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Wednesday, May 22, 2002 Getting a successful startBy SUSAN WRIGHT DAYTONA BEACH — The toddler with the wispy blond bangs gleefully mashing yellow paint onto her paper doesn't know she has an advantage that 1-year-olds at her day-care center didn't have a year ago. Cassidy Malik, 15 months, is one of the first children to benefit from Successful Beginnings, a child-care education program based on infant brain research released in the late '90s. The program evolved when children's advocates set out to make fundamental changes in the way babies are cared for, from conception through early childhood. As a result, Cassidy is getting the nurturing, attention and carefully orchestrated mental and physical stimulation that experts now know her very active mind needs. Tammy Brown, Cassidy's child-caregiver at KinderCare on Beville Road, completed the Successful Beginnings training last year. "In some ways, it's more demanding, but it's a lot more rewarding, too. We really feel that we are making a difference in each child's future, not just baby-sitting," Brown said. In 1997, the media was full of reports on a burst of research that showed a baby's brain is influenced from birth through the first few years of life by almost every experience -- and how opportunities to develop could be lost forever. When babies are touched or exposed to music and language, for example, their brains are wired in ways that affect their intelligence, psychological health and a host of other capabilities throughout their lives, the experts said. Most of this wiring occurs in the first three years of life or not at all, they said. In Volusia and Flagler counties, those who care for children started working to apply those findings in child-care settings and in the home, Child Care Resource Network Director Jo Sheppard said. The result was Successful Beginnings, which was launched last year with $49,000 in startup funds from Success by Six, an infant brain-research program, and the United Way of Volusia/ Flagler Counties' Community Foundation. Organizers are seeking another source of funding to continue the program when that money runs out. Rebecca Taylor is the one-woman Successful Beginnings promoter and instructor who educates child-care providers, parents and others about the development of infants. In the past year, she has provided free training to 96 providers in Volusia and Flagler counties, serving an estimated 544 children. In her 10-hour training sessions, Taylor overturns many providers' ideas of an orderly center. To some, a good center meant a place where babies were kept on a regular schedule; put down for naps at the same time; fed at the same time; and often left to entertain themselves in-between. With its focus on babies' needs, the Successful Beginnings program insists the rigid concept of schedules has to go. At KinderCare, babies now nap when they are ready, and eat when they are hungry, not on a preset schedule. While one baby is napping, another is being fed, and two others are exploring the workings of a plastic gate. Each appears comfortable, cheerful and interested. There are plenty of toys and pop-up books in the room, but nothing revolutionary. Taylor says an enriched environment doesn't require expensive or sophisticated equipment. "There's nothing high-tech about this," she said. Instead, the main emphasis is on plenty of adult-child interaction, with techniques as simple as baby-talk, funny faces and picture books. The results will be difficult to measure and it may take a generation to tell if the effects are as significant as supporters hope. But Taylor, Sheppard and others are convinced the program is the start of something very big. For further information or to request training, call Becky Taylor, Successful Beginnings coordinator, (386) 343-2400, Ext. 177. |
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