outset.
What does early childhood mean?
Early childhood encompasses the period from conception to the time of entry into school at about the age of six. For programming purposes it is useful to extend the age to about seven or eight years in order to include the articulation between programs directed to children during their preschool years and education programs in the first year or two of school.
Why is the period of childhood under discussion limited in this way? This is our period of greatest growth and development—when the brain develops almost to its fullest, when we learn to walk and talk, when we establish moral foundations, when we gather confidence in ourselves and develop a general view of the world. So although it is part of a continuing process of human development, it deserves to be distinguished from later periods. But this period also differs from later ones because it is a time when children learn through hands-on manipulation of concrete objects and through trial and error. At about age seven or eight children enter "the age of reason," when they can better manipulate ideas and learn concepts and are less dependent on objects.
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Program Implication An early childhood program should deal with the period from conception to the early primary school years. It can cover the entire period or focus on periods within that time span such as pregnancy, the first year of life, the first three years, or the period just before entry into school. Any of these periods can be related to the progress and performance of children during their first years of primary school. (See the discussion of child development below for a breakdown of early childhood into shorter periods linked to the changes children undergo as they mature.) |
What does child care mean?
Child care consists of the actions taken by caregivers to ensure survival and to promote the growth and development of children. Good care responds to children's basic physical, mental, social, and emotional needs, determined both biologically and by the children's cultural and socioeconomic context and their environment.
Caregivers.
In the past caregivers were almost always family members. Primary responsibility for care still usually remains with the family. But a host of social and economic changes have combined to make family arrangements for care difficult or impossible, and there has been a shift toward provision of care outside the home by caregivers who are not family members. In some cases social changes also have created expectations about the content of care that go beyond family members' capability or available time. Families need and are demanding help from other caregivers. Increasingly, responsibility for care is being shared.
It is crucial for those planning ECCD programs to realize that much of the need and demand for child care programs originates in the needs of parents (and sometimes siblings) of young children. Family members, particularly mothers, need to free up time for earning or learning outside the home, sometimes just to survive and sometimes to improve their social or economic position or for personal development. To meet this need, parents seek programs that are affordable and accessible and that fit their work schedules. These characteristics of programs are related only indirectly to children's basic needs.
Parents also would like caregivers to be trusted and accountable people. Given the option, most parents would choose as caregivers people they know and can be reasonably sure have the knowledge to help their children learn and develop. But in the real world the ability to help children learn and develop may have to be a secondary criterion in choosing caregivers.
Child care actions.
If child care is to respond to the needs of children, it should include activities or actions that provide them with affection, interaction and stimulation, consistency and predictability, learning through exploration and discovery, and a sense of success. That is, it needs to fulfill their mental, social, and emotional needs, not just satisfy their basic physical needs for food, shelter, rest, cleanliness, protection from harm, and attention to sickness.
But many programs do not respond to this full range of needs. Instead, they serve merely as "parking lots" for children, providing a kind of custodial care that ensures a roof over the head and food in the stomach but little else. Custodial programs assume the responsibility for taking care of children by providing protection and meeting biological needs. But this care is not accompanied by a second notion of care—that requiring concern, interest, and love. Limited custodial arrangements may serve an adult's immediate needs for affordable, accessible, and flexible care, but they do not adequately serve children's needs. Sometimes the need for survival forces parents to compromise, however, choosing custodial arrangements even though they know the care is impersonal and incomplete.
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Program Implication
Because children may be cared for by family members, outside providers, or both, programs may be directed to either or both of these sets of caregivers. The strategies required will differ depending on who the principal caregivers are in the population to whom a project is directed and on whether the project focuses on care in the home or outside the home. Family care and parenting education should not be forgotten in a rush to establish child care alternatives. When setting up child care services, it is crucial to keep firmly in mind both the care and development needs of children and the needs of parents (particularly mothers) and other family members needing child care arrangements that will allow them to earn and learn. For adults affordability, access, and flexibility are important criteria in choosing a program. Because good child care meets social and psychological needs as well as biological and physical needs, programs should not be content to simply provide custodial care. |
What does child development mean?
To fully understand what good child care is, we need to be clear about what child development is. Development should be distinguished from growth. Growing means getting bigger. Development involves learning to function in new and increasingly complex ways. Here is one useful working definition of child development:
Child development is a multifaceted, integral, and continual process of change in which children become able to handle ever more complex levels of moving, thinking, feeling, and relating to others.
Development is multifaceted and integral. Development proceeds simultaneously along several dimensions:
- A physical dimension—the ability to move and to coordinate movements.
- A mental (or, more broadly, cognitive) dimension—the ability to think and reason.
- An emotional dimension—the ability to feel.
- A social dimension—the ability to relate to others.
Although these dimensions of development can be separated conceptually, they are closely related. Changes in one affect changes in another.
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Program Implication A child development project or program should attend to the whole child, not simply to one dimension or another. It should try to get the different program components (such as health, nutrition, stimulation, and education) to children all at one time. In the words of Margaret Alva: ...a child is born without barriers. Its needs are integrated and it is we who choose to compartmentalize them into health, nutrition or education. Yet the child itself cannot isolate its hunger for food, from its hunger for affection or its hunger for knowledge. This same unity extends to the child's perception of the world. The child's mind is free of class, religion, color or nationality barriers, unless we wish it otherwise. It is in this intrinsic strength in the unity of the child, that we need to exploit, for building a better world, and a more integrated development process. |
Development occurs continually.
Development during early childhood is part of the continual process of human development over the life span. Although ECCD programs concentrate on the first years of life, we should be alert to how development during that period is dependent on ideas about what a person's later development should include.
Although development is continual, it is not linear nor always in the direction desired. There may be plateaus or valleys. A child's gains in development during one period as a result of participating in a program may be lost in another period because the conditions for development change. This reversal can occur even during a project, because the child care center and the family present different conditions for development. Or it can occur after a program ends, because no equivalent effort is made to meet the child's needs during the next period of life. For example, a child who enters a poor-quality primary school may lose qualities developed in an early childhood program during the preschool period.
Development occurs as a changing child interacts with the surrounding environment.
Children change constantly and rapidly, particularly during their early years. So it is necessary during early childhood to treat children differently at different stages of their development. (See table 1.1 for a rough division of early childhood into stages, along with the corresponding abilities and needs of children.)
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Program Implication The welfare of children during the time when the family is responsible for care should not be neglected, even if care is provided outside the family at other times. The relationship between these two environments is important. Every effort should be made to ensure that a program providing assistance to a child during a limited period is reinforced by conditions to support developmental gains once the child is no longer in the program. This means support for families, education, and health systems. Otherwise there may be no strong link between children's development in a program and their later development or success. |
| Table 1.1 Developmental stages and corresponding needs during early childhood | |||
| Developmental stage |
Approximate age | Illustrative needs | |
| Parental | Conception to birth | For the mother, a proper diet and periodic checkups, avoidance of stress, avoidance of alcohol and drugs, social support | |
| Infancy | Birth to 1 year | Protection from physical danger; adequate nutrition and health care; adults with whom to form attachments and who understand and respond to signals; things to look at, touch, smell and taste; opportunities to explore in a safe environment; appropriate language stimulation; support in learning to walk | |
| Toddler | 1-3 years | All the above plus support in acquiring new motor, language, and thinking skills; a chance to develop some independence; help in learning how to control their own behavior; opportunities to learn to care for themselves; daily opportunities for play | |
| Preschooler | 3-5 or 6 years | All the above plus opportunities to develop fine motor skills; encouragement of language through singing; activities that develop a positive sense of mastery; opportunities to learn cooperation, helping and sharing; experimentation with drawing, painting, recognizing familiar objects and patterns, etc., which are part of developing writing and reading skills. | |
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Program Implication Because children change rapidly during early childhood, the focus and content of ECCD programs must vary with their age and developmental stage. The environment should also be appropriate to the children's stage of development. |
The rate, character, and quality of development vary.
Development varies not only from child to child but also from culture to culture. Individual variation is the product of a child's genetic makeup and the environment in which he or she struggles to survive and develop. Cultural variation is not just the result of differing goals, but of traditions, habits, circumstance, settings, and family. Moreover, the arrangements most appropriate for responding to particular needs and the content of programs will differ from place to place. Thus just as the motor, language, and social skills to be developed will vary among settings, so will the activities deemed most appropriate to promote these skills.
See table 1.2 for a summary of the characteristics of development and their implications for programs.
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Program Implication Individual and social variation, along with the changing nature of the child during early childhood, leads to the conclusion that there is no one formula for programs. Programs must allow for variation. Both the model and the content of programs must be flexible to take into account differences in children's environments, which place different demands on them. |
| Table 1.2 Characteristics of the child development process and the implications for Programs | |
| Characteristics | Implications |
| 1. Development is multidimensional and integral. | 1. Programs should be multifaceted rather than unifocal. |
| 2. Development occurs along interrelated dimensions. | 2. Programs should bring together actions that respond to children's physical, intellectual, social, and emotional needs. |
| 3. Development occurs in the interaction between a changing child and a changing environment. | 3. Programs should be concerned with the condition not only of the child but also of the people, things, and circumstances making up the child's environment. |
| 4. Development occurs continually and follows a general sequence. | 4. Programs should follow some general principles while adjusting to children's developmental stage. |
| 5. Development varies from child to child in rate, character, and quality. | 5. Programs should have the flexibility to deal with children's individual needs. |
| 6. Development varies from culture to culture. | 6. Programs must take the cultural context and demands into account. |
