Health and Early Childhood Education

In today's society, families are faced with a host of health issues. Rising poverty rates have lead to increased numbers of children suffering from malnutrition. The AIDS epidemic has shown no sign of being eradicated. An unacceptable number of children die each year of SIDS (although, science has made progress in reducing this number). Families, afraid of vaccinating their children, leave their children exposed to a great number of diseases once thought to be extinct. Overuse of antibiotics has left thousands immune to them, allowing illness to go untreatable.

One issue which has had a great impact on my classroom this year is mental health issues, both in children, and how parents who are mentally ill affect their children. According to the website www.zerotothree.org, infant mental health is defined as "the healthy social and emotional development of a child from birth to 3 years". Unfortunately, many children are born into families which make this type of healthy development difficult, if not impossible.

I will give the example of a set of twins who joined my classroom in mid-March. They were referred by a child service agency, having been dismissed from their prior center. It soon became apparent why they had been removed. Their mother has a chemical imbalance, and their father is an alcoholic who, at the time, was incarcerated for the 4th time. Their mother is argumentative, refusing to follow center policies and verbally attacks the staff pretty much every time she enters the center. Since it is part of my job to see that policies are followed, she has taken a special dislike of me! She has little interest in her twins, nor their older sister. The family has been associated with the agency which brought them to us for the last two years, since the twins (aged 2) were found wandering around the neighborhood alone. At a meeting this week with their caseworker, I was informed that this is the longest the boys have lasted at ANY center (keep in mind they have been with me for only 2 months)!

Due to the mother's mental health issues (which she refuses to accept treatment for), the father's alcoholism and frequent incarceration, the level of poverty at which they live, and the basic neglect they are exposed to, the boys are suffering on many levels. Academically, they are behind. They cannot correctly identify any letters or number , cannot correctly hold a pencil, use scissors, or follow even the simplest of directions. Socially, they are also behind. They cannot interact with their peers or teachers appropriately, and they continually fight with each other, both by yelling at each other and by striking each other. They have shown up at school on one more than one occasion with cuts or bruises they said were caused by each other. We had to dismiss the TS worker assigned to them, as it quickly became apparent that one of the reasons they were fighting was to gain his attention. Unfortunately, they will celebrate their 5th birthday this summer, at which point state funding will no longer be available for them to continue to attend my class, and instead they will be placed into a kindergarten classroom they are not developmentally ready for. I have only 2 more months to work with them, and still meet the needs of the rest of my students. We have made progress, but we still have so much more to accomplish before they are ready to be immersed in a classroom of their peers and hold their own. These boys are lucky in that the school district they are entering is a good one, and they have a good chance of continuing to have teachers who can address their many needs.

According to the Convention on the Rights of Children, all children with disabilities have the same rights as all other children. Among those are the right to a developmentally appropriate education. According to my research, the view across the US as well as worldwide is pretty universal: early intervention is essential, and must be accessible and affordable, meaning that most services must be provided at little or no cost. But what do we do when the family refuses to follow the recommendations provided? Or when the children no longer qualify for services because they are too old? Or when the children aren't the only ones in need of services, but the parent(s) are as well? Or when the parents ARE the issue? Unfortunately, I do not have all the answers. I can only hope and pray that in time, someone will.