Last month, families across the country began receiving the first payments under the Advance Child Tax Credit (ACTA), a part of the American Rescue Plan Act. For many families with young children, like Educare Chicago parent Cheryse Singleton-Nobles, the expanded Child Tax Credit offers integral support that increases their ability to provide a stable environment and experiences for their children to thrive.

“A lot of us are struggling. Even though the pandemic is ending, that doesn’t end the financial impacts it created,” Cheryse shares.

Across the nation, even as employment is rising and strains on household budgets have eased in recent months families continue to struggle. One in three adults with children report difficulty covering usual household expenses, and one in eight report their families don’t have enough to eat. This financial strain and chronic stress can undermine young children’s sense of security, safety and joy. If prolonged, it can have a negative, long-term impact on their development.

“If it’s stressful for an adult, imagine how stressful this time has been for young children whose entire routine was disturbed,” Cheryse continues. “The Child Tax Credit puts us in a place of peace so that we can be in a better mental state to focus on doing more for our children and not worrying as much about things getting turned off or bills not being paid.”

The expanded Child Tax Credit will help directly alleviate the strain that so many families are experiencing on multiple fronts. Eligible families will receive up to $3,600 per child under age 6 and $3,000 for children ages 6 to 17, with half made available to families in advance through six monthly payments and the rest claimed when they file their tax returns.

Many organizations, including our own Educare Learning Network, are proactively reaching out to educate families on the tax filing process and helping them take full advantage of the Child Tax Credit. At Educare Chicago, “staff let us know it was coming, who to contact and offered to assist with the tax filing process,” Cheryse shares.

“Who am I?” From the moment babies are born, they are learning about who they are, how to express their feelings and what makes them special. Their earliest relationships with parents and caregivers help develop a sense of belonging and set the foundation for their future learning and success.

Parents and caregivers can help young children along as they grow and learn more about who they are, their feelings and how they fit into this world.

Supporting Black fathers in their role as a child’s first and most important teacher is an investment in our children and our communities. This Father’s Day, let’s intentionally change the narrative, advocate for local, state and federal policies that benefit Black fathers and promote positive and culturally relevant parent and home visiting programs that benefit early childhood development.

Learn more about my work and continue to follow this blog for the latest updates from Start Early.

In April 2021, Start Early merged with the Early Learning Lab (ELL) — a nonprofit with expertise in human-centered design, systems thinking and technology solutions — to drive stronger, more equitable solutions, programs and policies that are better informed by community voices to improve early childhood systems across the country.

The merger uniquely positions Start Early to develop new ways of working that draw upon the collective experience of both organizations in elevating parent voice, systems change, and knowledge transfer and network building.

The Early Learning Lab was founded in 2015 to bring new methods and tools from the social innovation sector to the early childhood field to catalyze the design, implementation and scaling of high-impact products and programs.

Now, the Early Learning Lab is a new division within Start Early. The Lab will continue its work to lift up family and community voices and advance smart technology solutions in early childhood programs and systems.

Teri Rogoway’s love of nature started early, with her own mom. “My mom taught me from a really young age that nature was a gift and that we could be better people as a result of interacting with nature,” she shares. “I’ve always had a positive experience in nature and I wanted to give those kinds of experiences to other people.”

As the educational programs coordinator for the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority, Teri helps children engage with nature from an early age. “We do stroller walks with parents and infants and toddlers, where we let the kids play outside and make things out of twigs, rocks and leaves. I never tell them what to make, I just let them create,” she notes, which helps build creativity skills that follow them into their later years.

Engaging parents is key to increasing young children’s exposure to and appreciation of nature. “You want parents to feel comfortable being out in nature because children watch how their parent responds. If the parents are afraid, then a child might pick up on that fear and carry it with them through life,” she explains.

The weather outside may be frightful, but the great indoors beckons. Inclement weather can offer the perfect opportunity to engage in indoor activities with your children that help them build important academic and social skills; skills such as executive functions, memory, self-regulation and teamwork. Executive Function: means your child will develop abilities to remain focused on an activity, complete tasks and be persistent and Self-Regulation: is the degree to which your child can control their emotional reactions.

Vehr reflects on how even a 3-month policy wouldn’t have felt sufficient. “With a 3-month policy, I would have spent about a third of my leave with at least one child in the hospital. The extended 6-month leave meant that I could spend meaningful time, especially in those precious early days, focused on establishing new routines and caring for my children.”

Decreasing an employee’s salary and retirement savings opportunities at a time when their expenses are increasing causes high levels of stress, conditions that have been shown to negatively affect children’s growth and development. Start Early’s parental leave program also aligns with research evidence about the impact caregiver stress and access to high-quality healthcare has on young children by providing employees with 100% of their salary and benefits during parental leave.

“I was really one of the fortunate parents in the NICU,” says Vehr. “I think about mothers who have to return to work before they’ve fully healed or parents who are forced to return to work when their little ones are so very young because not receiving a paycheck is simply not an option.”

A comprehensive paid parental leave program can aid in retaining women in the workforce. One study from Institute for Women’s Policy Research found that implementing paid parental leave policies in California and New Jersey resulted in a 20 percent reduction in the number of women exiting their jobs in the first year after welcoming a child and up to a 50 percent reduction after 5 years.

“When you invest in your people, they invest back in the organization which ultimately leads to increased retention,” notes Byville. “I feel a much stronger sense of loyalty to Start Early because of the space they made for my family.”

Vehr agrees, “I feel a deeper sense of commitment to our organization and more cared for as an employee.” She adds, “it really calls on employers to consider a far more empathetic, humane approach to parental and family leave, and it also calls on our lawmakers to support employers with that aim.”

The benefits of paid parental leave set families, employers, and our communities up for success, which is why Start Early will continue to advocate for family-friendly policies that support time for parents and caregivers to bond with and care for their children without jeopardizing their ability to afford basic needs.

At Start Early, we know that reading is fundamental to a child’s development. As we celebrate Read Across America Day, we recognize the importance of making reading with your little ones a priority every day! By reading with your young child, you are not only bonding and inspiring a love of reading, but also developing strong early language and literacy skills that are key to future learning and success.

Whether your child is a newborn or about to head to kindergarten, here are some great books to read during storytime:

• Little Blue Truck by Alice Schertle
• Giraffes Can’t Dance by Giles Andreae
• Smile, Baby Faces Board Book by Roberta Grobel Intrater
• Hair Love by Matthew A. Cherry
• Peekaboo Morning by Rachel Isadora
• We’re Different, We’re the Same by Bobbi Kates
• Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late by Mo Willems
• Grumpy Monkey by Suzanne Lang and Max Lang
• What If by Samantha Berger
• Swimmy by Leo Lionni
• The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt

Other Early Learning Resources:

• 7 Books for Teaching Young Children How to Be Great Leaders
• 12 Tips to Boost Early Literacy

Empowering parents in their role as their child’s first and most important teacher is an essential component of quality early learning and care.

A recent piece in “Early Learning Nation” looks at the benefits of intensive family engagement, a key component of the Educare model featured in a new documentary, “Tomorrow’s Hope.” One of the educators featured in the film is Brenda Eiland-Williford, director of early childhood quality and impact at Start Early. She shares how partnering with parents — building a foundation of support, bonding and relationships — can help communities undergoing transitions and give children and families “the problem-solving, conflict-management and self-regulation skills to thrive.”

Family engagement will also be critical to the success of cities, states and communities as they reckon with how to rebuild early childhood systems back better in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Parents and caregivers have the clearest perspective of what their family needs, and family voices — like those featured in “Tomorrow’s Hope” — must be included in the planning, implementation, oversight and evaluation of all programs serving children from birth to age 5 and their families.

Rebecca Berlin, chief learning officer at Start Early and principal investigator of the National Center for Parent, Family and Community Engagement (NCPFCE) why lifting up family voices is so important in another “Early Learning Nation” piece: “We know this will lead to early learning programs that truly support family well-being, effective family and community engagement and children’s school readiness so that every child has the opportunity to thrive.”

A growing concern for the early childhood field is how to best support parents and families in nurturing their young children’s healthy development. Educators and leaders are eager to help families gain the knowledge and tools they need to effectively engage in their children’s learning.

Technology-based interventions hold great promise for reaching and communicating with families. These interventions are relatively low-cost, scalable, and accessible for parents who use their mobile phones for communication and information seeking. Technology-based interventions can also reinforce the learning and community building of on-the-ground family support programs. But this promise can only hold true if the technology products are designed to reach parents and communicate what they want to know.

In the last few years, a number of tech-based family engagement platforms and tools designed to guide parents have emerged, including apps like Vroom, Let’s Play, and Kinedu, video tools like Ready Rosie, texting programs such as Text4Baby and Ready4K, podcasts, and word-tracking wearables like LENA and Starling. As awareness about early childhood development increases, more technology players (non-profit and for-profit) are likely to enter this space.

At The Early Learning Lab (The Lab), we have spent the past year surveying early childhood technology tools, learning how various products and programs are being implemented and evaluated, and identifying best technology practices for early childhood family engagement.

Whether you are an entrepreneur developing a new early learning tech product, a school administrator trying to find an effective family-engagement tool, or a parent-support program operator looking to add a digital component to your program, The Lab sees the following 10 design elements as critical to the impact of any early learning parent engagement tool:

All in all, no one product is going to have all 10 of these elements. But this list can serve as a useful guide for developers and a wish list for people who are evaluating and purchasing technology products for parent engagement. Technology holds great promise for reaching large numbers of families and helping us achieve the goal of kindergarten readiness for all, but only if the products we develop and use are designed for impact.