Early childhood development experts, Dr. Fraser Mustard and Hon. Margaret McCain, were on Prince Edward Island this week, October 6-8 to present their research on the importance of the early years.
Dr. Mustard, who began his medical career in cardiology, is a leading authority on early brain development. He has stated that children develop patterns for life by age six and that the quality and capacity of our future population depends on what we do now to support young children.
Hon. McCain is recognized for her advocacy role against family violence and her efforts towards the development of policies that support healthy child development. She is a social worker, a philanthropist and former lieutenant governor of New Brunswick. She and her husband, Wallace McCain, now live in Toronto.
McCain and Mustard co-authored The Early Years Study, and later assisted Dr. Stuart Shanker with the Early Years Study 2: Putting Science into Action, which recommends an integrated system of community-based early childhood development and parenting centres linked to the school system.
While on PEI, the champions for young children talked about the role schools and communities play in early brain development. They shared their research with government, community and business leaders who are working in the areas of early child development, education and health.
Here is the Guardian coverage of the comunity meeting that was hosted at the Murchison Centre on October 6, 2008:
Investing in the development of children in their early years will impact Canadian society socially and economically, says Margaret McCain.
Social worker McCain and Dr. Fraser Mustard, co-authors of the book the Early Years Study 2: Putting Science into Action, spoke to a group of students, educators and researchers on the subject of early childhood development at the Murchison Centre in Charlottetown Tuesday.
The pair took turns in explaining the importance of early-year development of a child and how communities can develop quality parenting centres to achieve this.
Mustard said early development is essential to society.
“If you don’t invest wisely in early human development, you’ll fail to get equity and you’ll fail to have a healthy competent population,” he said.
There is a need for this kind of care today, McCain said.
“Parents today need high-quality parental care and they need stimulation for their children.”
In McCain’s presentation, she said that in early childhood development reports, 42 per cent of functioning Canadians are illiterate, meaning they could read a
simple message but cannot
understand a complex message seen in a newspaper or on a medicine bottle.
She said P.E.I. and other parts of Canada should take the survey into consideration.
“Like many parts of Canada, P.E.I. needs to pay attention to this because your literacy and economic outcomes are at least as bad, if not more so than some other parts of Canada.”
Mustard urged parents to be productive with their children.
“For heaven’s sake, be effective. Intervene often because sculpting the brain for language abilities depends on the amount of language exposure.”
McCain listed risk factors that would make a child turn out poorly. She said they include poverty, single parenting, child abuse and substance abuse among others.
She said being well fed and clothed and the ability to live in a safe and well protected environment is something every Canadian has a right to.
“This is a basic human right we Canadians hold dear.”
McCain and Fraser agreed in their presentations that a lack of qualified early childhood development centres is a social problem that should be universal
rather than targeted to certain groups.
McCain said there should be systems set up to solve this problem.
“A universal system must be available, must be affordable, it must be accessible and probably optional for everyone.”
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