Posts tagged ‘child care’
The Most Important Trait For Caregivers
For updates on early childhood research and new articles, follow me on Twitter @whizbits
When our first son was just a few months old, our PEPS parents group had an early childhood speech development expert as a guest speaker. She provided the following simple advice: the most important thing to look for in prospective caregivers for your baby is that they are talkative. Basically, find a chatty nanny or daycare provider.
For some time now, researchers have found that children of more talkative mothers have larger vocabularies than children of quieter moms (studies at the University of Chicago showed as much as a 400% difference among two year olds). (more…)
Pre-K Child Care Affects IQ, Impulsiveness of Teenagers
Good news (for the most part) for working moms: teenagers who had higher quality child care performed significantly better in cognitive tests and had fewer adolescent behavioral problems than those given low-quality or no care outside the home.
Research published in May 2010 by Deborah Lowe Vandell, professor at UC Irvine followed 1,000 children from their births in 1991 to age 15 to identify the effects of childcare outside the home. Surprisingly, the childcare received in the critical birth-to-kindergarten years continued to show effects over 10 years later. Those receiving higher quality care scored 5.3 points higher (100 points is average) on cognitive tests. They also had fewer problems “acting out” as teens. Previously released research had concluded that the positive academic effects were apparent for these children in fifth grade. (more…)
