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Promoting young children's healthy development and school readiness:
ten guidelines

Aleisha concentrates on reading the Accelerated Reader book.

1. Be warm, loving, and responsive
When children receive warm, responsive care, they are more likely to feel safe and secure with the adults who take care of them. These secure attachments are the basis of all the child's future relationships. Research shows that children's early attachments affect the way their brains work and grow.

2. Respond to the child's cues and clues
Infants communicate by the sounds they make, the way they move, their facial expressions, and the way they make or avoid eye contact. If you pay close attention to your child's needs for stimulation as well as quiet times this will help your child form secure attachments.

3. Talk, read, and sing to your child
Making up stories about daily events, singing songs about people and places you know, describing what is happening during daily routines -all of these conversations give your child a solid basis for later learning.

4. Establish routines and rituals
Repeated positive experiences, which form strong connections between neurons in the brain, provide children with a sense of security. They also help your child with what to expect from his/her environment and how to understand the world around him/her. Children who have safe and predictable interactions with others have also been found to do better in school later on.

Playground recess is safe and fun at TLC.

5. Encourage safe exploration and play
Play is equally important as a learning experience. While many of us think of learning as simply acquiring facts, children actually learn through playing. As a parent, you should encourage exploration and be receptive when the child needs to return to you for security.

6. Make TV watching selective
Be selective and involved in your child's TV habits. Don't use TV as a baby-sitter. Whenever possible, sit and watch programs together with your child, and talk about what you are viewing.

7. Use discipline as an opportunity to teach
As children grow, they become capable of more exploration, discovery, and experimentation. In the process, they experience more confusion and frustration. At times, their feelings can become intense. As children explore their world, they need limits and consistent, loving adult supervision. Studies prove that the way in which adults provide discipline-which really means to teach-is crucial to their children's later development.

Acknowledge your child's accomplishments with specific praise.

8. Recognize that each child is unique
Children have different temperaments: one child is outgoing, while other is more bashful and slow to warm up. Your child's ideas and feelings about himself reflect mostly your attitude toward him. When your child masters the challenges of everyday life, she feels good about herself, particularly when you acknowledge her accomplishments with specific praise: "You climbed those stairs all by yourself." When children receive concrete praise, they begin to see the connections between their actions and your response. As a sensitive parent to your child's cues and clues, you'll have a child with positive self-esteem.

9. Choose a quality childcare program and stay involved
One of the most important family decisions is choosing a good quality program for your child. Research shows that high-quality early childhood educational programs will boost your child's learning and social skills when he enters school. To make a good choice, visit and observe how the educators interact with the children in their class. Seek a provider who responds warmly and responsively to your child's needs. After choosing your child care provider, stay involved. Ask for "progress report cards" and one-on-one conferences.

10. Take care of yourself
Taking care of our children is the most important, most wonderful, and often the most challenging job in our society. However, your health and welfare are extremely important: when you are exhausted, preoccupied, irritable, depressed, or overwhelmed, you will have a harder time meeting the needs of your child.

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