Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.

The aim of this book is both to reflect current knowledge of perceptual development and to point to some of the many questions that remain unanswered. The study of perceptual development is now a sophisticated science. The majority of the chapters tell a fascinating detective story: the way in which infants perceive and understand the world as they develop. Each of the major sections is prefaced by introductory comments, and the book will be useful for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, researchers, and other professionals who have an interest in early perceptual development and in infancy in general.

Readers’ comments: A Fabulous, Important Book. Jesper Juul provides parents with such an amazing and absolutely vital approach to raising children that it rings true on every page. Some of what he suggests we as parents do is difficult, but all of it is right on about how we can raise confident, healthy, whole humans, right from the start. I was thrilled to have discovered a book that allowed me to see different possibilities with child raising. Anyone with a child will gain immensely from reading this book, seeing themselves in his numerous examples, and learning how to move on from there. I am grateful for this book and highly recommend it. No Parent Should Be Without It. With tremendous wisdom and a warm, pragmatic eye, Mr. Juul helps us redefine the ways we look at a child's behavior and our relationship to our children and ultimately, each other. This is a book that doesn't offer easy answers or 'tricks' to help in the raising of your child. This is a book that helps you see with a child's eye, hear with a child's ear, and feel with a child's heart in ways that feel so natural and obvious, you will wonder why you haven't thought of them before. It is a book that offers day-to-day skills along with the thinking that helps generate them. This groundbreaking book should be on the shelf of all parents everywhere. I cannot recommend it highly enough. If you have children - read this book! This is an amazing book that will surely turn upside down any thoughts you ever had about raising children. Even though you may not agree with all the views in this book, there is so much food for thought and new ideas that you will return to this book again and again for interesting and mind blowing advice.

How we raise young children is one of today's most highly personalized and sharply politicized issues, in part because each of us can claim some level of "expertise." The debate has intensified as discoveries about our development-in the womb and in the first months and years-have reached the popular media. How can we use our burgeoning knowledge to assure the well-being of all young children, for their own sake as well as for the sake of our nation? Drawing from new findings, this book presents important conclusions about nature-versus-nurture, the impact of being born into a working family, the effect of politics on programs for children, the costs and benefits of intervention, and other issues. The committee issues a series of challenges to decision makers regarding the quality of child care, issues of racial and ethnic diversity, the integration of children's cognitive and emotional development, and more. Authoritative yet accessible, From Neurons to Neighborhoods presents the evidence about "brain wiring" and how kids learn to speak, think, and regulate their behavior. It examines the effect of the climate-family, child care, community-within which the child grows.

Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.

This book invites those caring for infants to join as companions on an incredible journey. Each chapter taps a distinct area of research to shed light on babies’ biological expectations for care and their amazing competence as active participants in that care. Exploring each domain of development, with policy and practice recommendations, the authors offer important insights into: How prenates “read” and adapt to characteristics of their environment.How fetus and mother respond in sync to a cascade of hormones that facilitate healthy birth, breastfeeding, bonding, and immune system development.How infants search for proximity to caring, responsive others as a means of regulating physiological systems and making friends.How infants gather statistics on language through interactions with companions. How infants learn as they investigate objects and people within everyday play and interactions. “I have never experienced a book that more clearly and purposefully communicates the day-by-day development of infants and the essential role adults play in the optimization of that development.” —From the Foreword by J. Ronald Lally, WestEd Center for Child & Family Studies, author of For Our Babies “Infant development comes alive in this book.” —From the Afterword by Ed Tronick, Distinguished University Professor, University of Massachusetts, Boston “A must-read for anyone interested in young children. This will be a valuable resource for academics, clinicians, and caregivers.” —Bruce D. Perry, ChildTrauma Academy “This extraordinary collection of stories invites us to explore and reflect on what it’s like to be a baby, new to the world and full of curiosity.” —Elizabeth Jones, faculty emerita, Pacific Oaks College