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11 Supporting Parents P arents are their children’s first and most enduring teachers.1 When a child is thriving, we say she is a credit to her family. When a child is failing or not getting what she needs, it is often the parents who are blamed. When too many of our children are coming to school with too few words, requiring disproportionate resources of money and teacher attention and often continuing to lag behind in spite of remedial efforts and repeated grades, it makes sense to include parents in the solution. Parents help their children to build a sturdy language foundation for later learning in several ways: r they interact directly as they talk, read, and play with their children r they choose caregivers, programs, and activities for their children and set up learning opportunities r they supervise, monitor, and partner with people to whom they entrust their children’s care and education, to be sure their child’s individual needs are met r they notice when their children are lagging behind peers in reaching critical milestones and seek help for speech and language delays or other difficulties r they scout out resources and information and join with other parents to exchange ideas and provide mutual support r they support, advocate for, and sometimes create programs and policies to meet the needs of their children and of all children in their communities Supporting parents in all of these roles can improve children’s chances of getting the kind of early and ongoing experiences that prime them for success. Supporting Parents as Nurturers, Playmates, and Language Teachers T. Berry Brazelton, who has been called “the nation’s pediatrician,”2 believes in parents. He loves to watch a newborn baby turn toward the sound Supporting Parents 145 of her mother’s voice and to see the joy in her parents’ eyes when he shows them what she can do and tells them how special she is. “What a beautiful baby!” he tells parents on a typical first visit, in a voice that shows that he is already falling in love with their child. “Look how that baby looks in your face and smiles, and look how you look back at her.” He urges other doctors to use similar introductions, and to begin “right from the start to help the parent see the responses the child makes, and the stages the child is going through.”3 Dr. Brazelton has worked with thousands of families in his forty-year career. He knows that every parent of a young child has questions. And because for all of their wonderful uniqueness children traverse a common series of developmental challenges, many of these questions can be anticipated . Dr. Brazelton has identified a series of expectable transitions, when children are likely to regress, act up, or show signs of distress as they prepare for a developmental spurt. He calls these transitions or challenges “touchpoints”4 because they are times when parents are most appreciative of professional guidance and of reassurance that they and their child are OK. They are also opportunities to provide parents with information on what to expect and with insights and resources that help them fully support their child’s emerging abilities. Dr. Brazelton has reached out to parents through books, television shows, and one-on-one consultations, and has trained other health professionals in his methods of behavioral assessment, relationship-building, and anticipatory guidance. The Brazelton Touchpoints Center5 reaches out not only to individual professionals but also to communities, training health care and family support professionals, early childhood educators, community elders, and others who touch young children and their families to work together to ensure that every child gets a good start. Essentially, Touchpoints strengthens the culture of the village, with the community coming together to support families so that families can support their children. Dr. Brazelton’s faith in parents and his determination that they get the information and attention they need are shared by policy makers throughout the country. In Missouri, these convictions have sustained Parents as Teachers (PAT),6 a parenting education program that has become a national model. PAT brings information and education to families , visiting them in their own homes or in other places where they feel comfortable, providing information for parents, activities for parents and children together, screening for vision, hearing, language, health, and overall developmental problems, and connections to providers of health, early childhood education, nutrition, and other family support services. 146 Chapter...

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