Early Childhood: Let's begin at the beginning

When do 'the early years' begin? Government documents often refer interchangeably to 'early years, 'pre-school children' and 'under-fives', focusing on cognitive development rather than any other aspect of development. They talk too of 'school readiness', as if school were an end in itself rather than a small part of life-readiness, and success in school-taught subjects as the most important aspiration for childhood. There's more to education than prescribed learning to tested standards, epitomised by the early learning goals of the Early Years Foundation Stage, and many people are appalled by both the cognitive and social pressures to which children are expected to conform as they grow up.

A large number of dedicated people are trying to lessen or redirect these pressures but economics are against them. Even while the costs of childcare to parents rise and income from wages and benefits falls, Government insists that paid work for parents is the only route out of poverty for children. Meanwhile, parents at every income-level struggle to resolve the conflict between spending time with a child or using that time to earn money to spend on her, and between enjoying and 'educating' her. Many find the conflicts diminishing somewhat as children near 'school age' and free care in school. Few parents exercise their right to keep children out of school until they turn five and many are worrying about school readiness before they have left babyhood behind.

'I know it's time she started in nursery,' said the mother of an 11-month baby, 'but we've been having such a good time in the park with other mums from my antenatal class that I've been putting it off. But babies these days don't just stay home with mummy and play, do they? It's time she was with a real teacher and doing all those proper activities ...'

Who says? Infants and parents have natural human rights before life is ruled by requirements of an artificial technical world: a secure family with affectionate parents who have time free from other duties to grow in creativity and co-operation with their infant; a richly varied and challenging natural environment; and a responsive community of companions of all ages.

But babies' rights are being largely ignored because babies are not seen as individual people, as persons, but as appendages - even burdens - to parents. Even after the first year, the natural creativity and co-operation of infants and toddlers, their self-produced motives for acting and knowing with other people, are remarkably neglected in standard educational theory, and especially in the administrative practices and Government policies by which nurseries, childcare centres and schools are regulated in post-industrial societies.

As childcare institutions replace traditional care in families and communities, their duty comes to be perceived as protecting children from physical risks, including those of adventurous play in rich environments, and instructing them in a multitude of skills, including many such as moving around, speaking, reasoning and behaving well socially, that are integral to human development.

CHANGING ATTITUDES

If we are to change childhood we have to change our attitudes to its beginnings in babyhood. Neuroscience is pointing the way, mandating a focus on the under-ones rather than all under-fives, and on emotional and social development before and alongside cognitive development and skills. Outcome studies are making it clear that the most important aspiration for any child is not precocious pre-academics at three or four, or even excellent language at two, but a secure attachment to parents or people who stand in for parents, from the very beginning, and joyful companionship with them.

Babies are born and must flourish in an enormous range of environments. Brains large enough to allow for every possibility would require skulls too big for natural birth. Instead of extra large brains, natural selection has produced adaptable brains, born at a very early stage of development and able to develop specialised structures to adapt in days, rather than over the aeons of evolution, to whatever demands the baby meets.

Born into a chaotic family where there is little attention and perhaps domestic aggression rather than affection, a baby's brain structure and chemistry will immediately start to adapt defensively. She may develop extra-strong fear and anger reactions which are easily provoked for the rest of her life. Born into a family where predictable parents enjoy, cuddle and play with her, listen to her, comfort and laugh with her, the connections that form in a baby's brain will be very different.

Babies depend on intimate bodily care from someone who loves them. Their rapidly growing brains are shaped by social experiences and produce sociable human minds - clever ears and eyes and expressive faces and hands that can communicate their interests and feelings from moments after birth.

In a few weeks they enjoy conversations without words, sensitive to the tones of any gentle human voice and the fun of its musicality. They learn to take part in the little rituals of action songs, beginning to pick up traditions of their ancestors from family members. Before one year they like to co-operate in simple tasks and share jokes. Their memories grow. They learn how people they know well use things like toys and books, and cups and spoons. They pick up words and play with them with a special genius for what the sounds of language can tell.

From the start, a child is a creative person who responds with inventive expressions to live company. This is how knowledge of the human world and its culture or 'human sense' is passed on, with the child as both learner and teacher, in a small trustful community.

MOTHERS MATTER

'Mothers matter' is not a new message, of course. Women everywhere have always known that babies' survival depends on being mothered. But this is the first generation that can come to understand the scope of mothering. They understand that the relationship a mother, or someone who stands in for her, makes with a baby is largely responsible not only for that child's immediate health, well-being and behaviour but also for making the actual physical connections and layers within the baby's brain and nervous system that shape who she is and will be.

There's a large body of sound research showing that the hugs and conversations, songs, games and giggles, activities and outings babies get with loving and loved people affect every aspect of their development. We cannot afford to go on ignoring or trivialising that 'baby-stuff'.

Only if everyone understands the importance of these early relationships, and how eagerly babies seek and respond to them, will society come to treat them as the intelligent, feeling human beings they are. And only then can we hope to make families, communities and nurseries and schools fit for children rather than trying to force children to fit into them.

We need playgroups and nurseries, nursery schools and pre-schools because long before even our pushy society considers children old enough to benefit from classroom schooling, they are ready and eager for companionship in peer communities with their own meanings, arts and techniques. Toddlers want to discover how to use the artful and super-complex human body and mind as richly and confidently as possible, and take pleasure and pride in learning by imitating, co-operating to build shared beliefs and understandings.

This early peer culture was traditionally embedded in large families and small communities but small families in vast cities must find institutional alternatives. Unfortunately, the creativity of young children is often beyond the expectation of those who are charged with managing the complex machines and machinations, rules and routines of the adult world, and whose primary concerns are with its economic, health, judicial, political and employment problems.

Somehow we have to demonstrate to politicians, administrators and managers of children's services that early childhood is qualitatively, even morally, different from all other concerns, and that efforts should be made to meet the needs and nurture the natural talents of babies and young children, regardless of cost.

Fortunately, we need not rely on moral exhortation alone. Money spent on children is the best investment a nation can make. Good beginnings not only produce children, adolescents and adults who will cost the state less in the long run, the creativity of early childhood is a resource in itself and ignoring it is downgrading the social and cultural health of all our communities.

Penelope Leach PhD, C Psychol, FBPsS is a psychologist specialising in child development. She is hon senior research fellow at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust and at the Institute for the Study of Children, Families and Social Issues at Birkbeck. Colwyn Trevarthen is emeritus professor of child psychology and psychobiology at the University of Edinburgh and a vice-president of the British Association for Early Childhood Education

MORE INFORMATION

Penelope and Colwyn will be speaking together on the theme of 'Early Childhood for a Good Life - Intimate, Enjoyable, Informative, Unhurried' at Early Childhood Action's forthcoming conference, 'Unhurried Pathways', with Baroness Susan Greenfield and Sue Palmer, on Saturday 27 October, University of Winchester. Booking details from Marie Charlton at shadinsky1@yahoo.co.uk; tel: 07734 812 733.