High Quality Early Childhood Education Has Lifelong Benefits
Leah Langby
May 22, 2014
Keeping Up With Kids

In recent workshops in IFLS-land with brilliant presenters like Dr. Dipesh Navsaria, Jim Gill and Saroj Ghoting, we have been learning a lot of important stuff about early literacy, the importance of helping children and their caregivers get access to great resources and information about child development, and the lasting negative effects of unmitigated toxic stress.

A colleague in the public health field sent along an article about a new study that indicates the long-lasting health benefits of high quality early childhood education.  Previous studies have shown the long-lasting cognitive and academic benefits of high quality experiences.  The current one looked at adults who, as infants and young children, received consistent, high-quality care in one setting, the Abecedarian Project in North Carolina.  These adults now have a significantly lower risk of hypertension and heart disease.  “Even without pinpointing a single mechanism responsible for improved adult health, scientists…agree that early childhood interventions are an encouraging avenue of health policy to explore. ” (source

This has further implications for us as youth services librarians.  How can we improve the early childhood opportunities for young children?  How can we help support families and caregivers, daycare providers and grandparents and even teens who are babysitting?  For some great ideas, don’t forget to keep track of the Growing Wisconsin Readers Blog!

search all blog posts using keywords or title, date, categories

Archives

Categories

Related Articles

Raising Wisconsin’s Children Conference

Thanks to our friends at UW-Madison Department of Extension for putting together an excellent, free virtual conference--great to share with parents and caregivers, also great for library workers who serve youth and families.  Take a look!  Raising Wisconsin’s Children...

Resources for Games and Gaming!

The American Library Association's Games and Gaming Round Table have been busy!  If you want to add some well-vetted board games to your circulating collection or to your programming toolkit, check out their recent Platinum Play winners, "evergreen titles well-suited...

Guest Post: Goodbye Dewey? Rethinking Youth Nonfiction

Thanks to Katie Halama, Youth Services Coordinator, L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library, for this guest post!  Katie received a scholarship from IFLS to attend the Wisconsin Library Association Annual Conference.  She shared insights and resources from a session by...