NIH Radio
Early Child Care Linked to Increases in Vocabulary and Problem Behaviors in 5th and 6th Graders
Brief Description:
The most recent analysis of a long-term NIH-funded study found that children who received higher quality child care before entering kindergarten had better vocabulary scores in the fifth grade than did children who received lower quality care.
Transcript:
Schmalfeldt: The most recent analysis of a long-term NIH-funded study found that children who received higher quality child care before entering kindergarten had better vocabulary scores in the fifth grade than did children who received lower quality care. However, the study authors also found that the more time children spent in center-based care before kindergarten, the more likely their sixth-grade teachers were to report problem behaviors. Dr. James Griffin, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Science Officer for the study, explained a possible reason for this finding.
Griffin: There are some people that speculate that those who are in center-based care, because there's more children, there may be more opportunities for conflict and maybe some opportunities to learn some not-so-good behaviors. The other could be it's just a way of being socialized in a group versus a smaller setting, and that some of those behaviors persist.
Schmalfeldt: Researchers emphasized that this so-called bad behavior fell into the range of normal childhood shenanigans — like sassing back and getting into fights — and was not considered to be clinicially disordered. What's more, according to Dr. Griffin, the biggest influence on a child's behavior is still to be found at home.
Griffin: We found through sixth grade that parents are actually the biggest influence on children's lives and the best predictors of how they're going to do later in school and socially — much larger than any effects of child care.
Schmalfeldt: These are the latest findings in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, the largest, longest running and most comprehensive study of child care in the United States. Families were recruited through hospital visits to mothers shortly after the birth of a child in 1991 in 10 locations in the U.S.
Griffin: And that's what makes them interesting. We've been studying these children since birth, and so while we can't draw causal conclusions, at the same time it's interesting to see these effects persist all the way into fifth and sixth grade.
Schmalfeldt: The study appears in the March/April 2007 edition of Child Development. From the National Institutes of Health, I'm Bill Schmalfeldt in Bethesda, Maryland.
About This Audio Report
Date: 4/13/2007
Reporter: Bill Schmalfeldt
Sound Bite: Dr. James Griffin
Topic: Child Care
Institute(s): NICHD
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