Good parenting does not come natural, but is learned, according to early childhood education expert Dr. Carol Brunson Day.
And good parenting and education during a child’s early years is most important of all, according to a large body of research.
Brunson Day, president and chief executive officer of the National Black Child Development Institute, made a brief stop in St. Louis on Tuesday to accept the 2008 Parents as Teachers Child and Family Advocacy Award at the annual Parents as Teachers Conference.
The award honors an individual or organization that has demonstrated exceptional service and steadfast commitment in advocating for children and families. It is given annually by Parents as Teachers National Center, which is based in St. Louis. The center’s chief operating officer, Cheryle Dyle-Palmer, is African-American.
“Our children are born brilliant with capabilities that are extraordinary, but they start losing ground the minute they hit social pressures, and it moves right on up until they hit these critical points, such as third-grade reading,” Brunson Day said.
“The things that you can do early make so much more difference than the same amount of energy put in later in life.”
In a career that spans 39 years, Brunson Day has authored more than 25 publications and sits on several national boards focused on improving the lives and the education of young children. Education, she said, starts way before formal schooling. It starts in the home early, even before birth.
She contended that nurturing a child’s first years in life is critical in the child’s development of academic skills and the necessary jump-start needed to ensure adults have greater success in life.
Research shows that early learning reduces educational failure, crime, drug use and violence, while lowering cost for health care and social services. Recent studies also show that young black males who are not successful in the fourth grade or able to read at fourth-grade level are more likely to go to prison.
“It makes the work even more urgent, because now we are losing so many of our black children to desperation,” Brunson Day said. “They’re taking desperate measures to survive.”
Brunson Day began her work with children as a nursery schoolteacher in the late ’60s. After reading a national report that negatively depicted black families as merely homes with absent fathers and subpar expectations of their children, Brunson refocused her career to changing the perception of black families. She joined the National Black Child Development Institute in the early 1970s, based in Washington, D.C, and in January 2007 she was named president and CEO.
The organization’s mission is to improve and protect the lives of black children by advocating for improved child welfare services, universal access to early childcare and childhood education, family support services and educational reform. It has a St. Louis affiliate.
Parents must take their role as their child’s first teacher seriously, both women said. It’s more than teaching the child how to read and write, but also instilling self-esteem and fostering a positive self-image, which many black children lack today.
“Parents need to know that what they think of the child, the child will think of him or herself, so they have to think highly of their kids,” Brunson Day said.
“They have to tell them that they’re strong, beautiful and competent, and the child will learn to believe those things of him or herself.”
A child’s learning, she said, is impacted by the child’s social context, including health and economic status. In order for schools to better serve black children, they must work to develop the whole child, not just the educational aspect. Collaboration between schools and businesses, churches, the justice department, the health care system and other systems is necessary for children to thrive, she said.
“Children bring so many problems into the schools that schools can’t handle,” Brunson Day said. “That should not be the way the problem is conceived. The context of the family should be of concern to the schools as well.”
The women contended that although access to education has improved in the last 50 years, quality has not. While jobs, income and educational attainment have grown, so has the economic divide that leaves many poor black families out of the loop. But in spite of the hardships faced by today’s black families, the women said there is still hope.
“The problems that black children and families face are overwhelming, but we have a long history of resisting domination and have always found ways to fight against injustice,” Brunson Day said.
Parents as Teachers National Center is a national organization that provides tools and strategies that promote healthy development from the very beginning of a child’s life that can follow them until they themselves can become parents.
Its annual conference runs through today (April 3) at the Renaissance Grand Hotel and America’s Center. For more information, go to www.parentsasteachers.org. For more information on the National Black Child Development Institute, go to www.nbcdi.org.