Canadians parents whose children attend daycare or who are cared for by an extended family member may want to keep close tabs on their kids’ weight, according to a recent study out of Quebec.

Researchers at the University of Montreal and the CHU Sainte-Justine Hospital Research Centre say they’ve made a link between children in daycare and their chances of becoming obese between the ages of four and 10.

“We found that children whose primary care arrangement between 1.5 and 4 years was in daycare-center or with an extended family member were around 50 per cent more likely to be overweight or obese between the ages of 4-10 years compared to those cared for at home by their parents,” lead researcher Dr. Marie-Claude Geoffroy said in a statement Monday.

“This difference cannot be explained by known risk factors such as socioeconomic status of the parents, breastfeeding, body mass index of the mother, or employment status of the mother.”

Fellow researcher Sylvana Cote advised parents not to worry, but suggested they “ensure their children eat well and get enough physical activity, whether at home or at daycare.”

The findings were published in the medical journal Pediatrics.

For six years researchers followed 1,649 families with kids born between 1997 and 1998. The children were measured for weight and height at ages four, six, seven, eight and 10.  Their childcare situations broke down as follows: 30 per cent attended daycare; 35 per cent were in a family or home-based daycare; 11 per cent were cared for by an extended family member; five per cent were cared for by a nanny and 19 per cent were cared for at home by their parents.

The study found that children who attended daycare regularly were 65 per cent more likely to become overweight or obese. Kids who were cared for by an extended family member were 50 per cent more likely to be overweight or obese compared to kids who were cared for at home by their parents.

Every increment of five hours spent in either a childcare centre or with a relative per day increased a child’s odds of being overweight or obese by nine per cent, researchers say.

Article found here: http://www.citytv.com/toronto/citynews/life/health/article/236936–daycare-linked-to-obesity-in-kids-study

These articles/reports/studies would give us a good answer why:

2.   “Secure children – Secure parents – The role of family in the 21st century”
http://www.stratletter.com/dec10speech.html
      Statement given at a Swedish Parliament seminar on December 10, 2008.

3.   “Are the Swedish state family policies delivering?”
http://www.mireja.org/Resources/himmelstrand_lisbon_statement.pdf
      Statement given on May 25, 2010 at the EU-sponsored FamilyPlatform conference in Lisbon. Gives a short overview.

4.   “Busting the Myths of Swedish Family Policies”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEED4yFltCE
      YouTube recording of a 60 minute speech in Ottawa on May 5, 2011. The most extensive presentation recorded or written.

5.   “Work-Family Balance: The importance of Family Focused Solutions”
http://www.mireja.org/Resources/110603_UN_presentation.pdf
       Statement given at a United Nations Expert Group Meeting in New York on June 3, 2011. The shortest presentation, but has extensive references.

6.   Dr Sarah-Eve Farquhar (2008), “Assessing the evidence on early childhood education/childcare”

7.    Nurturing Children: Why “early learning” doesn’t help, article from the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada

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Related Links:

• Media Release 12 – Early Childhood Education Brings Social Drawbacks, Uncertain Benefits
• New Zealand Law Society Submission
• Australians have common sense where it seems our NZ Government does not
• ECE (Preschool) is no good for 4, 5 and possibly 6 year olds expert says
• Presenting an oral submission to the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill
• Social Services Select Committee members
• Barbara Smith’s submission
• Media Release 11 – Parents Are Responsible for Education, Says HEF National Director
• Media Release 10 – Preschool Associated With Social and Academic Disadvantage
• A Bit of Political Advice to Home Educators by Craig Smith
• Samuel Blight’s submission
• Home Education Foundation’s submission
• Media Release 9 – Social Security Bill Should Treat Home Education as a Legitimate Choice
• Media Release 8 – Social Security Bill Will Cause Real Hardship to Real People
• Family Integrity’s submission
• Media Release 7 – Paula Bennett’s One-Size-Fits-All Approach Leaves Parents With No Options
• 2nd letter from Paula Bennett to Barbara Smith
• Why should I put a submission into the Select Committee about the beneficiaries?
• Media Release 6 – Social Security Bill Will Punish Responsible Parents Who ‘Can’t Be Bought’
• Beneficiaries: Policy and Law
• 66 Submissions
• Submission: Trafficking, extortion, kidnapping, slavery and deception
• Media Release 5 – Beneficiary Parents “Not Able to Home School” Under Social Security Bill
• Media Release 4 – Social Security Bill Targets Responsible Parents for Toughest Penalties
• Letter from Paula Bennett to Samuel Blight
• Opinion Piece in Truth
• Possible timeline for Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill
• Media Release 3 – Social Security Bill’s ECE Obligations Breach Human Rights
• Media Release 2 – Vulnerable Children Not Benefited By Social Security Bill
• Media Release 1 – Social Security Bill Coerces Parents, Removes Freedom
• Make a submission: Reject compulsory Early Education for 3 year olds
• Some of the main links
• Comment on Q+A: Social Development Minister Paula Bennett
• Human Rights in New Zealand Today: The right to education
• Raymond S. Moore on Early Childhood Centres
• Should preschool be compulsory?
• TVNZ One this morning Q&A with Paula Bennett
• Maxim Institute: What is best for children?
• HUGE Concerns over the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill
• Letter from Paula Bennett concerning beneficaries and home education to Barbara Smith
• Toby Manhire on Benefit-slaying Nats starting to look plain nasty
• Linking welfare to preschool attendance a world first
• New Update on: How will the new Social obligations which will be required of all beneficiary parents effect home schoolers?
• How will the new Social obligations which will be required of all beneficiary parents effect home schoolers?

Update 5/10/12: Make a submission: Reject compulsory Early Education for 3 year olds

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Excerpt from an interview with Raymond S. Moore in Human Events, September 15, 1984

Q: [Interviewer] I’m quoting you now: “An early start in formal institutionalized schooling deprives children of the free exploration so crucial to the development of genius.” Could you elaborate on that and give specific ways in which institutionalized learning may penalize or stifle genius?

A: [Raymond S. Moore] Harold McCurdy, a distinguished psychologist from the University of North Carolina and a leading student of genius, says that genius is derived from the experience of children being most of the time with adults and very little with their peers. So when you start assembling children in very large numbers for long periods of time, you are on the wrong course for producing strong character and intellect. The more children around your child, the fewer meaningful human contacts he will have.Let me give you another example, the matter of adult responses. John Goodlad, Graduate Dean of Education at UCLA, came out with an article in the Phi Delta Kappan in March, 1983. He did a comparison of over a thousand schools and found that the average amount of time spent in person-to-person responses between teachers and students amounted to seven minutes a day.It doesn’t take much to see that if your child is one of 20, 25, 30 or maybe more youngsters in a classroom and the teacher is giving only seven minutes a day in responses, that your child is lucky if he gets spoken to once a day. If he is an aggressive or misbehaving child, he might get more attention. But when a child is home with his mother, he may get one, two, three hundred answers to his questions and ideas a day. So you can see right there where we are in terms of the sheer potential there is for the stimulation of intellect in a home.

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Harold McCurdy

In 1960, the Smithsonian Institution’s journal, Horizon, published a daring three-part recipe on “The Childhood Pattern of Genius:”

• The first ingredient was much time  with warm, responsive parents and other adults.
• The second was isolation from peers,
• and the third called for much freedom for children to explore their own interests.

Finally, study director Harold McCurdy applied it to families and schools:

“…the mass education of our public school system is, in its way, vast experiment on reducing…all three factors to a minimum; accordingly, it should tend to suppress the occurrence of genius.”

Even more this can be applied to ECEs

Update 5/10/12: Make a submission: Reject compulsory Early Education for 3 year olds

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Should preschool be compulsory?

Digital image / P.K. Stowers

To read whole article and to vote in poll  click here

Jane Silloway Smith: No. Better parenting helps kids’ lives, not preschool

The Government’s announcement last week that all beneficiary parents will be required to send their children to early childhood education (ECE) for at least 15 hours a week from age three was signalled as a way to ensure children of beneficiaries “get the best possible start in life”. Despite good intentions, making preschool compulsory could ultimately do more harm than good by undermining instead of strengthening children’s most critical relationships.

The case for compulsory preschooling seems, on the surface, to be a compelling one. Evidence from many reputable sources indicates that attendance at high-quality ECE can enable children from disadvantaged backgrounds to narrow the achievement gaps with their more advantaged peers in terms of school readiness. So, children of beneficiaries go to ECE; they get better prepared for school; their life chances improve; and the Government avoids the social and financial costs of future negative outcomes for these children. A win-win for all, right?

Not quite. ECE has been shown to benefit children from disadvantaged backgrounds because these children often lack what their more advantaged peers have: a nurturing home environment. Educational researchers regularly report that a nurturing home environment will have a more profound impact on a child’s educational achievement than preschool programmes – a reason often stated for why more advantaged children are not often found to gain much, if anything, educationally from ECE.

So making preschooling compulsory for the children of beneficiaries actually dodges the most critical factor for a child’s future – their home environment. Most child development experts will tell you children need a good home in which they are able to form an attachment to their parents for proper development. For that to occur, parents need to be nurturing and interacting with their children: talking to them, cuddling them, and generally taking an interest in their lives.

Many parents on a benefit are doing a good job with all that, despite the financial and employment obstacles they may be facing. It would be a mistake, then, to force them to put their children in ECE when other options may be more suitable.

Though good parents abound, we must face the reality that some are not properly nurturing and interacting with their children. Yet taking decision-making away from parents in dysfunctional situations, as compulsory preschooling would do, absolves them of their responsibility for their children and does nothing to correct the most pressing problem: poor parenting. No amount of high-quality ECE will ever make up for this lack…

Read more and vote in poll here

In the end, what’s best for children is to grow up in a stable family with parents who are nurturing and interested in their development. Compulsory preschool won’t ensure this; indeed, it may undermine it.

* Dr Jane Silloway Smith is research manager for the Maxim Institute, an independent research and public policy think tank, incorporated as a charitable trust. For more details, see www.maxim.org.nz