Receptive language, trust and continuity of quality care are three of the critical building blocks in the first year of life. If the childcare you give or pay for is of a high quality the other two ought to fall into place. The neurotypical development of any one building block doesn’t happen without the presence of the others.
By way of explanation ‘receptive language’ is what we label an infant’s response to the words we say to him. When a 3 month-old infant grins and gurgles at us he is usually responding to our own facial expressions, language and burblings – he is already ‘receiving’ the language we are offering him.
As he approaches the one-year mark (with the most advanced babies it will be around 8 or 9 months) and he is crawling about, he might hold up an object as if to show it to us. If we say “Oh, Sam, you found the elephant, can you show it to me?†(we might even be sitting a little way away from Sam and holding our hand out, palm up of course)…and then Sam crawls over and gives us the elephant – our whole ‘conversation’ was based on the child’s receptive language. This is how we begin to know just how much language and labeling your child, any child, has already received and is capable of ‘receiving’.
Similarly if a 15 month-old knows a regularly sung nursery rhyme like ‘Row, row, row your boat†and we ask if they want to sing ‘row, row’ and they respond ‘r’ we should be sufficiently familiar with their growing communication abilities and behaviour to know that the two of us are in agreement and we should then go on to start singing the song and doing the motions that go with it. We communicated, the child communicated and we reached a mutual agreement “time to sing”!
It does require that we as a parent or carer enjoy the initial simple repetition involved with regularly caring for infants. This repetition of language, and actions that are related, is one of the building blocks to speech — we should be scaffolding those experiences and language use every single day. If we aren’t happy with what might be deemed ‘menial’ repetition then I suggest we either shouldn’t be working in early childhood care or not have children!
Personally I love the daily accomplishments of the little ones I’ve cared for – every day there’s a new word from the most verbal (the ones with the best receptive language). All these accomplishments come because of – trust.
The others, according to my standards, seem to be ‘lagging behind’. Then I suspect that no one at home has been working on the child’s receptive language and probably no one at daycare either. Those babies do not trust their parents or their carers. Such parents are often more concerned about the materials or outdoor activities their child is exposed to, not understanding that receptive language and trust are two of the most critical foundations in the first 2 years – without it children are behavioural challenges to all but the very best caregivers!
Trust is so critical to early childhood that the lack of it is easy to identify in children who have no semblance of it in their daycare or home lives. Their behavioral instability is manifest every single day! With 13-month-old infants it’s usually screaming ‘for no apparent reason’. With those who are 2 and older it’s behavioural patterns that frustrate even the most experienced caregivers and teachers.
Without trust between parent and any of their child’s (often) multiple caregivers or from caregiver to caregiver, a young child doesn’t have trust in his world. Those without trust are usually quite removed from the adults around them. Such children aren’t totally free to participate in what’s going on in their day room. The adult caregivers, not knowing that they need to build trust or not even knowing how to build trust, simply go about their daily ‘work’ (for many it is simply ‘a job’) doing just the practical tasks for each infant and child.
But children are little humans and we, albeit poorly paid caregivers of the very young, must do all in our power to help them grow to be the best they can be in every way. We must supply an environment of trust in which they can build their physical and language skills to ready them to move up to their next age group. This is particularly true of centres where children do not remain with a primary caregiver for their first 3 years.
Which brings me to the final essential component in infant and toddler care…continuity of quality care. A virtually impossible thing to provide in the daycare setting — even in the best facilities staff move on.
I’m not sure how to ensure continuity of quality care in a centre situation – most parents are so unaware of how important it is and certainly in my experience, some centre owners have no clue as to its importance let alone how to provide it.
Quite probably it all comes down to pounds and pence or dollars and cents – but running a daycare is truly a HUGE responsibility. It isn’t enough to give parents the sales pitch, to sell them on what your facility can (or might) provide, what matters is the standard of care your staff reaches.
Not knowing whether or not you have quality staff nor understanding that continuity of quality care is essential to neurotypical development in young children are two of the biggest missing pieces in administration of early childhood care.
Such irresponsible administrators actually end up breaking everyone’s trust, the children and their families and the staff!