Hertzman – early childhood educators

Well, I think it is clear when you look at environments that work for children that ones that are rich in language and responsive, and ones that are well-managed in terms of the social and emotional environment are the ones that work the best. So I think when we’re talking about taking more community responsibility for children now, we have to be very cognizant that we want, you know, a critical mass of the front-line staff to be verbal, to be interactive, to be socially and emotionally very secure, and so forth.   

On the other hand, we really do have to have an understanding among childcare workers as to how important social development is in that window, sort of from about two to five, in particular, because you know people like Richard and Tremblay have shown, that’s the window in which kids can unlearn physical aggression. The model is not one of kids learning it from tv, you know, when they’re teenagers or something, but it’s a question of unlearning physical aggression during a window of opportunity early on in life. And so, you know, having skills there to look for that, to look for kids who are overly anxious and to be thinking about how do you change the environment so that these kids can develop the best possible, you know, is very important. And that takes a lot of skill.