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The purpose of this book is to support the work of early-childhood professionals caring
for young children in a variety of settings. Information included here will help child-care
practitioners and educators to become more aware of the importance of emotional
development for children. Promoting positive mental health in young children begins in
infancy with responsive caregiving by the important people in a baby's life and proceeds
through early childhood with consistent and quality nurturing and caregiving. The role of
the child-care provider and early educator is primary in ensuring the best possible
outcomes for children's social and emotional health through the developmentally
appropriate activities and environment provided. Consistent observation and recording
may reveal to a child-care practitioner indicators of risk in a child's emotional
development. While a child-care provider has a responsibility to refer parents as
necessary to local early intervention resources, the role of the provider is not one of a
mental health professional in the identification or diagnosis of mental health issues. The
child-care provider is there in support of a child's overall emotional well-being as it
pertains to the child care setting.
The Six Keys: Strategies for Promoting Children's Mental Health in Early Childhood
Programs provides support to early childhood practitioners through training and
educational opportunities around the emotional development of children. It is a holistic
approach that helps practitioners examine their role in children's mental health, as well as
the role of environment, temperament, risk factors, and resilience.
Each chapter includes:
Wisdom from the Field, offering the expertise and experience of early childhood educators from
across the country who were part of a university teacher preparation program from 2001-2006.
Their input provides strategies for effective practices.
Key Points capture the essential information in each chapter.
Childhood Vignettes appear in italics throughout the book to emphasize the ongoing nature of
emotional development in day-to-day experiences that children have.
Some style issues:
He and she is used interchangeably throughout the text in an effort to be respectful of both
genders.
Caregiver, practitioner, provider, teacher, educator are used interchangeably to refer to the
early childhood professional working in a setting that provides early care and education to young
children, birth to age eight. This includes family childcare, child-care centers, nursery schools,
school readiness programs, Head Start classrooms and other similar settings. Any names used are
fictional and examples are a composite of experiences of the author.
Different cultural approaches to child rearing can impact the relationship of the parent to the
early childhood professional when it comes to emotional milestones and development.
Attachment, temperament, family systems, and risk factors all need to be viewed with cultural
respect and awareness. Ultimately, all children need to feel safe and secure in their early
childhood setting and we can assure this outcome if we work closely with families, building a
relationship of trust through open and honest communication.
Chapter 1
Why All the Fuss About a Child's Emotional Development? Key 1: Provide responsive caregiving.
We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It's easy to say 'It's not my child, not my
community, not my world, not my problem.' Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider
those people my heroes. --Fred Rogers
So How Are the Children?
What is it about the emotional development of young children that has triggered so much interest by researchers and early childhood experts in the last few years? People in the early childhood care field, teachers, child care providers, policy makers have many questions about whether we are doing right by children in our practices and our programs when it comes to children's mental health. What is going on in our families and our communities that prompts so much study and reflection? Is it because we see children in the news who have committed unimaginable crimes against themselves and others and we can't understand why? Is it because there is an increase in earlier and younger diagnosis of conditions like depression and emotional/behavioral disorders in young children? Or, is it that our children are spending increasingly more time away from family, in school, activities, child care, and we worry about what that legacy will mean? We are learning a great deal through early childhood research about how children's emotional growth occurs and what can go wrong with that development as it impacts a child's mental health.
The World We Live In
Our world today is often not the place we might have hoped it would be for raising our children.
Television in the l950s presented idealized dramas on television depicting worse-case-scenarios
of Beaver Cleaver cheating on a homework assignment, or, in the 1980's, the Huxtable's on "The
Cosby Show" in affable family squabbles. But today's television news can shock our senses, like
an April 2004 CNN headline that read "Children on Easter Egg Hunt Find Guns Instead"
(www.cnn.com, April 11, 2004). We expect children to go to a park and participate in games and
fun, not stumble on a loaded weapon. On any given day, we hear current events that make us
wonder how we can ever raise capable, successful children. More than not, our culture seems at
odds with our values. We see and hear our communities besieged with violence, division, and,
sometimes, inhumanity. Caring, involved adults are asking important questions about how we can
bring up children in our world who will experience.
Many early childhood advocates have used the traditional story of the Masai tribe of Kenya as a
rallying cry for changes in our national policies toward children. Masai warriors, as they returned
from battle, would enter their villages asking one question: "So how are the children?" They
believed that if the children were healthy and cared for, then the community would be strong. For
a time, many cars in the U.S. were seen with So How Are the Children? bumper stickers. And
how are the children? Many would believe that in the 21st century, they are not faring so well.
Five-year-old Sarah is playing with a doll family when her caregiver sits down by her. They
begin to talk and Sarah relates that she misses her dad a lot (her parents have been separated for
several months). Miss Claire says, "I know it makes you sad not to see your dad." Sarah replies,
"My mom won't let me talk to him at all, she is so mad at him. I don't even tell her how much I
wish I could go over to his house."
For many children like Sarah, stressors from within the family itself are impacting how they see
the world and their relationship to it. In the midst of an often uncertain world, we realize the role
healthy emotional development plays in securing well-being for our children. The mental health
side of child development has not always been a consideration. Laura Berk, a leading child
development expert, explains that for many years the importance of how children learned
cognitively overshadowed the emotional side to their development, and now there is great
excitement generated within the early childhood field around the mental health of children. Great
excitement around learning what makes children react the way they do to the world around them,
what helps them make and keep friends, what helps them grow into successful adults with healthy
relationships (Berk, 1997). We in the early childhood field have felt this excitement too, as we
watch children grow and learn about their own feelings and how those feelings relate to others.
We see the important role that emotions play in the overall development of a child.
Josh ran into the preschool room yelling, "Everybody hates me, they hate me." He plopped down
on a chair and put his head on the table. His teacher sat next to him and said, "I like you Josh,"
and Huda from across the table said, "I like you, too, Josh."
What do we mean when we talk about children's mental health? Psychologists consider the term
mental health to refer to "psychological well-being," that takes into account family and
interpersonal relationships, as well as relationship to the larger community. Some experts
define mental health as the absence of mental illness (Encarta, 2006), but many psychologists
consider this definition too narrow. In simple terms, mental health refers to the way children feel
about themselves and the world around them. Child developmentalists commonly define mental
health for infants as the developing capacity of a baby to experience and regulate their emotions,
to form secure attachments and relationships, and to explore their environment (Zero to Three,
2006). As children continue to grow and develop, positive mental health begins to include how
they look at themselves and the other people in their lives, and then what they do with that
information. It also includes how children relate to others, to challenges, to stress, and to
decision-making. Emotional health has a direct impact on how one thinks, learns, communicates,
and grows.
This text will use the terms mental health and emotional development interchangeably, referring
to the both the developmental process and the outcome. In this context, emotional development is
a major development domain alongside social, cognitive, and physical development and not
viewed in a deficit model, as in mental illness. The national nonprofit organization Zero to Three,
a primary source on infant growth and development, views mental health as synonymous with
healthy social and emotional development.
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