Vol 5 Issue 1
Focus on school readiness
IN THIS ISSUE:
- Maternal stress, depression and anxiety during pregnancy
- Smoking in pregnancy and beyond birth
- Attachment and a secure base
- Adverse events in early childhood
- Sleep and routines
- Technology for toddlers
- Parents as first teachers
Author: Kathleen Roche-Nagi, Hanan Hussein, Kathryn Thomson,
Description: Our Guest Editors question whether current parent education programmes are serving the needs of families from minority ethnic communities
Description writer: Kathleen Roche-Nagi, Managing Director, Approachable Parenting
Hanan Hussein, Honorary Tutor, University of Birmingham; Principal Clinical Psychologist, Black Country Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, UK
Kathryn Thomson, Honorary Assistant Psychologist, Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust; Trainee Wellbeing Practitioner, Oxford NHS Foundation Trust, UK
Author: Robin Balbernie
Description: Adverse outcomes for children of women who experience stress, depression or anxiety during pregnancy are not inevitable. The importance of prevention and early intervention strategies which aim to circumvent these negative consequences, and which integrate perinatal mental health, child health and public health, cannot be understated.
Description writer: Clinical Director of PIP (Parent Infant Partnership) UK
Author: Nicole Reilly
Description: There is now a strong body of evidence confirming that antenatal mental health issues are a major cause of maternal morbidity. However poorer outcomes for children are not inevitable, and can be addressed at least in part by prevention and early intervention strategies which integrate perinatal mental health, child health and public health.
Description writer: Perinatal & Women’s Mental Health Unit, St John of God Health Care and the School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Australia
Author: Euan Holmes
Description: The impact of maternal smoking on the baby in the womb, continues to be a major cause of a range of poor birth outcomes. In England prevalence remains too high with the highest rates in the poorest communities. Further progress can be made through ensuring the maternity workforce has the means to make brief and effective interventions, putting their knowledge into practice.
Description writer: Policy and Campaigns Team, Action on Smoking and Health (ASH)
Author: Sophie Moullin
Description: Attachment is, of course, only one factor among many influencing young children’s development before school. Few studies have been able to confirm a causal role for attachment security in skill development. Still, sizeable associations found over multiple samples, specifications and decades, suggest that attachment security – and the sensitive parenting that largely accounts for it – be taken seriously as a foundation for learning.
Description writer: PhD Candidate, Sociology and Social Policy, Princetown University, USA
Author: Andy Phippen
Author title: Dr
Description: By the age of three, many youngsters have access to online devices in the home and will certainly have parents and carers who fully engage with it. With younger children, our focus should be on how and when the child interacts with the technology, and on the use of technology by stakeholders who have responsibilities for their safeguarding and welfare.
Description writer: Professor of Children and Technology, Plymouth University, UK
Author: Lyn Robinson-Smith, Helen L. Ball
Description:
Parents are concerned about their child’s sleep for important reasons, given the wealth of evidence linking sleep with developmental outcomes. Encouraging parents to implement and develop appropriate bedtime routines and helping them to identify cues relating to their child’s individual sleep need will contribute to supporting cognitive function, learning and school readiness.
Description writer:
Lyn Robinson-Smith Reasearch Associate, School of Education, Durham University, UK
Helen L. Ball Professor of Anthropology, Director of Infant Sleep Lab, Durham University, UK
Author: Tejinder K. Kondel-Laws
Description: Skills for school readiness may not be the priority for most parents and indeed, may seem overwhelming as a responsibility. However, by opening-up a dialogue for prospective parents on how future brain-based adult processes and abilities relate to those seen in preschool children, the influential impact of effective parenting, parental wellbeing, early childhood care and education can be appreciated.
Description writer: Chartered Clinical Psychologist, Perinatal & Infant Mental Health, Whittington Health, NHS
Author: Janice Saunders
Description: Parents as First Teachers improves the quality of parent-child interaction and attachment, enhances maternal mental health, increases school readiness and nurtures positive parenting behaviour which goes on delivering benefits throughout the life of the child.
Description writer: Parents as First Teachers UK Director and National Trainer
Description: Helping parents-to-be to understand, prepare for and even enjoy the unpredictability of life with a young baby is key to supporting them through the first months of motherhood and fatherhood. The following activity is a very simple one that nonetheless opens up important areas for discussion
