A child's job is to learn all about
the world and fully develop into
the very best person that
he or she can be.

Child development is complicated. There are many research studies and thick textbooks that cover every aspect of child development. Good caring practices, environments, activities, and the expectations of children and teachers are designed to promote and foster each child's development. How can we explain that to parents? How can we help parents understand and recognize the value of what we do?

Of course, what good early care and education programs should do is under siege by a growing national anxiety attack and obsession with school readiness. This anxiety casts a cloud (or shroud) over early childhood programs, as if all we should focus on is how to create the ideal child for a kindergarten classroom, and an academic kindergarten at that! The irony is many of these of children may live to be 100 years old. Drawing from a popular expression, they will experience "40 as the new 30", "60 as the new 50." So why does four have to be the new six?

In reality, the focus of good child care is much broader and deeper because our programs provide the foundations for lives that extend far beyond the kindergarten year.

The child's job concept

The idea of The Child's Job is to articulate the fundamentals and goals of child development to parents (and staff) and explain the logic of why we do the things we do. Think about children as being born with a job to do. Their job is to live their lives, learn about the world, and develop into the very best people that they can be. Children are fully equipped and driven to pursue that job. They are filled with possibilities. From birth, children are marvelous learners, immediately investigating the sights, sounds, and feel of the world. They are born to be competent little scientists driven to move, to experiment, to know. They also are programmed to connect with and learn from the people around them. Children are in a state of constant learning long before the big steps of walking and first words for infants; or the real social play and first sentences for toddlers; or the confident plunge into reading, writing, sports, and a complicated social life that marks the development of children through the preschool and early school age years, long before they appear to us as students. As they move through childhood, they are exploring all their own bodily powers and what this world is made of: the sensations, people, things, relationships, and the elements and forces of the natural world.

The child's job: Full development

Make sense of the world: To a newborn baby, the world is not yet completely differentiated by sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste. Sensory input blends together and flows into the nervous system as waves of sensation. The task of separating out and sorting through sensations begins at birth. This process continues all through childhood as we refine our senses, and learn to make more refined distinctions. As we mature, our senses become sharpened by experiences, and the world becomes a finely woven fabric of color, size, shape, hard and soft, sweet and sour, and much more.

Learn to communicate fully: Babies are wonderful communicators and engage us with cries and smiles. They are wired to grab our attention and we are wired to seek it out and respond. Toddlers make huge leaps, in facial expressions and sounds, body language, and ultimately, words. From that point, communication explodes to more expansive use of physical expression, oral language, mastering written language, and the many ways that children and adults learn to communicate their thoughts and feelings.

Discover and develop all bodily powers. Babies begin to hold their heads up, discover their hands, develop their grasp, and creep around the room. These first infant movements begin the journey that years later result in all the wonderful things our bodies can do: walking, running, climbing, playing sports, writing, using tools, making things, singing and dancing, and anything else we choose to do with our bodies.

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