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Tara J. Yosso

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Whose culture has capital_A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth_1

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READ|Exploring Cultural Concepts: Funds of Knowledge

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READ|Exploring Cultural Concepts: Funds of Knowledge

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From EKLEC

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WATCH|How Every Child Can Thrive by Five

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WATCH|How Every Child Can Thrive by Five

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“What if I was to tell you that a game of peek-a-boo could change the world?” asks seven-year-old Molly Wright, one of the youngest-ever TED speakers. Breaking down the research-backed ways parents and caregivers can support children’s healthy brain development, Wright highlights the benefits of play on lifelong learning, behavior and well-being, sharing effective strategies to help all kids thrive by the age of five. She’s joined onstage by one-year-old Ari and his dad, Amarjot, who help illustrate her big ideas about brain science. (This TED Talk was produced in collaboration with Minderoo Foundation as an educational tool for parents and caregivers around the world and is supported by UNICEF.)

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Institute of Learning and Brain Sciences

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Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences (I-LABS)

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What's in an Interaction? | Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences (I-LABS)

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Zero to Three

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From EKLC Teacher Time Episode 3's Viewer's Guide

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Chapter 14 of Infant and Toddler Development and Responsive Program Planning: A Relationship-Based Approach 4th Edition

by Donna Wittmer (Author), Sandy Petersen (Author)

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QFA

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Vroom

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READ|Reading Your Child's Cues from Birth to Age 2

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READ|Reading Your Child's Cues from Birth to Age 2

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The Center on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning

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World Health Organization

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Center on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning

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The Child Development Institute

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Attunement is our ability to be aware of and respond to our child's needs. It is deeply connected to emotional attachment. Some children may have a very different temperament than that of a parent, or may not communicate affection in the same way, which can interfere with the quality of their emotional relationship. Parents can use a variety of techniques to increase their level of attunement.

Attunement starts with meeting an infant's basic needs for warmth, food, sleep, safety and love. The gentle touch and voice used by a caregiver builds a child's sense of security. A parent can pay attention to how their child feels by looking at how their little one responds to stimuli (e.g. likes to be touched firmly rather than softly, likes soft lights instead of bright lights, or doesn't tolerate crowds). They can also look for and respect their child's natural rhythms (e.g. needs to eat every 2 hours, needs naps every three hours, or needs a set bedtime schedule). Kids will thrive on structure and routine. Food is another area that can affect a child's wellbeing. It's helpful to pay attention to how food (especially new foods and additives) affects them-if you suspect a food allergy or sensitivity, speak to your pediatrician. Food allergies can cause a child to be fussy, overly tired, or hyper.

Children need your help to understand their own emotions. Mirroring and emotional labeling are techniques used to help children make sense of their feelings. They often respond to non-verbal communication first. If a child hurts himself and you respond with a big smile when he looks to you for comfort, you are unwittingly confusing his emotional lexicon. It is best if your face reflects the emotion they feel inside, followed by a label, such as: "Ouch! That hurts!", and then reassure him. Children especially need help with strong emotions such as frustration and anger. A phrase like, "You're mad! It's hard to share your toys," along with a facial expression reflecting his emotion, will go a long way to reassure him that emotions are part of normal life and therefore don't have to feel unsafe. As they get older, you can help them to communicate more complex feelings.

Stories and narratives are key to emotional intelligence and communication. They help kids build empathy, and understand choices and consequences. Your children learn from hearing how others experienced a situation. The more you read and share your own stories with your child, the more they will understand themselves and others. Stories and narrative also help them learn to communicate how they feel.

Make discipline about their actions, not them. Kids need fair rules and consistent consequences. Tell them exactly what they did wrong, and why it was not acceptable. The consequence should be tied to their actions, not failure to meet your expectations. You should also sound firm, but not angry. The minute a child hears the anger in his caregiver's voice, he is too busy dealing with his fear response to hear the lesson at hand.

Our society is very focused on goals and milestones, but it is the small stepping stones in between that make the experience memorable. Your child may have her limits but she tries hard every day. Take a moment to honor that, and praise her effort instead of the result. This helps create the foundation for respect, self-worth and resilience. It also helps you accept your child for what she is capable of doing in that moment.

And finally, attunement is built through respect: physical, emotional and spatial. We have covered parenting techniques to improve attunement to your child's emotional and physical needs above, but what does respecting their spatial needs mean? It means letting go of your worries, letting your children have their space, and allowing them free-unstructured playtime and quiet time. We all need space in order to grow. Kids learn from their mistakes, and being allowed to figure things out for themselves. They feel safer when their parents trust them to explore, experience and grow.

We hope this article helps increase your understanding of your child's individuality. CDI's therapy team is great resource for parents who want to learn more about attunement, emotional attachment, mirroring, emotional labeling and parenting.

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Attunement is our ability to be aware of and respond to our child's needs. It is deeply connected to emotional attachment. Some children may have a very different temperament than that of a parent, or may not communicate affection in the same way, which can interfere with the quality of their emotional relationship.

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Gallup.com

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View Leaders

Teamwork makes the dream work. It's a decent saying, but the advice is incomplete.

When it comes to improving collaborative teamwork, defining what improvement looks like and why teamwork is important is the first step. Improving teamwork is less about doing that literally than it is about establishing the outcome you're trying to improve. One cannot simply "improve teamwork" for the sake of improvement alone. Instead, you and your team are attempting to accomplish something that has yet to be done -- and defining that clearly and often is paramount.

Teamwork cannot exist apart from the "something" that your team is working to accomplish.

Are you trying to achieve your sales goals, drive greater employee performance or create technology to better serve your customer base?

Once you've established the "what," you can focus on working best as a team to achieve those goals (or on driving spirited competition within your team to achieve the goal *nudges the sales department*). This comes from setting your goal(s), understanding how your team collaborates most efficiently and placing individuals in the roles that best fit them, for the success of that individual and of the team.

So quit relying on cheesy sayings to inspire your teams and instead understand the benefits of great teamwork, how to build a high-performing team, and learn how to improve teamwork and teamwork skills, for real.

1) Individuals who know their strengths work together to form better partnerships, and more thoughtful partnerships create stronger teams. Strong teams start with the individual.

2) The strengths and dynamics of your team directly affect business outcomes.

Consider your business strictly in terms of its end goal. Are you trying to sell a product, increase donations or provide a service? For a moment, don't think about relationships. As you think about your goal, you should consider all business components that directly affect it. Now reintroduce the relationships -- your people matter, and the way your teams work together matters to the business goals of your organization.

Strong teams start with the individual.

Consider this fact about CliftonStrengths: When predicting both engagement and performance, a team's awareness of their strengths is more important than the specific composition of those strengths. In other words -- just knowing your strengths, as well as the strengths of your partners, leads to higher engagement and performance.

Higher levels of engagement affect business outcomes such as:

It's clear, teamwork and team building are important in the workplace.

When team members value each other's strengths, they more effectively relate to one another, avoid potential conflicts, boost group cohesion and create positive dialogue.

One of the most difficult tasks for an individual is easily explaining what they're good at. You can say you're "organized," but that could mean different things for different people.

Because strong teams begin at the individual level, the research-based CliftonStrengths assessment is a powerful tool that gives people a common language and vocabulary they can use to better describe, communicate with and understand each other. After acknowledging the importance of teamwork in the workplace and the power of knowing your strengths, take the next step by giving power to those strengths through CliftonStrengths.

When you have people in roles that fit their strengths and talents, their energy and passion can fuel their own great performance and inspire the same from their partners.

Consider these items that great teams have in common:

Team members can name and understand the individual talents of everyone on the team.

Team members can see a clear connection between each other's strengths and behavior. They can see the link between strengths and success.

Everyone on the team has partnerships that encourage their strengths development.

Team members use their knowledge of each other's strengths to plan, strategize, analyze and direct their actions.

Do you want to be a great team, or take your already-great team to the next level?

Break down your possible "next steps" into the " best next step." Focus on one piece at a time. There is a zero percent chance that every team will go about improving teamwork in the same way, so recall that first, you should establish goals and then consider how teamwork helps achieve those business goals.

Decide what it is you're trying to achieve. Learn your strengths. Get to work.

Action Items

Check the pulse of your team by asking them about their perceptions of teamwork in your workplace.

Decide whether teamwork is seen as important or unimportant to your organization and specify a simple goal that your team can achieve as a first step.

Write down team goals you want to achieve or business outcomes you want to improve to narrow your focus. Then, set specific dates you want to achieve these goals.

03 Improving Teamwork in the Workplace

Let's get right to it. Here are some first steps, ideas and action items to start improving teamwork.

Initial Steps to Improve Teamwork

Setting goals is an integral part of improving teamwork. How can people do the things they do best when a) they don't know what they're supposed to be doing and b) they aren't given time to consider what brings them energy?

Begin by describing what each employee is supposed to accomplish, not how they are supposed to accomplish it. Explain expectations in terms of the outcomes the employee needs to achieve to reach team goals. How each employee goes about meeting these expectations will vary -- but if you've hired adults and you trust the adults you've hired, you need to give them the freedom to work the way they know best.

Begin by describing what each employee is supposed to accomplish, not how they are supposed to accomplish it.

Next, outline quality standards for each task or function on the team. When team members know what excellence looks like, they can deliver quality work. How does excellence look for the account lead on this project? What about the copywriter or the sales manager or the technology developer? Surely excellence looks different for each: define excellence to deliver quality.

Finally, know the strengths of your team members, and help them learn their strengths. Give each person time to self-reflect and consider what they do best, what gets in the way of their excellence, what they consistently deliver, and so on. We know CliftonStrengths is the best way to name, aim and claim those natural strengths, but for the sake of starting, begin with reflection -- and continue reading for more about CliftonStrengths and teamwork.

Now you have clear goals, everyone on the same page for standards of excellence, and the right people in the right roles performing the tasks.

Improved Teamwork Impacts Company Culture

Another area where you can build teamwork in an organization, and start today, is by recognizing quality work and achievements. When you reward team members for quality work, they will repeat what they have done, and the entire team gains a greater understanding of what excellence looks like.

Changing a culture doesn't happen without taking those initial steps. So when something like recognizing employees for their excellent work and contributions improves both teamwork and culture, you should take advantage of it.

By encouraging teamwork and recognizing quality work, a team may experience greater emotional loyalty among individual members -- this is one of three characteristics that constitute a well-connected team, which, in turn, impacts the culture. These characteristics are:

confidence in one another's reliability and dependability

appreciation of one another's talents and strengths and recognition that these talents and strengths enable everyone to tackle challenges together

a deep-seated loyalty to the team

These ideas of trust and emotional loyalty lay the foundation to start thinking about long-term teamwork solutions.

Long-Term Teamwork Solutions

Don't get too caught up in long-term teamwork solutions if you have yet to implement the above suggestions for improving teamwork. However, it would be wise during the first stages of building a stronger team to ask team members to make note of the things that prevent them from doing quality work, as well as the things that make doing quality work easier.

Discussing roadblocks to excellence as a team encourages everyone to contribute ideas about how to remove them.

Begin establishing partnerships where you see someone else's strengths complementing yours. Find the partners who love doing things you dread. The ones who think of ideas much differently than you and who approach projects, relationships, and conversations in a new way. Read more about strong partnerships in How to Build a Better Team.

Finally, you should consider your conversations. Begin by having a conversation with your team about the future of the team and identify common themes you hear when listening to team members' responses. Read the next section for more on conversations that improve teamwork.

More About CliftonStrengths and Teamwork

Teams that use their strengths perform better. Period.

Your strengths -- the ability to deliver consistent, near-perfect performance in a specific task -- are simply your talents -- a natural way of thinking, feeling or behaving -- multiplied by the investment -- time spent practicing, developing skills and building a knowledge base.

People are not meant for high performance or excellence in every category, that's a foundational truth in understanding high performance. We need people who are stars, not well-rounded. You can't be a star in every area, but every area has a star performer. Teams should be made of those individuals.

For too long, the focus in the workplace has been on individual employees or team members developing weaknesses rather than reinforcing their strengths. The goal is not to have a team comprised of individuals who are each well-rounded, but instead to have well-rounded teams comprised of individuals performing in light of their strengths. This, alone, is one of the greatest reasons why teamwork is important in the workplace.

Excellence is not achieved in isolation. Excellence is created through the merging of people's differing strengths. Once each team member's strengths are aimed at the same purpose and teams are aligned on goals, this is where true excellence and success happens. So, encourage collaboration among team members who have complementary strengths. Better yet, model these healthy partnerships and show that teamwork is important.

Individuals who feel they are part of a team that is committed to quality are safer, better with customers, less likely to quit their jobs and more productive -- further proving the importance of teamwork. Identify your team's and your strengths. Have a conversation with each individual on your team, as well as in a group setting. Talk about what each person brings individually to the team, and then collectively and about how those individual efforts work together.

The goal is not to have a team comprised of individuals who are each well-rounded, but instead to have well-rounded teams comprised of individuals performing in light of their strengths.

The CliftonStrengths assessment is a research-based assessment that transforms great potential into greater performance. The assessment offers actionable, legitimate insights into how to work better as a team as you fully understand your strengths, as well as the strengths of your partners.

Simplified, the first step to improving teamwork is through knowing your team's strengths. Know where you and your team members thrive because of your strengths -- which come naturally -- and build stronger teams, thus improving teamwork.

Continue reading the rest of this page for more insights into improving teamwork, conversations, the manager's and executive's roles in teamwork, collaboration, team exercises and creating high-performing teams.

Action Items

Complete a goal audit; make sure you're describing what people should accomplish, not how to accomplish it.

Choose a team or organizational goal you'd like your team to achieve. Outline quality standards for each task or function that lead to the goal.

Based on your employees' roles and strengths, place them in positions that help the team achieve quality success in your goals.

Ask your team what gives them energy and what drains their energy. This will help individuals identify potential partnerships and improve team awareness.

Primary objective:

More planned than Quick Connects, these conversations happen less frequently. During Check-In conversations, managers and employees review successes and barriers and align and reset priorities. These conversations last from 30-60 minutes and are a "what's on your plate" working meeting -- a good time to align on priorities and offer your employees support.

Team development begins at the individual level, and managers must do their part to facilitate growth, encourage openness and communicate shared goals across the team. Managers should use the collective information from these conversations to help determine the best path to development for each of their employees and for their team as a whole.

To help guide coaching behaviors, managers should ensure their ongoing performance conversations are:

Know each employee's preferences regarding communication and coaching. Don't constantly ask for progress reports. Instead, touch base with them at least weekly.

Keep coaching conversations focused by knowing the purpose and expectations of each conversation. This helps prevent discussions from becoming transactional in nature -- which often makes them feel disingenuous or unnecessary.

The best managers don't primarily give reactive feedback on past performance; rather, they proactively provide advice and strategies for achieving outstanding performance in the future.

*When performance corrections are needed, managers need to coach forward by focusing on what can be done differently in the future rather than focusing on the mistakes of the past.

Action Items

For managers: Set time on your calendar for the next couple months to check in with each of your employees.

For employees: Reach out to your manager and request a time to check in. Have a few talking points you'd like to discuss and ask about making check-ins a regular occurrence.

Team bonding doesn't have to be formal. Stop avoiding your coworkers in the copy room, hallways or lunch line. Chat about work, chat about life, just start forming those meaningful relationships.

05 Leading a Team: The Manager's Role in Teamwork

Great managers provide a clear definition of quality work and link this description to performance standards. When team members know what excellence looks like, they can better deliver quality work.

Managers should not assume that employees always know how to accomplish their goals. Even if a manager and employee initially set goals together, circumstances and priorities still change.

It's vital that the manager keeps the team moving in the same direction while keeping a pulse on the context in which their employees are living and working. Imagine if you were in the hospital for a month, and the nurse only came in once to check your vitals. Is it nice that they came in to see how you were doing? Well, yeah, but they're not really doing their job. Wouldn't it have been nicer if they came in daily, maybe even multiple times a day? Of course.

The same idea applies to managers. Between regular meetings, planned check-ins and spontaneous touch bases, managers will see the full spectrum of work that their team is accomplishing. In terms of teamwork, the manager is the one who is setting the expectations, highlighting opportunities to improve team collaboration, and oftentimes distributing the workload. This can only happen successfully when the manager chooses to remain involved in and engaged with their team.

Sound like an insurmountable expectation? This is where knowing your team's strengths saves the day. Each person may define teamwork/approach teamwork differently. Gathering individual employee's ideas about teamwork (what they expect and what they need) will give you a solid foundation that carries the weight of all your responsibilities as a manager. Talk about your approach and use strengths-based conversations to help set and manage expectations related to goals and performance. This is the job of the manager.

It's a tall order, which is why "leading people should not be a reward; it should be a responsibility that requires talent and training. And that training must include expertise in the most important part of any organization -- its people."

Simply knowing one's strengths is not enough to make a difference in performance. Managers need to have a conversation with team members so they recognize not only who they are, but also what they are capable of becoming.

To help team members understand and use their strengths, managers must ask themselves two questions: Am I an expert on my team members' strengths? Do all of my team members know and appreciate their unique strengths and contributions?

Think about the dynamics or the makeup of your team. If you were asked to describe how your group works as a team or define their processes, could you do it?

Knowing the individual strengths of each team member is important, but the collective strengths of your team are equally important. It's important to visually display the makeup of your team. CliftonStrengths grids show the order of a team's strengths and provide invaluable insights into the way that team operates. There are four domains that each strength fits within. These are the Strategic Thinking domain, the Executing domain, the Relationship Building domain and the Influencing domain. If your team is heavily driven by relationships, you ought to manage them in a much different way than if they were heavy strategic thinkers.

CliftonStrengths Team Grid

As a manager, it's your responsibility to know your team, inside and out.

This important job requires frequent communication and someone willing to help employees connect their individual roles to the greater mission and purpose of the organization.

It's a tall order, which is why "leading people should not be a reward; it should be a responsibility that requires talent and training. And that training must include expertise in the most important part of any organization -- its people."

Action Items

Set aside time to outline standards for quality work. You can't communicate expectations to your employees without understanding them yourself.

Meet with your team to focus on engagement only. Intersperse team-building activities with questions to get to know your team better.

With your team's strengths in mind, consider how and when they do their best and worst work. Invite your team into this discussion if you're comfortable -- but learn how the team is wired and leverage those strengths.

Inspire Employees And Define Excellence

06 Leading a Team: The Executive's Role in Teamwork

"Bet your leadership job on this: When team inspiration grows, client buildouts, revenue and quality earnings grow."

An executive's role in teamwork is similar in some ways to the manager's role. However, they should be more focused on what's happening behind the scenes.

Executives can inspire teamwork through defining the organization's mission, purpose and values.

From an executive's standpoint, their role in teamwork has seemingly fewer immediate connections to the concept. This is because they're driving the larger mission and goals, while communicating to managers and employees how their specific jobs connect to those greater goals.

It's important for executive leaders to set priorities, have discipline and follow through. They should be investing time, resources and energy into their managers because they understand the two non-negotiable traits for leaders.

1. Bring multiple teams together: Executives need a well-defined and well-articulated mission and purpose that everyone can easily relate back to the work they do every day -- their contribution.

2. Understand how you make decisions, then make great ones: Leaders must have an honest understanding of their decision-making limits (strengths and weaknesses), apply critical thinking, and use analytics-driven evidence (what do the numbers say?).

In addition to inspiring their people, executives must focus on those two traits.

Consider a culture that might be the opposite of one that promotes teamwork -- one that promotes entitlement. While cultivating a culture of entitlement may not be intentional, it can happen when executives make poor leadership decisions and focus on the wrong aspects of culture. For example, if an executive makes providing free, daily lunches a higher priority than the mission and purpose of an organization, entitlement will begin to define the culture. The executive may find teams complaining that the chef is no longer up to par, or maybe that the food isn't as good as it once was. Perhaps the quality declined ... or maybe employees are searching for something greater than a perk.

Bottom line -- if executives don't create the culture, the culture will create itself. This leaves you and your organization susceptible to losing your best employees.

According to the bestselling book, It's the Manager, only 27% of employees strongly believe in their company's values. And Gallup's research reveals that less than half of U.S. employees (41%) strongly agree that they know what their organization stands for and what makes it different from its competitors.

Philosophically, if executives have a perspective that positions the mission, purpose and values at the core and communicates this to managers, business outcomes and culture remain the focus.

According to the bestselling book, It's the Manager:

27% of employees strongly believe in their company's values

41% strongly agree that they know what their organization stands for and what makes it different from its competitors

Stop Hoarding Talent and Get Practical About Teamwork

Ever heard of talent hoarding? One sure way to improve teamwork in the workplace as an executive is to encourage talent sharing and be aware of talent hoarding.

Talent hoarding is when your star talents are being left without developmental opportunities because they are consistently resourced to the same people or projects. The personal priorities of some managers keep the best talent working for them -- and when your "best employees believe that the only way up is out, you have a serious retention issue on your hands."

Talent sharing, or proactively moving stars to new roles or having conversations about growth and development, is a great way for executives to help improve teamwork in the workplace.

Bottom line -- if executives don't create the culture, the culture will create itself. This leaves you and your organization susceptible to losing your best employees.

In the end, the executive is the one who needs to get practical about teamwork. Know when it's going to fuel a team or when there is an intentional design to exclude teamwork. For example, collaboration and open communication may be encouraged -- but competitive, more individualized work comes with the job (i.e., sales, recruiters, etc.). Executives should know where friction or healthy conflict is intentional.

Teamwork is not always defined by "getting along," but rather, should be about having respect for individual ideas and personalities. In other words, teamwork has a couple faces -- but it's up to the executive to handle the tension between great products and outcomes, as well as great relationships.

Action Items

Take a look at your mission, purpose and values -- do they exist so you can say you have them or are they driving business decisions?

What's one business outcome you want to change (retention, engagement, absenteeism, profit)? Think of all the ways (and get as creative as you can) that improving teamwork may affect that outcome.

Read Gallup's CHRO insights to better understand what is on the minds of the top CHROs from around the world.

Just as a matrixed structure doesn't automatically make companies more focused, adaptable or agile -- neither does placing individuals on highly-matrixed teams make them better at teamwork or great at collaborating with their partners. Here are two items to help increase productivity and successful collaboration across teams:

Get clear on expectations. To build clarity, leaders need to actively create a culture of dialogue between managers and employees. Maintaining open lines of communication on a day-to-day basis will help bring clarity to foggy expectations (i.e., remember the importance of ongoing conversations).

Emphasize your job's (or your employees' jobs') connection to the greater purpose. Consider what we said earlier on: Teamwork is nonexistent apart from the "something" that your team is working toward together. If a team member is unable to see how their presence on a team or role is connected to the greater purpose, they will be less engaged and committed.

Flextime is another component of the changing workplace that is impacting the way teams interact, thus, changing the way a team may approach traditional teamwork skills. Flexibility in the workplace can look different than simply where and when people work. Some more examples are: type of work, organizational structure, culture and work environment, and roles. To improve teamwork among employees who take advantage of flextime, managers must preach the ultimate outcome of flexible work: autonomy with accountability.

Think about how to build trust in a team -- first, you must model trust for your team. Having a real flexible work environment starts with your leaders and their responses to employees who use the flexible work options your organization provides. Instilling trust among employees gives individuals the confidence to work together as a team by relying on the simple idea that they are trusted.

Managers build trust through individualization, keeping their promises and frequent conversations. Consider employees who work remotely. A good bit of face time during onboarding helps establish this trust, as well as annual in-person meetings once the worker is established. These meetings can be more social than not, but there's always a business case to be made for face-to-face conversations. For example, this may mean choosing to use the video function, in addition to the audio function, when meeting with remote workers.

It is only when managers understand the importance of their relationship with their remote employees that they can begin to individualize their approach to helping these workers achieve higher performance, as well as encourage collaboration and teamwork among traditional and remote employees.

Isolation is one aspect of remote work that can have a negative impact on performance, even though some would argue that being alone is the point of working remotely -- to be able to isolate yourself for maximum focus. Managers must understand that the expectations of remote workers are different than those of on-site workers, especially if remote workers feel isolated. Even remotely, employees want to feel as though they are part of a team.

With these changing components of the workplace and the constant attempts at figuring out how to build an effective team, conflict is sure to arise.

Navigating tough team dynamics, whatever the cause, can be a wildly uncomfortable topic for some. But conflict and friction following a change in traditional team structure is nothing more than a classic cause-and-effect relationship. When navigating tough dynamics, remember these two things:

1) Start strengths-based conversations at an individual level as individual ownership is vital to strongly collaborative team cultures.

2) Embrace conflict, don't avoid it. High-performing teams recognize that conflict is a natural consequence of collaboration. Engage in authentic dialogue with the expectation that you'll reach a conclusion.

Action Items

Think about the teams on which you're currently serving. What is the greater purpose of the team? What goals are you trying to achieve? And how do you connect to that?

Reach out to your best partners and thank them for their talents, gifts and partnership.

When having a meeting with a remote worker, use video instead of only audio.

08 How to Build a Better Team

Build a better team the same way you'd build anything else, piece by piece.

Although they don't have to be in this order, consider these steps to building a better team as an invitation to something greater.

1) Give people the opportunity to do what they do best. 2) The most effective teams trust one another to deliver quality work, so share a common definition of quality and talk about quality as a fundamental value of the team. 3) Create an opportunity for two employees to work on a project together so that they can each do what they do best and possibly develop a closer relationship. As the pairs find better ways to work together, their insights about partnerships lead to enhanced trust and relationships across the whole team over time. 4) Set goals for your team that align with the overall mission, purpose and vision of the organization. 5) Lead open discussions about recent problems your team has faced. Talk about what went wrong but focus more on best practices for the future. 6) Identify and discuss quality with your team. Learn what quality means to them and the things they do to foster high-quality standards. 7) Share best practices. From research or experience, maybe both, share some of the best practices for teamwork in the workplace and encourage others to share theirs.

Action Items

Pick two of these steps and set a date for deployment.

Find a partner who can help you get these steps started -- it's important to create momentum at the start.

Rethinking Group Exercises

09 Team Building Activities for Work

A team's success ultimately depends on its ability to perform and achieve its goals. So make sure your team is ready to do just that!

When team members are aware of one another's talents, they are more likely to understand how each person naturally thinks, feels and acts. This awareness helps the team navigate issues and realize how they can work best together to accomplish goals and achieve objectives.

The 40 exercises in our CliftonStrengths Team Activities Guide can be categorized into four sections (four goals): enhance self-awareness, develop partnerships, build strengths-based teams and improve performance. Within the action items of this section, you will find a team exercise that we've pulled from the guide to feature. Download this sample activity or get the whole activities guide here.

CliftonStrengths Team Activities Guide

When deciding on teamwork activities, remember that exercises and activities should have a greater purpose. Need help deciding whether one is meaningful or inconsequential? Relate it back to these five broader activities that improve teamwork.

If your teamwork activities don't fit into one of these categories somehow, find team building exercises that do! Here is one to get you started.

Action Items

10 How to Build a Successful Team: Insights Into Two High-Performing Teams

A strengths-based culture isn't a "soft idea" or simply a "nice dream." Instead, it represents a cultural shift in the workplace where each employee is encouraged to use and invest in their strengths, which directly affects business outcomes -- and there's nothing soft about that.

See how two companies, Southwest Airlines and Stryker, have implemented a strengths-based culture with CliftonStrengths -- and hear from real employees about just how much CliftonStrengths has changed the game both professionally and personally for them.

These high-performing teams represent best practice commitment to the development of teams and organizational culture.

Start Improving Your Team Today

Congratulations! Now that you know everything that's needed to improve teamwork at your organization, check out more resources and information about CliftonStrengths.

We're excited for you and your team to start seeing improved outcomes immediately!

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How to Improve Teamwork and Collaboration in the Workplace

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What is the importance of teamwork in the workplace? Learn the benefits of team building and effective team collaboration to improve teamwork.

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READ|7 Strategies for Promoting Collaboration in Crisis

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READ|7 Strategies for Promoting Collaboration in Crisis

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Harvard Business Review

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Big Cheese Photo/Getty Images

We've made our coronavirus coverage free for all readers. To get all of HBR's content delivered to your inbox, sign up for the Daily Alert newsletter.

Crises like the Covid-19 pandemic highlight the importance of effective collaboration for long-term commercial success. Particularly in a crisis, organizations need to pull together experts with unique, cross-functional perspectives to solve rapidly changing, complex problems that have long-term implications. The diversity of experience allows a group to see risks and opportunities from different angles so that it can generate new solutions and adapt dynamically to changing situations.

Research shows, however, that anxiety makes people more risk-averse in a crisis; as a result, they are less likely to seek out differing perspectives. They tend to fall back on actions and solutions that have worked in the past - what researchers call "threat rigidity." The desire to try to bring things under control can also lead to a go-it-alone mentality. And as resources (finances, job opportunities, even physical supplies) dry up during a crisis, people often focus on self-preservation. As a result, collaboration across an organization can break down. Our research on the 2008 financial crisis, however, shows that collaboration leads to sustainably higher commercial performance. In this article, we offer seven actions that leaders can take to foster collaboration.

We collected a decade's worth of data on collaboration and financial performance across dozens of organizations, including professional service firms, financial institutions, and health care organizations. In interviews with some of the subjects, we asked open-ended questions about how they handled work during the crisis. Very different collaboration patterns became obvious. The exhibit below shows the outcomes for one law firm, which were typical across many of the companies we studied.

Records from project and financial databases showed how partners worked before, during, and after the crisis and their relative performance outcomes. To control for outliers, we excluded the partners with the highest and lowest performance historically and those in groups that were likely to flourish during a downturn, such as the bankruptcy and restructuring practices. We separated the remaining 400-plus partners into deciles based on the proportion of their work conducted with other partners versus on their own. Then we plotted their respective revenue generated during the period.

The results were stark. The most highly collaborative workers - the top 10% - grew their business during the crisis and continued that upward trajectory afterward (see the green line). The performance of the middle group (second and third deciles) declined slightly during the crisis, but their revenues started to recover within a year (see the yellow line). People in the third group (the bottom 70%) hunkered down and dramatically reduced their collaboration with others. They guarded their clients and hoarded work. The revenue generated by this group contracted during the crisis and still had not recovered five years after the recession had ended. We saw a similar pattern in other kinds of organizations.

Why did people work this way? As uncertainty and stress increased during the crisis, the highly collaborative people evolved their approach to developing business and executing work. They expanded their network across functional and industry silos and increased the number of colleagues they worked with. They were willing to pitch in on others' projects. They talked about how, as the crisis evolved and pressure rose, they teamed up with trusted colleagues to identify and pursue new opportunities - even when it meant getting less personal glory on a project-by-project basis. As a result, they ended up working on a wide variety of clients or projects, essentially spreading their bets across different kinds of opportunities. It's not that they hit only home runs; it's that they had more at-bats, and they played different positions as needed.

The self-focused, uncollaborative people took a wholly different approach. They erected walls around their projects, pushed colleagues away, held their business and clients closely, and hoarded work. As a result of their self-interested behavior, their network diminished. They had no "tribe" to help bring them into existing opportunities and to identify new ones. In one health care organization, for example, when grant funding started to dry up, the loners suffered because they weren't involved in enough different kinds of research initiatives to keep money flowing into their labs.

The obvious conclusion: The degree of collaboration during a crisis has a huge impact on whether companies and individual employees thrive.

Here is some advice for how leaders can promote collaboration:

1. Encourage naïve questions and constructive challenge. At McKinsey, where one of us (Heidi) once worked, this was called the "obligation to dissent": It's not only accepted but expected that people challenge each other's assumptions and offer new ideas. This means that nobody feels like she risks looking foolish by asking teammates with different functional backgrounds from hers to explain their thinking or define a technical term. Involving people with a wide variety of skills in an effort to tackle novel and complicated problems can help the group collectively see potential risks or solutions that would elude individual experts - especially when they are encouraged to be inquisitive.

2. Watch out for hoarding behaviors. Be imaginative about data sources that might show you behavioral patterns inside your organization: Nearly all leaders with whom we have worked have been surprised that they have access to various kinds of data that can show collaboration patterns (e.g., project management databases used to track grant funding or product development, CRM systems that show sales pipelines).

If such data isn't available, use pulse surveys to capture people's self-reported actions; a well-designed three-question survey can be completed in just a few minutes and reveal places where individualistic behavior is starting to creep in. For example, it might ask those surveyed the extent to which they agree or disagree - on a to-5 scale (1=strongly disagree; 5=strongly agree) - with these statements: 1) The group has a shared sense of purpose; 2) there is a high degree of trust within the group; and 3) colleagues regularly take credit for the work of others.

3. Connect with the front lines. Make direct contact with people down the hierarchy so you have unfiltered information about people's actions and states of mind. (This is especially critical when people are working remotely.) Such interactions can help leaders understand how employees are coping, identify areas where risks of go-it-alone behaviors are more likely, and establish linkages among people so that they are better able to support each other. Arlene Zalayet, an executive at Liberty Mutual who has 1,800 employees in her department, recently began holding 18 check-ins a month by video with groups, including entry-level workers. In one of these town halls, an administrative worker shared how Covid-19 was affecting her African-American community, sparking an important discussion about the value of the company's diversity efforts and what it would take to support different kinds of workers through this crisis.

4. Reinforce the business's purpose and goals frequently. A belief that their work fulfills a higher purpose motivates people to think and act in a more collective fashion - to be more open to collaboration. Clearly understanding the business goals helps people see how their own knowledge contributes to - but doesn't fully satisfy - the complex needs of the business. Leaders need to lower employees' sense of uncertainty and boost their confidence to reach out to colleagues. So even if your message hasn't changed, you need to repeat it because the world has changed and employees need to know that the existing direction still holds.

5. Get team members to reflect on their preferred ways of working. This includes the leader. When you're under stress, you're more likely to retreat to your comfort zone, so it's crucial that you think about what kinds of behaviors come most naturally to you. When the pressure builds, are you more likely to pick up the phone to commiserate and brainstorm with a colleague or to hole up and go it alone? As part of this process, revisit that behavioral assessment you completed last year. And get others' perspectives. For instance, ask people with whom you've been sheltering what they've observed you do when you're stressed. As team members becomes more aware of their typical styles, they can start to figure out how to use those tendencies to work more effectively as a group.

6. Play to your strengths. Rather than trying to change your natural tendencies - which is almost impossible during the stress of a crisis - focus instead on consciously using your style to improve collaboration. If you are naturally drawn to working on teams, then use your enthusiasm to foster an esprit de corps - for example, by calling out when the team has reached even a small milestone. Boosting engagement and morale isn't "soft work"; it leads to quantifiable gains in productivity and other "hard" business outcomes. We saw this firsthand with Gillian, a senior manager at one of the Big 4 accounting firms we recently advised. She deliberately builds team members' confidence and trust in each other's competence by highlighting their expertise, calling out ways their knowledge helps to achieve the team's goals and then widely sharing team-based success stories. If you share Gillian's teamwork orientation, just be careful you don't overdo it and join many teams at once. Be selective and focus on the highest-priority projects.

If you're inclined to work independently, you can use that tendency to improve teamwork by helping drive execution. Sameer, a finance director at a software company that we studied, has been nicknamed the "teamwork tsar" because he's the one most likely to point out when working as a group is worth it and when independent work will be more effective. His go-it-alone preference is a healthy counterpoint that keeps the team focused on the task when others might get bogged down in seeking consensus or when group discussion leads down an unproductive rabbit hole.

Leaders need to appreciate that it doesn't take a single type of person to boost collaboration; they need to draw on the diversity of behavioral styles and coach each team member to play their own part in boosting cross-silo working.

7. Champion collaborative leaders and teams. Many leaders undermine their talk about the importance of collaboration when they focus praise exclusively on individual employees for hitting a sales target or working overtime. While recognizing individual effort, also acknowledge the team that helped make the person a hero by calling out the specific actions it took to provide support and the ways all of its members accomplished a goal together. Especially when employees are working from home, leaders should emphasize the role of supporting players by mentioning family members' role in making it possible for workers to be productive.

At some point leaders should examine and address organizational structures such as compensation and incentive systems and hiring practices to see whether they support or undermine a culture of collaboration. But obviously, that will probably have to wait until the crisis has passed. In the meantime, try applying the seven strategies. By promoting cross-silo collaboration, your organization is more likely to survive the current hard times and thrive when they're over.

If our free content helps you to contend with these challenges, please consider subscribing to HBR. A subscription purchase is the best way to support the creation of these resources.

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7 Strategies for Promoting Collaboration in a Crisis

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We've made our coronavirus coverage free for all readers. To get all of HBR's content delivered to your inbox, sign up for the Daily Alert newsletter. Crises like the Covid-19 pandemic highlight the importance of effective collaboration for long-term commercial success.

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From Harvard Center for the Developing Child. Access video and other resources here.

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Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University

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Serve and return interactions shape brain architecture. When caregivers are responsive to children's signals, they help them build critical skills.

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READ|Understanding Temperament in Infants and Toddlers

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READ|Understanding Temperament in Infants and Toddlers

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From Center on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning

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Twenty-month-old Laura just begancare in Ms. Neil's family child care home. Ms. Neil is having difficulty integrating Laura into her program. Laura's schedule is unpredictable-she becomes tired or hungry at different times each day-and she always seems to want to run, climb, and jumpon everything. Laura also gets extremely upset whenit is time to transition from outdoor play to lunch, orwhen Ms. Neil interrupts an activity in which Laurais engaged. It is not uncommon for her to tantrumfor 10 minutes or more at these times. Ms. Neil has had many years of experience working with youngchildren, and attributes Laura's lack of a consistent schedule to her recent enrollment and need to getused to the program. She is also struggling with thefact that her favorite activities-quiet games, bookreading, and sensory experiences-are ones thatLaura doesn't seem to enjoy. After several weeks of observing little change in Laura's behaviors, Ms. Neil is frustrated. Laura's unpredictable napping and feeding times, as well as her constant needfor physical activity and intense reactions duringtransitions, are making responsive care for all theother children difficult. Ms. Neil meets with Laura's family, and learns that Laura's parents haven't had difficulty with the issues she describes. When sheasks specifically about her schedule, her parentsdescribe Laura as being a good eater and sleeper, but do report that she doesn't have a consistent schedulefor eating or napping. They also share that Laura's need for active physical play is typically not an issuebecause they have a large backyard and Laura hasseveral older siblings who often include her in theiractive play. Still, all of the adults are concerned about Laura's success transitioning into Ms. Neil's program, and want to find a way to help her.

What Is Temperament?

A child's temperament describes the way in which she approaches and reacts to the world. It is her personal"style." Temperament influences a child's behavior and the way she interacts with others . While temperament does not clearly define or predict behavior, understanding a child's temperament can help providers and families better understand how young children react and relate tothe world around them. Information about temperamentcan also guide parents and caregivers to identifychildren's strengths and the supports they need to succeed in their relationships and environments.

Researchers have described young children's temperament by depicting several different traits. These traits address an infant's level of activity, her adaptability to daily routines, how she responds to new situations,her mood, the intensity of her reactions, her sensitivityto what's going on around her, how quickly she adapts to changes, and how distractible and persistent she mightbe when engaging in an activity . Based on these traits,researchers generally categorize children into three temperament types:

E asy or flexible children tend to be happy, regular in sleeping and eating habits, adaptable, calm, and noteasily upset.

Active or feisty children may be fussy, irregular in feeding and sleeping habits, fearful of new peopleand situations, easily upset by noise and stimulation,and intense in their reactions.

Slow to warm or cautious children may be lessactive or tend to be fussy, and may withdraw or react negatively to new situations; but over time they maybecome more positive with repeated exposure to anew person, object, or situation.

Clarifications about Temperament
Not all children's temperaments fall neatly into one of the three types described. Roughly 65% of childrencan be categorized into one of the three temperamentaltypes: 40% are easy or flexible, 10% are active orfeisty, and 15% can be categorized as slow to warm or cautious. Second, all temperamental traits, likepersonality traits, range in intensity. Children who have the same temperament type might react quite differently in similar situations, or throughout different stages in their development. For example, consider the reactionsof two infants when a stranger comes into the room. Acautious infant might look for her caregiver and relaxwhen she makes eye contact, while another baby withan easy temperament may smile or show little reactionto the stranger. In thinking about Laura's reactions and behaviors in Ms. Neil's care, might you categorize her temperamental type as feisty?

Finally, it is important to understand that although a child's basic temperament does not change over time, the intensity of temperamental traits can be affected by a family's cultural values and parenting styles. For example, a family that values persistence (the abilityto stick to a task and keep trying) may be more likelyto praise and reward a child for "sticking with" achallenging task (such as a puzzle). Parental recognitionof the child's persistent efforts can strengthen the trait, and she may become more persistent and more able tofocus over the course of his childhood.

A child's temperament is also influenced to some extent by her interactions with the environment. For example, ifa child is cared for in an environment that places a highpriority on scheduling predictable sleeping, eating, anddiapering/toileting experiences, a child whose biologicalfunctions are somewhat irregular might, over time, beginto sleep, eat, and eliminate more regularly. It is important to know that adults cannot force a change to a child's temperament; however, the interaction between the child's temperament and the environment can produce movements along the continuum of intensity for different traits.

Why Is Temperament Important?

Temperament is important because it helps caregivers better understand children's individual differences. By understanding temperament, caregivers can learn howto help children express their preferences, desires, andfeelings appropriately. Caregivers and families can also use their understanding of temperament to avoid blamingthemselves or a child for reactions that are normal for that particular child. Most importantly, adults can learn to anticipate issues before they occur and avoid frustratingthemselves and the child by using approaches that do notmatch her temperament.

Ms. Neil visited Laura in her own home and observed that Laura is constantly trailing behind her oldersiblings, and runs inside and outside the housewith few limitations. The household is a relaxed environment, where the older children help themselves when they are hungry, and Laura's mother responds to Laura's hunger or need for sleep whenever they arise. In contrast, Ms. Neil's program functions on a very consistent schedule, which she feels is importantin preparing children for their later school experiences.Ms. Neil does not have much space indoors, and shefinds outdoor play somewhat difficult to manage withchildren at varying ages and developmental levels.While Laura's family's pattern of behavior seems to be a match to her temperament, Ms. Neil's home does not currently represent a good "fit" for Laura, whomight be categorized as active or feisty.

Developing a "Goodness of Fit"

One important concept in care that supports healthysocial-emotional development is the notion of "goodnessof fit." In the previous example, Laura's activity, intensity, and unpredictability may reflect a mismatch between her temperament and Ms. Neil's caregiving style and environment. A caregiver can improve the goodness of fit by adapting his or her approach to meet the needs ofthe child.

Using What You Know About Temperament to Promote Positive Social-Emotional Developmentand Behavior

You can use your knowledge of temperament in many ways to support positive social-emotional development inthe infants and toddlers you care for:

1. Reflect on your own temperament and preferences.Understanding your own temperament can helpyou to identify the "goodness of fit" for eachchild in your care. Knowing more about your owntemperament traits will also help you to take thechild's perspective. For example, a caregiver who enjoys movement, loud music playing, and constantbustle might try to imagine what it would feel like tospend all day in a setting that was calm, hushed, andquiet. This reflective process can help you become more attuned to the experience of each child withinyour care. You can then determine what adjustments might be needed to create a better fit for each child.

2. Create partnerships with families to understand achild's temperament. Share what you have learnedabout temperament with the families you serve,and provide information about temperamentaltraits. Talk about what each temperamental trait describes, and ask parents to help you understandtheir child's activity level, response to new situations, persistence, distractibility, adaptability, mood, intensity, sensitivity, and regularity so that you can learn about the child's temperament and the family's cultural values (see Temperament Continuum handout attached). For a better understanding of how thesetraits look in young children, work with families toidentify their child's individual temperament. Refrain from judging a child's temperamental traits as "good" or "bad" behavior, and work with parents to see each child's approach to the world through a positive lens. Understand the contribution each child's temperament type makes to the group. The active or feisty children are often leaders and creatorsof games, or initiators of play. The slow to warm or cautious child may observe situations carefully andhelp you notice things you hadn't seen before. The flexible or easy child may take new play partnerson easily. Support each child's development by recognizing, valuing, and integrating the unique traitsthat each child has, rather than trying to change achild's temperamental traits.
Listen to how the family feels about the temperamentcharacteristics of their child. For example, if a child's temperament makes his sleeping routines irregular, but his family is consistently trying to get him to napat 1:00 PM, he may be frustrated by expectations thatdon't fit with his temperament. This frustration, if not understood, might result in conflict between theparents and the child, or result in him demonstratingchallenging behaviors at home or in care. Share withfamilies what you have learned about goodness of fit,and share your strategies, such as individualizing napschedules for your program. As you learn which traits are highly valued by each family, you can partner with them to determine an appropriate balance between thechild's temperament, the family's preferences, and the policies of the program.
Respect and value each child's temperament when individualizing your curriculum. Recognize howquality caregiving practices support all children's development, yet certain practices might beespecially important for certain temperament types.

A) For the easy or flexible child, ensure that you often check in with her, and initiate communication about her emotions. She might be less likely to demandattention and make her needs or distress known.

You can use language to develop her awareness and understanding of her own emotions, feelings,and reactions. Make sure she knows that her feelings and preferences are recognized and validated.

Encourage her to seek help when he needs it, andwork with her to communicate his feelings andneeds to others. "When Jack takes your block, youcan tell him, 'I am using that.'"

B) For the active or feisty child, be prepared to beflexible and patient in your interactions. A child who is feisty can experience intense emotions andreactions.

Provide areas and opportunities for her to makechoices, and engage her in gross-motor and activeplay to expend high energy levels. Feisty children might need a peaceful environment in order tohelp them calm themselves and transition fromplaytime to rest or naptime.

When preparing children for transitions, payspecial attention to individualized transition reminders for feisty children by getting down on thechild's level and making sure that the child hears and understands what will happen next in order toensure smooth experiences throughout the day.

Label children's emotions by describing what they seem to be feeling ("You are so angry. You really wanted that toy.") Stay calm when faced with the child's intense emotions. Reassure him by acknowledging her feelings, and also point out toher when he is calm so he can learn to recognizehis emotions on his own as she grows.

C) For the slow to warm or cautious child, provide additional preparation and support for new situations or people who become part of his environment.

Set up a predictable environment and stick to aclear routine. Use pictures and language to remindthe cautious child what will happen next. Drop-off and pick-up might also require extra time fromyou in order to support the cautious child.

Give children who are cautious ample time toestablish relationships with new children or to getcomfortable in new situations. Primary caregivers,who can provide a secure base to all children,are particularly important for a cautious child.Help her in unfamiliar situations by observingher cues carefully, and providing support and encouragement for her exploration and increasingindependence. (e.g., "I'm here. I'll be right in thischair watching you try on the dress-up clothes").

Each child's response to the environment will vary in intensity. Over time, temperamental traits might increase or decrease in intensity. As children grow, develop, and learn to interact with others, the environment, and their families, shifts in temperament might occur. This means caregivers must continue to observe children many timesand in different contexts to ensure that their needs are being met. The importance of adapting strategies in order to create a goodness of fit and meet the unique needs ofthe children and families in care, as Ms. Neil does below, cannot be overstated.

Ms. Neil reflected on her own temperament and howit might affect the children in her care, each of whom had their own distinct temperaments. She realizedthat she values a predictable schedule and is mostdrawn to calming, quiet activities. By developing apartnership with Laura's family, she learned more about Laura's home and her unique temperament traits. She was then able to better understand Laura's reactions and behaviors while in care. Ms. Neil began to organize additional outdoor play and activeopportunities in her schedule. She watched Lauraclosely and learned to recognize her need to sleep oreat, and made accommodations to individualize eatingand sleeping schedules for her. She offered Laura many advance reminders when transitions were aboutto take place, and was patient and understandingwhen she experienced intense emotions. Soon, Lauraappeared to be much more comfortable in Ms. Neil's family child care home, and was able to better useher energy to build strong and positive relationshipswith Ms. Neil and the other children. Through understanding herself, the children, and their families'temperament, Ms. Neil created an environment thatbetter met all of the children's needs. Ultimately, the work she did positively impacted the experience ofLaura and the other children in her care.

Who Are the Children Who Have Participated in Research on Temperament?

Research in temperament has blossomed in the last15 years through the efforts of literally hundreds of scientists in many disciplines. Studies that attempt tounderstand facets of temperament in children have beenconducted in a number of countries and with a wide variety of ethnically and linguistically diverse children.Participants in these studies have included childrenfrom European, American, Chinese, and Sub-Saharan African backgrounds. Research on temperament has beenconducted with children and families in home and child care settings.

What Is the Scientific Basis for the Strategies?

For those wishing to explore the topic further, the following resources might prove useful:

Bridgett, D. J., et al. (2009). Maternal and contextualinfluences and the effect of temperament development during infancy on parenting in toddlerhood. Infant Behavior & Development. 32(1), 103-116.

Carey, W. B., & McDevitt, S. C. (1994). Prevention and early intervention. Individual differences as risk factors for the mental health of children. New York: Brunner/Mazel.

Chess, S.. & Thomas, A. (1996). Temperament theory and practice. New York: Brunner/Mazel.Chess, S., & Thomas, A. (1999). Goodness of Fit. New York: Brunner-Routledge.

Hwang, A., Soong, W., & Liao, H. (2009). Influences of biological risk at birth and temperament ondevelopment at toddler and preschool ages. Child: Care, Health & Development. 35(6), 817-825.

Klein, V., et al. (2009). Pain and distress reactivity and recovery as early predictors of temperament intoddlers born preterm. Early Human Development. 85(9), 569-576.

Pitzer, M., Esser, G., Schmidt, M., & Laucht, M. (2009). Temperamental predictors of externalizing problems among boys and girls: a longitudinal study in a high-risk sample from ages 3 months to 15 years. European Archives of Psychiatry & Clinical Neuroscience.

259(8), 445-458.Rubin, K. H., Burgess, K. B., Dwyer, K. M., & Hastings,

P. D. (2003). Predicting preschoolers' externalizing behaviors from toddler temperament, conflict, andmaternal negativity. Developmental Psychology. 39(1), 164-176.

Thomas, A., Chess, S., Birch, H. G., Hertzig, M. E., & Korn, S. (1963). Behavioral individuality in earlychildhood. NewYork: New York University Press.

Van Aken, C., et al. (2007). The interactive effects of temperament and maternal parenting ontoddlers' externalizing behaviours. Infant & Child Development, 16(5), 553-572.

This What Works Brief is part of a continuing series of short, easy-to-read, "how to" information packets on a variety of evidence-based practices, strategies, and intervention procedures. The Briefs are designed to help teachers and other caregivers support young children's social and emotional development. In-service providers and others who conduct staff development activities should find them especially useful in sharing information with professionals and parents. The Briefs include examples and vignettes that illustrate how practical strategies might be used in a variety of early childhood settings and home environments.
This material was developed by the Center on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning with federal funds from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families (Cooperative Agreement N. PHS 90YD0215). The contents of this publication do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, nor does mention of trade names, commercial projects, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government. You may reproduce this material for training and information purposes. 10/2010
Newsletter constructed by the Graphics Core of the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center, Vanderbilt University. kc.vanderbilt.edu

Place the initials of each of the children in your care on the continuum for each trait based on your observations and discussions with the child's family. Then, write your initials where you feel you fall on each trait in the continuum. Use this tool to analyze where your temperament is similar and different to the children you care for. Then, knowing that it is the adult who must adjust to make the "fit" good, use the suggestions above to create care strategies that provide the best possible experience for each child.

Tendency to Approach Tendency to Withdraw
Eagerly approaches new situations or people Hesitant and resistant when faced with new situations, people, or things.
Very Adaptable Difficulty Adapting
Transitions easily to new activities and situations Has difficulty transitioning to new activities or situations

Persistent Easily Frustrated
Continues with a task or activity in the face of obstacles Moves on to a new task or activity when Doesn't become frustrated easily faced with obstacles. Gets frustrated easily
Positive Mood Serious Mood
Reacts to the world in a positive way, generally cheerful Reacts to situations negatively, mood is generally serious

1 ZERO TO THREE, Retrieved from worldwideweb http://www.zerotothree.org/site/PageServer?pagename=key_temp June 11, 2009 2 Dimensions of temperament (found in several places and merged/adapted). 3 WestEd. (1995). The Program for Infant Toddler Caregivers' (PITC) Trainers Manual, module 1: Social-emotional growth and socialization (p. 21). Sacramento, CA:

California Department of Education. 4 Thomas, Chess, Birch, Hertzig, & Korn, 1963.

Center on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning

We welcome your feedback on this What Works Brief. Please go to the CSEFEL Web site (http://www.vanderbilt.edu/csefel) or call us at (866) 433-1966 to offer suggestions.

Where Do I Find More Information on Temperament?

See the CSEFEL Web site (http://www.vanderbilt.edu/csefel) for additional resources.

Blackwell, P. L. (2004, March). The idea of temperament: Does it help parents understand their fussy babies? Washington, DC: ZERO TO THREE.

California Department of Education, Child Development Division and Far West Laboratory, Center for Child and Family Studies. (1990). The program for infant/toddler caregivers. Sacramento, CA.

Honig, A. S. (2005, April). Infants & toddlers: Getting to know babies' temperaments. Early Childhood Today, 19(6), 20-23.

Keogh, B. K. (2002). Temperament in the classroom: Understanding individual differences. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.

Kristal, J. (2004). The temperament perspective: Working with children's behavioral styles. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.

Lerner, C., & Dombro, A. L. (2005 ). Bringing up baby: Three steps to making good decisions in your baby's first years. Washington, DC: ZERO TO THREE.

Parlakian, R., & Seibel, N. L. (2002). Building strong foundations: Practical guidance for promoting the social-

emotional development of infants and toddlers. Washington, DC: ZERO TO THREE.

Strum, L. (2004). Temperament in early childhood: A primer for the perplexed. Washington, DC: ZERO TO THREE.

Wittmer, D. S. & Petersen, S. H. (2006). Infant and toddler development and responsive program planning:

A relationship-based approach. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice-Hall.

This What Works Brief is part of a continuing series of short, easy-to-read, "how to" information packets on a variety of evidence-based practices, strategies, and intervention procedures. The Briefs are designed to help teachers and other caregivers support young children's social and emotional development. In-service providers and others who conduct staff development activities should find them especially useful in sharing information with professionals and parents. The Briefs include examples and vignettes that illustrate how practical strategies might be used in a variety of early childhood settings and home environments.
This material was developed by the Center on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning with federal funds from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families (Cooperative Agreement N. PHS 90YD0215). The contents of this publication do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, nor does mention of trade names, commercial projects, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government. You may reproduce this material for training and information purposes. 10/2010
Newsletter constructed by the Graphics Core of the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center, Vanderbilt University. kc.vanderbilt.edu

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READ|How to Communicate When Everyone is Wearing a Mask

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How to Communicate When Everyone Is Wearing a Mask

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RESOURCE|65 Ways to Take Care of Yourself  (Touchpoints)

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Science Based Insights for a Meaningful Life

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Greater Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life

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Based at UC Berkeley, Greater Good reports on groundbreaking research into the roots of compassion, happiness, and altruism.

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A guide to Indigenous land acknowledgment.

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A guide to Indigenous land acknowledgment

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After hosting an Indigenous land acknowledgment event, we put together this written guide to based on our panelists' responses.

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RESOURCE|Professional Quality of Life Scale  (Touchpoints)

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RESOURCE|Professional Quality of Life Scale  (Touchpoints)

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WATCH|Pandemic Stress Supporting Young Children, Families, and the Early Childhood Workforce   (Touchpoints)

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WATCH|Pandemic Stress Supporting Young Children, Families, and the Early Childhood Workforce   (Touchpoints)

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Webinar Hosted by Advocates for Children of New Jersey

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Pandemic Stress: Supporting Young Children, Families, and the Early Childhood Workforce

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BOOK|Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall Rosenberg

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BOOK|Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall Rosenberg

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This the the book Psychologist Marshall Rosenberg is most known for and where you can find more information about Universal Human Needs.

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Not Available In-Store - Usually Ships from Warehouse in 1-5 Days

Description

5,000,000 COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE * TRANSLATED IN MORE THAN 35 LANGUAGES

What is Violent Communication?
If "violent" means acting in ways that result in hurt or harm, then much of how we communicate-judging others, bullying, having racial bias, blaming, finger pointing, discriminating, speaking without listening, criticizing others or ourselves, name-calling, reacting when angry, using political rhetoric, being defensive or judging who's "good/bad" or what's "right/wrong" with people- could indeed be called "violent communication."
What is Nonviolent Communication? Nonviolent Communication is the integration of four things:
* Consciousness: a set of principles that support living a life of compassion, collaboration, courage, and authenticity

* Language: understanding how words contribute to connection or distance

* Communication: knowing how to ask for what we want, how to hear others even in disagreement, and how to move toward solutions that work for all

* Means of influence: sharing "power with others" rather than using "power over others"
Nonviolent Communication serves our desire to do three things:
* Increase our ability to live with choice, meaning, and connection
* Connect empathically with self and others to have more satisfying relationships
* Sharing of resources so everyone is able to benefit

About the Author

Marshall B. Rosenberg, PhD (1934-2015) founded and was for many years the Director of Educational Services for the Center for Nonviolent Communication, an international peacemaking organization. During his life he authored fifteen books, including the bestselling Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life (PuddleDancer Press), which has sold more than one million copies worldwide and has been translated into more than 30 languages, with more translations in the works.

Dr. Rosenberg has received a number of awards for his Nonviolent Communication work including:
2014: Champion of Forgiveness Award from the Worldwide Forgiveness Alliance
2006: Bridge of Peace Nonviolence Award from the Global Village Foundation
2005: Light of God Expressing in Society Award from the Association of Unity Churches
2004: Religious Science International Golden Works Award
2004: International Peace Prayer Day Man of Peace Award by the Healthy, Happy Holy (3HO) Organization
2002: Princess Anne of England and Chief of Police Restorative Justice Appreciation Award
2000: International Listening Association Listener of the Year Award

Dr. Rosenberg first used the NVC process in federally funded school integration projects to provide mediation and communication skills training during the 1960s. The Center for Nonviolent Communication, which he founded in 1984, now has hundreds of certified NVC trainers and supporters teaching NVC in more than sixty countries around the globe. A sought-after presenter, peacemaker and visionary leader, Dr. Rosenberg led NVC workshops and international intensive trainings for tens of thousands of people in over 60 countries across the world and provided training and initiated peace programs in many war-torn areas including Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and the Middle East.

He worked tirelessly with educators, managers, health care providers, lawyers, military officers, prisoners, police and prison officials, government officials, and individual families. With guitar and puppets in hand and a spiritual energy that filled a room, Marshall showed us how to create a more peaceful and satisfying world.

Praise For...

" Nonviolent Communication connects soul to soul, creating a lot of healing. It is the missing element in what we do." -Deepak Chopra, author of How To Know God

"Dr. Rosenberghas brought the simplicity of successful communication into the foreground. No matter what issue you're facing, his strategies for communicating with others will set you up to win every time." -Anthony Robbins,author, Awaken the Giant Within and Unlimited Power

"Marshall Rosenberg'sdynamic communication techniques transform potential conflicts into peaceful dialogues and create compassionate connections. I highly recommend this book." - John Gray, Ph.D., author of Men are From Mars, Women are from Venus

"You have to be able to say, 'Where is this person coming from?' he says. 'What makes them tick? Why are they excited or frustrated by something that is happening, whether it's about computing or beyond computing?' There's far more to McCracken's outstanding piece. Nadella gave him a close and honest look at both himself and Microsoft, and the result is a fun must-read." - Ben Kerschberg, Forbes

"Upon becoming Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella asked his top executives to read Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication. . . . If empathy as a measure of emotional IQ is a predictor of success, then Nadella hit the nail on the head by inculcating the corporate giant with the trait from top to bottom. Why else is empathy important? Microsoft is both a services and a product company, and its offerings have to resonate with users. Nadella states: 'You have to be able to say, "Where is this person coming from? What makes them tick? Why are they excited or frustrated by something that is happening, whether it's about computing or beyond computing?"' - Harry McCracken, Fast Company

"The 1 Book That Transformed Microsoft's Culture from Cutthroat to Creative." - Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO

"Nadella's time as CEO was initially shaped by Marshall Rosenberg's 'Nonviolent Communication,' which he asked his top executives to read. This was the first indicator to senior leadership that Nadella would not operate like his predecessors" - Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, Business Insider

"The CEO of Microsoft, the most valuable company in the world, grounds himself and Microsoft's culture on ideas he's learned thanks to his reading habit. 'I read a few pages here or a few pages there,' Nadella told Fast Company. 'There are a few books, of course, that you read end-to-end. But without books I can't live.' Nadella's time as CEO was initially shaped by Marshall Rosenberg's 'Nonviolent Communication,' which he asked his top executives to read. This was the first indicator to senior leadership that Nadella would not operate like his predecessors. Nadella recommended it to his leadership team, symbolically differentiating his expectations from that of his predecessors. Nonviolent communication integrates qualities like compassion and effective communication to allow for better leadership. Rosenberg writes from a position of experience and research: He has started peace programs in places throughout the world that have experienced the effects of war, including Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Serbia, and Ireland. This book outlines the principles of peaceful conflict resolution. It's interesting to note that one of the concepts involves sharing power with others instead of using power over others. Nadella recommended it to his leadership team, symbolically differentiating his expectations from that of his predecessors. Reports have found that Microsoft used to have a conflict-heavy culture under Steve Ballmer - now there's nonviolent communication coming from the top." - Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, Business Insider

Product Details

ISBN: 9781892005281
ISBN-10: 189200528X
Publisher: PuddleDancer Press
Publication Date: September 1st, 2015
Pages: 264
Language: English
Series: Nonviolent Communication Guides

Categories

Related Editions (all)

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Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships (Nonviolent Communication Guides) (Paperback)

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Not Available In-Store - Usually Ships from Warehouse in 1-5 Days 5,000,000 COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE * TRANSLATED IN MORE THAN 35 LANGUAGES What is Violent Communication?

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READ|Building Resilience in the Face of Compassion Fatigue   (Touchpoints)

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READ|Building Resilience in the Face of Compassion Fatigue   (Touchpoints)

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By Veronika Talt for Psychology Today

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Key points

Self-care can cause feelings of guilt about those who are still suffering, but they don't have to.

Focusing on the basics of health and wellness increases people's capacity to care for others.

Social support is a key protector against stress and vicarious trauma.

I recently gave a presentation on compassion fatigue. I discussed how it differs from burnout, what some early warning signs are, and how to treat it. This was to an audience who frequently engages with refugees or other marginalized communities where trauma is rampant. I was surprised by one of the most frequently asked questions which was, "How do I prioritize my own needs when so many are suffering?" I could hear the guilt in their voices at the idea of helping themselves when others are worse off.

I was struck by this question because it reminded me of the great capacity humans have for compassion. Even at their own expense. And those with the biggest hearts are the most likely to suffer compassion fatigue (as explained in part one of this two-part series).

But I'm here to tell you a little secret.

Taking care of yourself will increase your capacity to help people who are suffering. The concern for so many is how to do the greatest good with the tools they have. They don't want to take time for themselves if it means leaving someone behind. But the wonderful thing is, you don't have to choose one way or the other because helping yourself will in turn make you even more capable of improving the lives of those around you.

Running yourself ragged for the sake of others speaks to your immense empathy, but that empathy can quickly lead to distress if you neglect your own needs. And the distress will impair the quality of your compassion and care.

If you start to see the early warning signs of compassion fatigue, try one or all of the following resilience boosters:

Identify things you can control. There may be situations beyond your control such as moving, financial strains, family matters, or others. Focus on what is in your power and communicate your needs clearly to those involved. This might mean discussing with your spouse, coworker, or mentor the symptoms of compassion fatigue you've been experiencing and your plan to address them. Remind them that addressing your needs will prevent worse outcomes later such as quitting an overwhelming job or mistreating others in your care.

Focus on the basics. Self-care begins with prioritizing the building blocks of health such as adequate sleep, nutrient-dense foods, and exercise. These three things will enhance your energy, sharpen your thinking, and increase your ability to bounce back from stressors.

Detach. Take breaks from aiding the suffering. This means mentally detaching too as you allow yourself to focus on hobbies and leisure. You may feel guilt at first when allowing yourself enjoyment when others are still hurting, but this will make you a more effective advocate long-term. You cannot pour from an empty cup. When you overexert yourself, your empathy and quality of care decrease. Showing compassion to others includes giving them our best selves.

Rely on social support. Strengthening our relationships with others is one of the most protective factors against stress. When we discuss our feelings and experiences with another, it regulates our emotions. Simply describing how we feel lowers our stress response. Our friends and family can offer emotional support, advice, companionship, tangible aid, and encouragement. Researchers found that social support is a crucial factor in bolstering one's ability to deal with trauma exposure. Relying on social support includes allowing others to help you. Those who are suffering merit your help-be sure to recognize your own deservingness of care.

Think of the why. Compassion satisfaction builds resilience. Focus on the impact your actions have on others and the purpose of your care. Remind yourself of your worth and abilities and be gentle with yourself when you make a mistake. Finding meaning in your care will bring greater satisfaction and gratitude, which in turn, prevents distress and burnout. Grief expert David Kessler said, "After all my years working with the dying and the grieving, I have found that in this lifetime, the ultimate meaning we find is in everyone we have loved." Never forget that when you aid the suffering, you do great and noble work.

The most important thing you can do is to practice self-compassion. You won't be able to help everyone, but you can help someone. Allow yourself to have your needs met. Remember, your happiness matters too.

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Building Resilience in the Face of Compassion Fatigue

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Self-care can cause feelings of guilt about those who are still suffering, but they don't have to. Focusing on the basics of health and wellness increases people's capacity to care for others. Social support is a key protector against stress and vicarious trauma. I recently gave a presentation on compassion fatigue.

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READ|7 Myths and Facts About Bilingual Children Learning Language

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READ|7 Myths and Facts About Bilingual Children Learning Language

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From the American Academy of Pediatrics

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​​​Approximately 20% of children in the United States speak a language other than English at home, with Spanish as the most common non-English language. The research on the benefits of bilingualism is constantly growing. Becoming bilingual supports children to maintain strong ties with their entire family, culture, and community-key parts of a child developing his or her identity. However, some big misconceptions about learning two languages persist.

Here are some of the common myths that parents may have heard-and set the record straight:

Myth: Exposing infants and toddlers to more than one language may cause delays in their speech or language development.

​ Fact: Milestones of pre-language development are the same in all languages. Like other children, most bilingual children speak their first words by age one (i.e., mama, dada). By age two, most bilingual children can use two-word phrases (i.e., my ball, no juice). These are the same developmental milestones for children who learn only one language. A bilingual toddler might mix parts of a word from one language with parts from another language. While this might make it more difficult for others to understand the child's meaning, it is not a reflection of abnormal or delayed development. The total number of words (the sum of words from both languages the child is learning) should be comparable to the number used by a child the same age speaking one language.

Myth: Speaking two languages to a child may cause a speech or language disorder.

Myth: Learning two languages will confuse your child.

Myth: Children with speech or language processing disorders can have more difficulty learning a second language.

Myth: Bilingual children will have academic problems once they start school.

Myth: If a child does not learn a second language when he or she is very young, he or she will never be fluent.

Myth: If a child is not equally fluent in both languages, he or she is not truly bilingual.

Additional Information & Resources:

Copyright © 2017 American Academy of Pediatrics and American Speech-Language-Hearing Association

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bilingual~ two languages~ trilingual~ bilingualism~ speech or language disorder~ asha~ school~ brain development~ spanish~ english~ learning english~ immigrant

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7 Myths and Facts About Bilingual Children Learning Language

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​​​Approximately 20% of children in the United States speak a language other than English at home, with Spanish as the most common non-English language. The research on the benefits of bilingualism is constantly growing. Becoming bilingual supports children to maintain strong ties with their entire family, culture, and community-key parts of a child developing his or her identity.

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READ|Reach Out and Read Diverse and Inclusive Books List

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READ|Reach Out and Read Diverse and Inclusive Books List

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RESOURCE|Book Sharing as a Vehicle for Learning

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RESOURCE|Book Sharing as a Vehicle for Learning

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A resource by Quality First Academy

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COL2.Book Sharing as a Vehicle for Learning

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READ|Developing a Thriving Reader from the Early Years: A Continuum of Effective Literacy Practices 

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READ|Developing a Thriving Reader from the Early Years: A Continuum of Effective Literacy Practices 

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By Read on Arizona

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Read On AZ_Developing a Thriving Reade rFrom the Early Years

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READ|Caregiver Sensitivity in Cultural Context: Japanese and U.S. Teachers' Beliefs About Anticipating and Responding to Children's Needs

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READ|Caregiver Sensitivity in Cultural Context: Japanese and U.S. Teachers' Beliefs About Anticipating and Responding to Children's Needs

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Article by Rothbaum, Nagaoka, & Ponte (2006)
From Journal of Research in Childhood Education

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How to access videos: 1.) Create a login 2.) Click on "Collateral" from top row of options 4.) Scroll down to "Other Communication Media Resources" 

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Welcome! Register your organization to access Any Time is 3Ts Time resources for organizations that reach families with children ages 0-3.

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RESOURCES|NAEYC: Welcoming and Supporting Dual Language Learners

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RESOURCES|NAEYC: Welcoming and Supporting Dual Language Learners

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Visit NAEYC for blogs, books and articles on supporting Dual Language Learners.

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Use these resources to support young children who are learning a second language while continuing to develop their home language.

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Call 877-705-KIDS (5437) for Free Child Development Support

The Birth to Five Helpline is a free service open to all Arizona families with young children looking for the latest child development information from experts in the field. Professionals may also take advantage of this service.

Call the Helpline to speak with one of our bilingual (English/Spanish) early childhood specialists, on duty Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. You can also leave a voicemail, complete our online contact form (below), or text the Helpline 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Virtual video consultation services are also available.

Introduced in 2005, the Birth to Five Helpline combines sensitive, supportive listening with sound information from professionals who have expertise in early childhood development and parenting/caregiving. Each child and family are unique. We collaborate with callers to understand their specific concern and align with each family's own parenting values, traditions and style.

Topics addressed include, but are not limited to:

By calling the Helpline, you can also access support as needed from Southwest Human Development's wide range of early childhood development staff, including psychologists, master's level counselors, registered nurses, disabilities specialists, early literacy specialists and occupational, speech/language and physical therapists. In addition to providing you with counseling and resource/referral information, we send individualized child development information as applicable.

Download the Birth to Five Helpline app!

Now, you can have the support of the Birth to Five Helpline at the touch of your fingers! Download our Birth to Five Helpline app in the Apple App Store or on Google Play. Just open the app on your phone and one-touch call, text or email our Helpline early childhood specialists.

Fussy Baby Program

An extension of the Birth to Five Helpline is the Fussy Baby program. This program provides telephone, home visiting and virtual video consultation and support to help families navigate challenges associated with hard-to-soothe infants, excessive crying, sleeping problems and feeding difficulties during their child's first year of life.
Click here for more information about the Fussy Baby program
For Professionals

If you are a child care provider, preschool provider, quality improvement specialist or any professional who works with young children ages birth to 5 and are looking for consultation or resource information, contact the Birth to Five Helpline at 877-705-KIDS (5437). If you would like to submit a question for the Birth to Five Helpline online, please complete the form below and an early childhood expert will contact you.

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Birth to Five Helpline - Southwest Human Development

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The Birth to Five Helpline is a free service open to all Arizona families with young children looking for the latest child development information from experts in the field. Professionals may also take advantage of this service. Call the Helpline to speak with one of our bilingual (English/Spanish) early childhood specialists, on duty Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m.

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By popular demand! Watch and share this video clip from ECLKC Head Start of a teacher book sharing with multiple children of different ages and stages.

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WATCH|Let's Talk Language Development Jamboard Answer Key Video

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WATCH|Let's Talk Language Development Jamboard Answer Key Video

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The Answers to the COL 2 Language Development Jamboard set to some groovy tunes!

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Courtesy of the Journey Through Books program

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Roles that Teachers take on Handout (Spanish Version)

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Courtesy of the Journey Through Books program

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RESOURCE|4 Conversational Styles Handout (English & Spanish)

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RESOURCE|4 Conversational Styles Handout (English & Spanish)

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From Quality First Academy

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By COL Participant request. This slide considers a few combinations of children's conversation styles and teacher roles that may not support optimal language development.

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WATCH| Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop explains the meaning and significance of Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors.

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WATCH| Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop explains the meaning and significance of Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors.

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From Bookharvest.org

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The Opportunity

Book Harvest promotes and shares books that portray all children, honoring diverse backgrounds, languages, abilities, and perspectives, and including stories by and about people of color. We believe that books should serve as mirrors and windows for all children: in order to become avid readers and to reap the full benefits of lifelong literacy, children have to see both themselves and worlds beyond their own in the stories they read.

Want to purchase culturally inclusive books and have them shipped directly to our office?

Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop explains the meaning and significance of Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors.

We are inspired by the work of Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop whose seminal essay, "Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors" asserts:
"Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books...When there are enough books available that act as both mirrors and windows for all our children, they will see that we can celebrate both our differences and our similarities, because together they are what makes us all human."[1]

The Challenge

The unfortunate reality is that there is limited availability of diverse and inclusive children's books. These statistics[2] underscore the stark challenge we face:

Of all the children's books published in 2018, most main characters were white (50%), followed by animals (27%). Only 10% were African/African American; not even 5% were Latinx.

Black, Latinx, and Native authors combined wrote just 7% of new children's books published.

Inclusive children's literature that features characters who are either physically and/or intellectually diverse-characters who have been labeled as disabled-remain few and far between. Additionally, those texts that do exist often follow tropes of pity or dehumanization. These texts have also been heavily critiqued for their over-representation of white male characters who access prosthetics.[3]

What We're Doing: Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors in Action

At Book Harvest, we are committed to providing high-quality diverse and inclusive books to children and families.

Here is Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors in action:

Book Drives: We provide materials that explain Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors and encourage book drive captains to share this perspective with their participants. While we welcome all donations of new and gently used children's books, we are always especially grateful for diverse and inclusive titles!

Dream Big: At our cornerstone event, celebrated on MLK Day each year, we celebrate our big dream of books and literacy for all children as we honor the legacy of Dr. King.

Informal learning spaces: Laundromats, barbershops, health clinics - in all these everyday places where families spend time, we stock bookshelves filled with free books in which children recognize themselves, through which they become eager readers on the laps of their parents while the laundry spins or in the barber's chair as the clippers buzz.

You can download a pdf of this information here.

[1] https://scenicregional.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Mirrors-Windows-and-Sliding-Glass-Doors.pdf[2] "Data on books by and about people of color and from First/Native Nations published for children and teens compiled by the Cooperative Children's Book Center, School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison."
[3] https://blog.leeandlow.com/2019/05/28/how-to-critically-select-childrens-books-with-representations-of-disability-experiences/

View and download our Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors List HERE.

Every month we feature five children's books that are at the top of our donation list. These are all included on our Regulator Bookshop and Amazon wishlists.

June's Featured Five celebrates Juneteenth and Father's Day.

1. Hair Twins
By Raakhee Mirchandani, Holly Hatam (illustrator)

2. Papa, Daddy, and Riley
By Seamus Kirst (author), Devon Holzwarth (illustrator)

3. Papi, Could I Be; Papi, Podria Ser
By Saul Lopez (author), Trinidad Olarte (illustrator)

4. A Flag for Juneeteenth
By Kim Taylor

5. The History of Juneteenth: A History Book for New Readers
By Arlisha Norwood

You can purchase diverse and inclusive books to donate from local bookstores or Amazon here and have them shipped directly to our office. Learn more.

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Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors

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Book Harvest promotes and shares books that portray all children, honoring diverse backgrounds, languages, abilities, and perspectives, and including stories by and about people of color. We believe that books should serve as mirrors and windows for all children: in order to become avid readers and to reap the full benefits of lifelong literacy, children have to see both themselves and worlds beyond their own in the stories they read.

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CDC’s milestones and parent tips have been updated and new checklist ages have been added (15 and 30 months).

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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

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Skills such as taking a first step, smiling for the first time, and waving "bye bye" are called developmental milestones. Children reach milestones in how they play, learn, speak, act, and move.

Click on the age of your child to see the milestones:

"Learn the Signs. Act Early." materials are not a substitute for standardized, validated developmental screening tools.

Special acknowledgments to the subject matter experts and others who contributed to the review of data and selection of developmental milestones, especially Paul H. Lipkin, MD, Michelle M. Macias, MD, Julie F. Pajek, PhD, Judith S. Shaw, EdD, MPH, RN, Karnesha Slaughter, MPH, Jane K. Squires, PhD, Toni M. Whitaker, MD, Lisa D. Wiggins, PhD, and Jennifer M. Zubler, MD.
Sincere gratitude to Natalia Benza, MD and José O. Rodríguez, MD, MBA for their thoughtful review of the Spanish-language translation of these milestones.

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“learn the signs. act early.” milestones

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Developmental milestones are things most children can do by a certain age. Track your child's milestones and talk with your child's doctor at every visit about the milestones your child has reached

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Visit the Hanen Centre for books, resources and training opportunities.

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Featured Article

When a Child Has a Language Delay, Research Shows That Parents Can Make a Big Difference!

Over the last decade, researchers looked at a large number of studies on parent-implemented intervention and compiled their findings. Here are the trends they found that tell us how effective this type of intervention is, and which types of children benefit.

Article
Continue Reading
Book Nook

Building Vocabulary with Steam Train, Dream Train

The Hanen Newsletter

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The Hanen Centre | Speech and Language Development for Children

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Over the last decade, researchers looked at a large number of studies on parent-implemented intervention and compiled their findings. Here are the trends they found that tell us how effective this type of intervention is, and which types of children benefit. Continue Reading

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By COL Participant request.

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The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker

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Description

"Hosts of all kinds, this is a must-read!" --Chris Anderson, owner and curator of TED

From the host of the New York Times podcast Together Apart, an exciting new approach to how we gather that will transform the ways we spend our time together-at home, at work, in our communities, and beyond.

In The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker argues that the gatherings in our lives are lackluster and unproductive--which they don't have to be. We rely too much on routine and the conventions of gatherings when we should focus on distinctiveness and the people involved. At a time when coming together is more important than ever, Parker sets forth a human-centered approach to gathering that will help everyone create meaningful, memorable experiences, large and small, for work and for play.

Drawing on her expertise as a facilitator of high-powered gatherings around the world, Parker takes us inside events of all kinds to show what works, what doesn't, and why. She investigates a wide array of gatherings--conferences, meetings, a courtroom, a flash-mob party, an Arab-Israeli summer camp--and explains how simple, specific changes can invigorate any group experience.

The result is a book that's both journey and guide, full of exciting ideas with real-world applications. The Art of Gathering will forever alter the way you look at your next meeting, industry conference, dinner party, and backyard barbecue--and how you host and attend them.

About the Author

PRIYA PARKER works to help people create collective meaning in their lives through gatherings. She is a master facilitator, strategic advisor, acclaimed author of The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters, and the host and executive producer of the New York Times podcast, Together Apart. Trained in the field of conflict resolution, Parker has worked on race relations on American college campuses and on peace processes in the Arab world, southern Africa, and India. She studied organizational design at M.I.T., public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and political and social thought at the University of Virginia. She lives with her husband and two children in Brooklyn, NY. @priyaparker

Praise For...

"A long overdue and urgent manifesto." -Seth Godin

" The Art of Gathering is one of the most transformative books I've read in years. It has fundamentally changed I how run meetings, attend conferences, and even arrange dinner with friends. Equally important, it has reminded me why people come together in the first place - and why we should treat every gathering as an opportunity to deepen our shared humanity." -Daniel H. Pink, author of When and Drive

"As social animals, humans gather, meet, and bond-seeking meaning, purpose, creative expression, and more. In almost all cases this is an unconscious process leading to subtle frustration and a lack of satisfaction. For the last few years I've avoided social gatherings because I find them meaningless and banal. I learned much from this book. Priya Parker has created both an art and a science to gathering in ways that can bring joy and fulfillment to any meeting." -Deepak Chopra

"[A] remarkable new book about how we spend our time together, at work, at home, and beyond. If you want to get more out of every event, whether it's with your boss and co-workers or friends and family, The Art of Gathering can help." - Bustle

"[A] fantastic book . . . . Good things happen when people connect. Especially when we follow Priya's sage advice." - Forbes

"Enthusiastically delivered formulas for better get-togethers... useful to those whose job it is to plan meetings, conferences, and the like and a worthy survival manual for consumers of the same." - Kirkus Reviews

"This clear and engaging book sets down many things you thought you knew, until you find yourself remembering that you did not attend to its simple rules at the last significant event you hosted.... A passion for successful encounters enlivens every page." -Sherry Turkle, author of Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age and Alone Together

"We're more connected than ever. But it doesn't really feel that way. We talk on the phone less than we used to, but we spend more time in front of screens, or plugged into earbuds. We're constantly interacting, but not always communicating on a meaningful level. We're busy, but we're not often getting a lot done. Priya Parker aims to change that. In her new book The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters, Parker sets out to make our lives more productive, and our interactions more meaningful." -Debbie Millman, Design Matters

"A brilliant and eminently practical guide! The Art of Gathering will open your eyes to just how often we gather - and how we can turn those mundane events into dazzling opportunities for meaning, dreaming, and doing. This book should be mandatory reading for everyone from the business executive to the community activist, the conflict resolution specialist to the dinner host. Concrete advice that will forever change the way you gather." -Daniel L. Shapiro, founder of the Harvard International Negotiation Program and author of Negotiating the Nonnegotiable

"Don't read this book alone. Read it at a gathering of friends, in a book club, with a team of colleagues, or on a family reunion. But read it-for its wisdom, its charm, its insight, and its ability to make every encounter with others more meaningful and enjoyable. The Art of Gathering is a book long overdue, and just in time." -Bruce Feiler, bestselling author of The Secrets of Happy Families and W alking the Bible "Many of the best things in life happen when people gather. So it's remarkable how little conscious intent goes into planning such moments. Thank goodness for this book. It opens up new ways of thinking about wonderful gatherings with a delicious confection of smartly-defined concepts and detailed examples. Hosts of all kinds, this is a must-read! " - Chris Anderson, owner and curator of TED

"Priya Parker's The Art of Gathering is brilliant. The book is a timely reminder: It's our human-to-human links that make the most meaningful moments of our lives. Page by page, Parker offers a decoder ring for the secret forces at work when we gather for business, crises or celebration. What to leave out, where to meet, how to charm-it's all here, explained with unforgettable stories and clever tips. You'll only put this book down because it will make you so hungry for a gathering of your own." -Joshua Cooper Ramo, author of The Seventh Sense and The Age of the Unthinkable

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The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters (Paperback)

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"Hosts of all kinds, this is a must-read!"

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A short resource about Priya Parker's 3 Goals of Generous Authority adapted for the QFA Community.

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Provides free digital access to picture books, narrated in many languages.

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Unite for Literacy provides free digital access to picture books, narrated in many languages. Literacy is at the core of a healthy community, so we unite with partners to enable all families to read with their young children.

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READ|Rocking and Rolling. Promoting Inclusion in Infant and Toddler Settings

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READ|Rocking and Rolling. Promoting Inclusion in Infant and Toddler Settings

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from NAEYC

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Dunia sits with a notepad in front of her as the toddlers in her early learning program nap. She reviews information about Maddox, a new child joining the program, that has been shared by his family. They write that Maddox loves animals-especially dinosaurs-and enjoys stacking blocks. He smiles and laughs and likes to watch his two siblings play. His family shares that Maddox was diagnosed with autism at 18 months old. Now 27 months old, he requires support with communication, engaging with peers, and participating in group activities. He is not yet toilet trained and can sometimes have difficulty settling down for naps.

Dunia reads that he will also receive visits once per month from his early intervention home visitor in the early education setting. She is happy to see this; Dunia is confident that Maddox's home visitor will have some tips for how she can effectively draw on his experiences and interests and be responsive to his needs. In the meantime, Dunia takes out her pen and draws several columns in her notebook, each with a different label: "Environment and Materials," "Group Activities," "Play and Peer Interactions," "Communication," and "Family Connections." Underneath these headings, she labels a new row: "Strategies to Try." Okay, Dunia thinks, I'll start here.

In the opening vignette, Dunia has identified many factors early childhood educators must consider when planning to include a child with different abilities, developmental delays, or disabilities in the classroom. The tenets of inclusion underscore the importance of high expectations and research-informed practices to provide access, participation, and supports for children with disabilities. Inclusive practices ensure progress in a child's development and learning across domains, including cultivating relationships and a sense of belonging in their learning community (HHS & DE 2015).

While inclusion is an important goal for many families and teachers and is a hallmark of a high-quality early learning program (DEC/NAEYC 2009; NAEYC 2020), effective implementation requires planning, intentionality, and collaboration.

Why Prioritize Inclusion?

Historically, the approach to working with children with disabilities has focused more on exclusion. Some educators, policy makers, and others argued that a child with disabilities was better served in environments exclusively with other children with disabilities. Some argued that a policy of inclusion would slow the progress of classmates without disabilities. This policy has gradually been replaced by the concept of and requirement for a least restrictive environment; that is, children with disabilities should be educated with children without disabilities whenever possible.

In practice, there are many benefits to including children with varying abilities in early education settings. For young children (including infants and toddlers) with developmental delays or disabilities, inclusive settings offer

access to challenging curricula and learning experiences

opportunities to develop age-appropriate social skills and early friendships and to build relationships with adults outside the family

immersion in language- and literacy-rich environments

the development of self-help skills (hanging up a jacket or backpack) that promote independence over the long term

Inclusive settings also have important benefits for infants and toddlers without disabilities. Children will

develop appreciation for individual differences and the unique strengths and abilities of others

benefit from different pathways to engaging and learning in the early education setting

participate in and prepare for an inclusive world

Research has found that children with disabilities in inclusive classrooms are more likely to engage in peer interactions than children in special education settings, and both children with and without disabilities make significant gains in early literacy scores while attending an inclusive, high-quality early education program (Lawrence, Smith, & Banerjee 2016).

SNAP: Making Plans for Inclusion

When creating inclusion plans, remember the acronym SNAP to guide this process:

Skills/Strengths: What skills and strengths does the child bring to this activity or environment? How might you build on those?

Needs: What needs does the child have? How might those impact their ability to participate in the activity or environment?

Adaptations:What can you change or adapt about the activity to ensure access? What resources do you need to achieve this adaptation? What training or support might be necessary to support your teaching?

Partners:What partners can you turn to with questions about ensuring access? These might include the child's families, early intervention provider(s), local agencies or nonprofits that specialize in a particular disability, or other colleagues with experience in developing similar adaptations.

Planning for an Inclusive Infant and Toddler Setting

For many infant and toddler professionals like Dunia, the big question is: How do I effectively plan for inclusion in my setting so that each and every child's strengths are recognized and needs are met?

Early childhood professionals should also approach this planning process by prioritizing the three defining features of inclusion: access, participation, and supports (DEC/NAEYC 2009). It is important to partner with the child's family and early intervention professionals to learn what supports are already being used at home and to identify activities that will align with the child's developmental needs and goals. The following are suggestions and strategies for bringing these priorities to life in an inclusive infant and toddler classroom.

Access refers to "providing a wide range of activities and environments for every child by removing physical barriers and offering multiple ways to promote learning and development" (DEC/NAEYC 2009, 1).

There are many ways of providing access to learning experiences based on a child's individual strengths, preferences, and needs. Teachers should consider the current skills and abilities of children and identify additional or different supports that may be needed for them to make progress toward learning objectives and to have access to all areas of their learning environment. For Maddox (from the opening vignette), Dunia might use dinosaur figures with him in a counting activity, rather than cube blocks. Using a child's preferences to engage them is often an effective strategy for young children, including children with autism spectrum disorder (Weber et al. 2018). For a toddler with limited fine motor skills, for example, the teacher might adapt each page of books in the reading corner by gluing popsicle sticks to create "page turners." These make it easier for grasping and turning pages independently, empowering the child to access literacy activities just like their peers.

Early childhood professionals should approach the planning process by prioritizing the three defining features of inclusion: access, participation, and supports.

In addition, educators should consider a "least to most" approach, starting with the least amount of adult involvement and letting the child do as much as possible on their own. This may result in some errors as the child attempts the skill, but it can lead to greater learning overall (Libby et al. 2008). For example, if a child is struggling to hold and place puzzle pieces, the child's teacher can try verbally coaching the child first ( least involvement). Then, the teacher can point to a space and prompt the child to "try putting the piece here." As a last option, the teacher can engage in the most involvement-putting their hand over the child's hand to place the piece. Other adaptations may entail offering a puzzle with fewer pieces or one with knobs rather than flat pieces.

Participation

Planning for participation involves tapping into a wide variety of practices to encourage active engagement during instructional activities and play (DEC/NAEYC 2009). One essential way that a baby or toddler participates in an early childhood classroom is through their emerging communication skills. Communication-related delays are the most common types of developmental delay (AAP 2021), and other diagnoses can also contribute to differences in how children communicate. For example, a child with low muscle tone may have difficulty coordinating muscles to smile-but still be quite happy and engaged in an activity.

To provide support for a child's growing communication skills, teachers can observe and connect with families about how a baby or toddler currently communicates. Is it through gaze, sign language, pointing/gesturing, vocalizing (but not words), or spoken language? With this information, educators can partner with the child's early intervention provider to use the same communication strategies that are being introduced and reinforced during home visits. (See Embedded Learning Opportunities for Children with and Without Disabilities by Christan Coogle et al. for more communication strategies.)

Participation also includes fostering relationships with other children. Toddlers with and without disabilities are just beginning to discover the pleasures of early friendships. Teachers can facilitate peer interactions for children with disabilities by considering the following:

Plan for pairs to encourage parallel play. For example, in the toddler room, you can create "partner paintings," with two children painting on the same large paper taped to the floor or wall.

Incorporate adaptations to promote greater participation. For example, if a toddler has difficulty processing sensory information, fingerpainting may be challenging. Offering sponges or brushes can help. For children with difficulty grasping a paintbrush, try taping a thin block to the paint brush to make it easier to hold.

Offer every child the chance to explore adaptations. By creating a rule that "only" one child can use a particular paintbrush, teachers can inadvertently stigmatize the use of that tool. Make an adaptation one more acceptable (and fun) choice for participating.

Build on strengths to nurture relationships. For Maddox, his teacher can encourage a block construction activity with one or two other children; there, Maddox can shine.

Increase engagement during large-group activities. Does the toddler need special seating to comfortably participate? Will proximity to you or a favorite classmate help? Will certain materials, such as preprogrammed lyrics into a child's speech-generating device, foster greater participation?

Model ahead of time or give one-on-one assistance for entering and sustaining play. For example, teachers can share play scripts like "Can I play?" or "My turn." Or staff can teach the entire class the sign language for common phrases. Also, teachers can model or prompt new explorations of materials: "Now let's pretend to give Teddy a bath." Modeling can be for children without disabilities to ensure everyone can participate: "Let's play with the blocks on the table so Devin can reach them from his wheelchair."

Finally, adult-child relationships are critical for children with developmental delays or disabilities. The language environment experienced by infants and toddlers has been shown to significantly impact their language learning trajectories (Degotardi 2021), and early educators and caregivers are a primary source of rich, child-directed speech and back-and-forth conversations (Chaparro-Moreno 2019). Relationship-building strategies are the same for all children: make one-on-one time with each child each day; notice and follow the child's interests; talk together and ask questions; and celebrate a child's strengths and achievements.

Finally, supports refer to both child-specific and systems-level aids that educators can use to effectively implement inclusion in their classrooms (DEC/NAEYC 2009). They may include assistive equipment for physical support (accessible strollers, specially designed highchairs, easy-grasp spoons), digital devices and picture symbols to help with communication, and certain objects like weighted teddy bears to foster feelings of security and focus.

Related to assistive equipment and other child-specific supports, understanding how to use and maintain the equipment and materials safely is critical to ensure a child can access and actively engage in their learning environment and activities. It ensures the child can access learning and play experiences to their maximum potential.

Early educators need support too, with assistance ranging from individualized coaching and supervision tailored to successes, challenges, and problem solving to broader professional development trainings and materials focused on inclusion. Especially important for successful systems-level support are sufficient time for planning for inclusion and a sufficient budget for adaptations and modifications.

Families of children with disabilities are themselves a crucial form of support and knowledge. Families can share strategies that have worked in the home and can give insights into the child's interests and preferences, approaches for soothing the child, and guidance on how the child communicates or uses cues. This relationship goes both ways-teachers can also share their observations and celebrations of the child's strengths and progress with families.

If families agree, the teacher may find the child's early intervention professional to be a significant source of support too. Early interventionists have worked with hundreds of children with different abilities and are well-versed in evidence-based strategies for including infants and toddlers in early childhood settings. Through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), early intervention professionals can visit the child while they are in the classroom setting to provide ideas or model strategies. With the family's permission, they also can share the child's Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP), which outlines what goals the child is working on and the activities that might support mastery of those targeted skills. (To learn more about early intervention professionals and processes, read When in Doubt, Reach Out: Teaming Strategies for Inclusive Early Childhood Settings, by Christine M. Spence et al. in the Spring 2021 issue of Young Children.)

Planning for inclusion means considering a variety of factors to ensure that every child has an opportunity to grow and learn in infant and toddler settings. Your relationship with them remains a central-and critical-factor. By connecting with each baby or toddler as a unique individual and ensuring the access, participation, and supports they need to thrive, you are building a model community that embraces all, supports all, and gives every child the chance to reach their maximum potential.

Think About It

What experiences have you had caring for infants and toddlers with developmental delays or disabilities? How might you share your insights and questions with your colleagues?

What are your hopes as you plan for inclusion in your classroom? What are your worries or anticipated challenges? Who might be key partners to help you address these concerns?

What supports and resources will you need to include children with different abilities in your classroom?

What are some actions you can take to build strong working relationships with the families of children with developmental delays or disabilities and with early intervention providers (if families agree)?

Choose an activity that you have planned for your classroom this week. Follow the SNAP approach to plan how each and every child can access, participate in, and have supports for this activity.

Take time to observe a child (with or without a disability or developmental delay) in your setting. What strengths do you see? What activities or routines does the child not have sufficient access to or participation in? What adaptations might you consider to make these moments easier?

What questions about a child's abilities, interests, and preferences might you have for their family? What stories, celebrations, or progress can you share with the family?

Reflect on your relationships with each child in your setting. Which children do you feel most and least close to? What actions can you take to build a stronger relationship with children with whom you don't feel as close?

Rocking & Rolling is written by infant and toddler specialists and contributed by ZERO TO THREE, a nonprofit organization working to promote the health and development of infants and toddlers by translating research and knowledge into a range of practical tools and resources for use by the adults who influence the lives of young children. The column and references for this article can be found online at NAEYC.org/resources/pubs/yc/columns.

Photograph: © Getty Images

Copyright © 2021 by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. See Permissions and Reprints online at NAEYC.org/resources/permissions.

References

AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics). 2021. Language Delays for Toddlers: Information for Parents. https://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/toddler/Pages/language-delay.aspx

Chaparro-Moreno, L.J., L.M. Justice, J.A.R. Logan, K.M. Purtell, & T.J. Lin. 2019. "The Preschool Classroom Linguistic Environment: Children's First-Person Experiences." PLoS ONE 14(8): e0220227. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220227

Degotardi, S. 2021. "The Language Environment of Infant Childcare: Issues of Quantity, Quality, Participation, and Context". In Contemporary Research on Child Care in Early Childhood Education, ed. Olivia N. Saracho, 85-107. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

DEC (Division for Early Childhood of the Council for Exceptional Children)/NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children). 2009. Early Childhood Inclusion: A Summary. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina, FPG Child Development Institute. NAEYC.org/sites/default/files/globally-shared/downloads/PDFs/resources/position-statements/DEC_NAEYC_ECSummary_A.pdf

Lawrence, S., S. Smith, & R. Banerjee. 2016. Preschool Inclusion: Key Findings from Research and Implications for Policy. New York: National Center for Children in Poverty. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED579178.pdf

Libby, M.E., J.S. Weiss, S. Bancroft, & W.H. Ahearn. 2008. "A Comparison of Most-to-Least and Least-to-Most Prompting on the Acquisition of Solitary Play Skills." Behavior Analysis in Practice 1 (1): 37-43.

NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children). 2020. "Developmentally Appropriate Practice."Position statement. Washington, DC: NAEYC. NAEYC.org/sites/default/files/globally-shared/downloads/PDFs/resources/position-statements/dap-statement_0.pdf

US Department of Health and Human Services/US Department of Education. 2015. Policy Statement on the Inclusion of Children with Disabilities in Early Childhood Programs: Executive Summary. https://www2.ed.gov/policy/speced/guid/earlylearning/joint-statement-executive-summary.pdf

Weber, S., L. Mays, A. Luebrecht, E. Beltz, & E. Seuss. 2018. An Early Childcare Provider's Guide to Managing Challenging Behaviors: Managing Challenging Behaviors with Intervention Strategies and Positive Behavioral Supports. Autism Speaks. https://www.autismspeaks.org/sites/default/files/2018-09/Early%20Childcare%20Providers%20Guide%20to%20Managing%20Challenging%20Behaviors.pdf

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Rocking and Rolling. Promoting Inclusion in Infant and Toddler Settings

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Dunia sits with a notepad in front of her as the toddlers in her early learning program nap. She reviews information about Maddox, a new child joining the program, that has been shared by his family. They write that Maddox loves animals-especially dinosaurs-and enjoys stacking blocks.

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READ|Using Curiosity to Encourage Communication Skills

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READ|Using Curiosity to Encourage Communication Skills

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From The Hanen Centre

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AZ Department of Education

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Arizonas Infant Toddler Developmental Guidelines_2nd Edition

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AZ Department of Education

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RESOURCE|CARA's Kit Resources for Early Childhood Educators

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RESOURCE|CARA's Kit Resources for Early Childhood Educators

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From CARA's Kit: Creating Adaptions for Routines and Activities

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From National Child Traumatic Stress Network

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READ|Understanding the Effects of Maltreatment on Brain Development

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READ|Understanding the Effects of Maltreatment on Brain Development

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From Child Welfare Information Gateway

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This is not the name of the video but for QFA purposes it has been labeled as such for you to find quickly on your padlet.

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This is not the name of the video but for QFA purposes it has been labled as such for you to find quickly on your padlet.

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This is not the name of the video but for QFA purposes it has been labeled as such for you to find quickly on your padlet.

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Behavior Has Meaning: Video Example 2 | ECLKC

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This short video clip appears in the Behavior Has Meaning 15-minute In-service Suite.

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Administration for Children and Families (ACF)

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This is not the name of the video but for QFA purposes it has been labeled as such for you to find quickly on your padlet.

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Focused Observations, Chapter 8 Observation Practice #18c. Dramatic Play (Captions)

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READ|Responsive Caregiving, Opportunities for Early Learning, and Children's Safety and Security During COVID-19: A Rapid Review

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READ|Responsive Caregiving, Opportunities for Early Learning, and Children's Safety and Security During COVID-19: A Rapid Review

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From Journal of the American Medical Association

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QFA Resource adapted from and NAEYC article

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RESOURCE|Supporting ATL for Dual Language Learners

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RESOURCE|Supporting ATL for Dual Language Learners

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From Quality First Academy

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READ|Enthusiatic and Engaged Learners: Approaches to Learning in the Early Childhood Classroom

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READ|Enthusiatic and Engaged Learners: Approaches to Learning in the Early Childhood Classroom

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by Marilou Hyson

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Description

Of all the school readiness domains, approaches to learning is perhaps the least understood but the most important. Research shows that positive approaches to learning improve both social-emotional and academic outcomes. This new resource will help early childhood professionals implement strategies to support young children's positive approaches to learning--their enthusiasm (interest, joy, and motivation to learn) and their engagement (attention, persistence, flexibility, self-regulation, and other essential learning behaviors). Along with extensive research, the text includes images of practice in early education programs in culturally, economically, and linguistically diverse settings.

This book will help teachers, future teachers, and other early childhood stakeholders to:

Understand how children acquire positive approaches to learning.

Know what research says about why approaches to learning are so important.

Recognize what supports and what undermines children's enthusiasm and engagement in learning.

Identify and plan specific strategies for the classroom.

Use culturally sensitive assessments to plan interventions.

Select and modify curriculum and teaching practices.

Access resources to help every child enter school with positive approaches to learning.

Influence educational policies and decision making.

About the Author

Marilou Hyson is Senior Consultant with the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and Affiliate Faculty in Applied Developmental Psychology at George Mason University. She is the author of The Emotional Development of Young Children: Building an Emotion-Centered Curriculum, Second Edition.

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Enthusiastic and Engaged Learners: Approaches to Learning in the Early Childhood Classroom (Early Childhood Education) (Paperback)

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Of all the school readiness domains, approaches to learning is perhaps the least understood but the most important. Research shows that positive approaches to learning improve both social-emotional and academic outcomes. This new resource will help early childhood professionals implement strategies to support young children's positive approaches to learning--their enthusiasm (interest, joy, and motivation to learn) and their engagement (attention, persistence, flexibility, self-regulation, and other essential learning behaviors).

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from NAEYC

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RESOURCE|Supporting Children Who Have Experienced Trauma

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RESOURCE|Supporting Children Who Have Experienced Trauma

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From Quality First Academy

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READ|The future of Healing: Shifting from Trauma Informed Care to Healing Centered Engagement.

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READ|The future of Healing: Shifting from Trauma Informed Care to Healing Centered Engagement.

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In one COL we had a discussion about new language being used to describe Trauma Informed Care. Here is the article that was referenced.

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Shawn Ginwright Ph.D.
From time to time, researchers, policy makers, philanthropy and practitioners all join together in a coordinated response to address the most pressing issues facing America's youth. I've been involved with this process for long enough to have participated in each of these roles. I recall during the early 1990s experts promoted the term "resiliency," which is the capacity to adapt, navigate and bounce back from adverse and challenging life experiences. Researchers and practitioners alike clamored over strategies to build more resilient youth.

In the early 2000's the term "youth development" gained currency and had a significant influence on youth development programs, and probably more importantly how we viewed young people. Youth development offered an important shift in focus from viewing youth as problems to be solved to community assets who simply required supports and opportunities for healthy development. Since that time, a range of approaches have influenced how we think about young people, and consequently our programmatic strategies. I have, for the most part, attempted to nudge and cajole each of these approaches to consider the unique ways in which race, identity and social marginalization influence the development of youth of color.

More recently, practitioners and policy stakeholders have recognized the impact of trauma on learning, and healthy development. In efforts to support young people who experience trauma, the term "trauma-informed care" has gained traction among schools, juvenile justice departments, mental health programs and youth development agencies around the country. Trauma informed care broadly refers to a set of principles that guide and direct how we view the impact of severe harm on young people's mental, physical, and emotional health. Trauma informed care encourages support and treatment to the whole person, rather than focusing on only treating individual symptoms or specific behaviors.

Trauma-informed care has become an important approach in schools and agencies that serve young people who have been exposed to trauma, and here's why. Some school leaders believe that the best way to address disruptive classroom behavior is through harsh discipline. These schools believe that discipline alone is sufficient to modify undesired classroom behavior, but research shows that school suspensions may further harm students who have been exposed to a traumatic event or experience (Bottiani et al., 2017). Rather than using discipline, a school that uses a trauma informed approach might offer therapy, or counseling to support the restoration of that student's well-being. The assumption is that the disruptive behavior is the symptom of a deeper harm, rather than willful defiance, or disrespect.

While trauma-informed care offers an important lens to support young people who have been harmed and emotionally injured, it also has its limitations. I first became aware of the limitations of the term "trauma-informed care" during a healing circle I was leading with a group of African American young men. All of them had experienced some form of trauma ranging from sexual abuse, violence, homelessness, abandonment or all of the above. During one of our sessions, I explained the impact of stress and trauma on brain development and how trauma can influence emotional health. As I was explaining, one of the young men in the group named Marcus abruptly stopped me and said, "I am more than what happened to me, I'm not just my trauma". I was puzzled at first, but it didn't take me long to really contemplate what he was saying.

The term "trauma informed care" didn't encompass the totality of his experience and focused only on his harm, injury and trauma. For Marcus, the term "trauma informed care" was akin to saying, you are the worst thing that ever happened to you. For me, I realized the term slipped into the murky water of deficit based, rather than asset driven strategies to support young people who have been harmed. Without careful consideration of the terms we use, we can create blind spots in our efforts to support young people.

While the term trauma informed care is important, it is incomplete. First, trauma informed care correctly highlights the specific needs for individual young people who have exposure to trauma. However, current formulations of trauma informed care presumes that the trauma is an individual experience, rather than a collective one. To illustrate this point, researchers have shown that children in high violence neighborhoods all display behavioral and psychological elements of trauma (Sinha & Rosenberg 2013). Similarly, populations that disproportionately suffer from disasters like Hurricane Katrina share a common experience that if viewed individually simply fails to capture how collective harm requires a different approach than an individual one.

Second, trauma-informed care requires that we treat trauma in people but provides very little insight into how we might address the root causes of trauma in neighborhoods, families, and schools. If trauma is collectively experienced, this means that we also have to consider the environmental context that caused the harm in the first place. By only treating the individual we only address part of the equation leaving the toxic systems, policies and practices neatly intact.

Third, the term trauma-informed care runs the risk of focusing on the treatment of pathology (trauma), rather than fostering the possibility (well-being). This is not an indictment on well-meaning therapists and social workers many of whom may have been trained in theories and techniques designed to simply reduce negative emotions and behavior (Seligman 2011). However, just like the absence of disease doesn't constitute health, nor the absence of violence constitute peace, the reduction pathology (anxiety, anger, fear, sadness, distrust, triggers) doesn't constitute well-being (hope, happiness, imagination, aspirations, trust). Everyone wants to be happy, not just have less misery. The emerging field of positive psychology offers insight into the limits of only "treating" symptoms and focuses on enhancing the conditions that contribute to well-being. Without more careful consideration, trauma informed approaches sometimes slip into rigid medical models of care that are steeped in treating the symptoms, rather than strengthening the roots of well-being.

What is needed is an approach that allows practitioners to approach trauma with a fresh lens that promotes a holistic view of healing from traumatic experiences and environments. One approach is called healing-centered, as opposed to trauma-informed. A healing centered approach is holistic involving culture, spirituality, civic action and collective healing. A healing-centered approach views trauma not simply as an individual isolated experience, but rather highlights the ways in which trauma and healing are experienced collectively. The term healing-centered engagement expands how we think about responses to trauma and offers more holistic approach to fostering well-being.

A shift from trauma informed care to healing centered engagement (HCE) is more than a semantic play with words, but rather a tectonic shift in how we view trauma, its causes and its intervention. HCE is strength based, advances a collective view of healing, and re-centers culture as a central feature in well-being. Researchers have pointed out the ways in which patients have redefined the terms used to describe their illnesses in ways that affirmed, humanized and dignified their condition. For example, in the early 1990s AIDS activists challenged the term "gay-related immune deficiency" because the term stigmatized gay men and failed to adequately capture the medical accuracy of the condition. In a similar way, the young men I worked with offered me a way to reframe trauma with language that humanized them, and holistically captured their life experiences.

A healing centered approach to addressing trauma requires a different question that moves beyond "what happened to you" to "what's right with you" and views those exposed to trauma as agents in the creation of their own well-being rather than victims of traumatic events. Healing centered engagement is akin to the South African term "Ubuntu" meaning that humanness is found through our interdependence, collective engagement and service to others. Additionally, healing centered engagement offers an asset driven approach aimed at the holistic restoration of young peoples' well-being. The healing centered approach comes from the idea that people are not harmed in a vacuum, and well-being comes from participating in transforming the root causes of the harm within institutions. Healing centered engagement also advances the move to "strengths-based' care and away from the deficit based mental health models that drives therapeutic interventions. There are four key elements of healing centered engagement that may at times overlap with current trauma informed practices but offers several key distinctions.

Communities, and individuals who experience trauma are agents in restoring their own well-being. This subtle shift suggests that healing from trauma is found in an awareness and actions that address the conditions that created the trauma in the first place. Researchers have found that well-being is a function of the control and power young people have in their schools and communities (Morsillo & Prilleltensky 2007; Prilleltensky & Prilleltensky 2006). These studies focus on concepts such as such as liberation, emancipation, oppression, and social justice among activist groups and suggests that building an awareness of justice and inequality, combined with social action such as protests, community organizing, and/or school walk-outs contribute to overall wellbeing, hopefulness, and optimism (Potts 2003; Prilleltensky 2003, 2008). This means that healing centered engagement views trauma and well-being as function of the environments where people live, work and play. When people advocate for policies and opportunities that address causes of trauma, such as lack of access to mental health, these activities contribute to a sense of purpose, power and control over life situations. All of these are ingredients necessary to restore well-being and healing.

The pathway to restoring well-being among young people who experience trauma can be found in culture and identity. Healing centered engagement uses culture as a way to ground young people in a solid sense of meaning, self-perception, and purpose. This process highlights the intersectional nature of identity and highlights the ways in which culture offers a shared experience, community and sense of belonging. Healing is experienced collectively, and is shaped by shared identity such as race, gender, or sexual orientation. Healing centered engagement is the result of building a healthy identity, and a sense of belonging. For youth of color, these forms of healing can be rooted in culture and serves as an anchor to connect young people to a shared racial and ethnic identity that is both historical grounded and contemporarily relevant. Healing centered engagement embraces a holistic view of well-being that includes spiritual domains of health. This goes beyond viewing healing only from the lens of mental health, and incorporates culturally grounded rituals, and activities to restore well-being (Martinez 2001). Some examples of healing centered engagement can be found in healing circles rooted in indigenous culture where young people share their stories about healing and learn about their connection to their ancestors and traditions, or drumming circles rooted in African cultural principles.

Healing centered engagement offers an important departure from solely viewing young people through the lens of harm and focuses on asset driven strategies that highlight possibilities for well-being. An asset driven strategy acknowledges that young people are much more than the worst thing that happened to them, and builds upon their experiences, knowledge, skills and curiosity as positive traits to be enhanced. While it is important to acknowledge trauma and its influence on young people's mental health, healing centered strategies move one step beyond by focusing on what we want to achieve, rather than merely treating emotional and behavioral symptoms of trauma. This is a salutogenic approach focusing on how to foster and sustain well-being. Based in positive psychology, healing centered engagement is based in collective strengths and possibility which offers a departure from conventional psychopathology which focuses on clinical treatment of illness.

Adult providers need healing too! Healing centered engagement requires that we consider how to support adult providers in sustaining their own healing and well-being. We cannot presume that adulthood is a final, "trauma-free" destination. Much of our training and practice is directed at young peoples' healing but rarely focuses on the healing that is required of adults to be an effective youth practitioner. Healing is an ongoing process that we all need, not just young people who experience trauma. The well-being of the adult youth worker is also a critical factor in supporting young peoples' well-being. While we are learning more about the causes and effects of secondary on adults, we know very little about the systems of support required to restore and sustain well-being for adults. Healing centered engagement has an explicit focus on restoring, and sustaining the adults who attempt to heal youth- a healing the healers approach. Policy stakeholders should consider how to build a systems that support adult youth worker's well-being. I have supported organizations in creating structures like sabbaticals for employees or creating incentives like continuing education units for deeper learning about well-being and healing.

Marcus's comments during our healing circle "I am more than what happened to me" led me to question our approach to trauma. What blind spots do we have in our approaches to supporting young people who experience trauma? How might the concepts which are enshrined in our language limit rather than create opportunities for healing? What approaches might offer "disruptive" techniques that saturate young people with opportunities for healing and well-being?

The fields of positive psychology and community psychology offers important insight into how policy makers, and youth development stakeholders can consider a range of healing centered options for young people. Shifting from trauma informed care or treatment to healing centered engagement requires youth development stakeholders to expand from a treatment-based model, which views trauma and harm as an isolated experience, to an engagement model which supports collective well-being. Here are a few notes to consider in building healing centered engagement.

Healing centered engagement begins by building empathy with young people who experience trauma. This process takes time, is an ongoing process and sometimes may feel like taking two steps forward, and three steps back. However, building empathy is critical to healing centered engagement. To create this empathy, I encourage adult staff to share their story first, and take an emotional risk by being more vulnerable, honest, and open to young people. This process creates an empathy exchange between the adult, and the young people which is the foundation for healing centered engagement (Payne 2013). This process also strengthens emotional literacy which allows youth to discuss the complexity of their feelings. Fostering empathy allows for young people to feel safe sharing their experiences and emotions. The process ultimately restores their sense of well-being because they have the power name and respond to their emotional states.

An important ingredient in healing centered engagement is the ability to acknowledge the harm and injury, but not be defined by it. Perhaps one of the greatest tools available to us is the ability to see beyond the condition, event or situation that caused the trauma in the first place. Research shows that the ability to dream and imagine is an important factor in fostering hopefulness, and optimism which both of which contributes to overall well-being (Snyder et al. 2003). Daily survival and ongoing crisis management in young people's lives can make it difficult for them to see beyond the present.

The greatest casualty of trauma is not only depression and emotional scares, but also the loss of the ability to dream and imagine another way of living. Howard Thurman pointed this out in his eloquent persistence that dreams matter. He commented, "As long as a man [woman] has a dream, he [she] cannot lose the significance of living" (p. 304). By creating activities and opportunities for young people to play, reimagine, design and envision their lives this process strengthens their future goal orientation (Snyder et al. 2003). These are practices of possibility that encourage young people to envision what they want to become, and who they want to be.

Healing and well-being are fundamentally political not clinical. This means that we have to consider the ways in which the policies and practice and political decisions harm young people. Healing in this context also means that young people develop an analysis of these practices and policies that facilitated the trauma in the first place. Without an analysis of these issues, young people often internalize, and blame themselves for lack of confidence. Critical reflection provides a lens by which to filter, examine, and consider analytical and spiritual responses to trauma. By spiritual, I mean the ability to draw upon the power of culture, rituals and faith in order to consistently act from a place of humility, and love. These are not cognitive processes, but rather ethical, moral and emotional aspects of healing centered engagement.

The other key component, is taking loving action, by collectively responding to political decisions and practices that can exacerbate trauma. By taking action, (e.g. school walkouts, organizing peace march, or promoting access to healthy foods) it builds a sense of power and control over their lives. Research has demonstrated that building this sense of power and control among traumatized groups is perhaps one of the most significant features in restoring holistic well-being.

I ran into Marcus at a street fair in Oakland not long ago. He was excited to see me and wanted to share with me that he was in a new relationship so he introduced me to his girlfriend. "This is my friend Michelle"! He introduced her with a sense of pride, and accomplishment. He also shared with me that he had enrolled in a program that was training him to become a medic. As we chatted for a while in the warm sun, dodging children, and fast walking parents, he leaned toward me and whispered, "yeah Dr. G, I'm not entirely healed, but I'm hopeful". I smiled, gave him a "brotha hug" and we departed ways.

I suppose, that if we had more time to chat he would have explained that healing is a process that we navigate for a lifetime. He might have shared with me that the future of his healing journey had just begun. Seeing him again, holding hands, sipping a soda with his new girlfriend was a powerful reminder, that he was so much more than the trauma he had experienced. As practitioners, researchers and policy stakeholders we need to listen and learn from young people who have insights that can advance how we think about trauma and healing. Shifting to healing centered engagement offered new questions, and strategies about how to support young people who experience trauma. Healing centered engagement is just a step toward a more holistic, and humanistic framework to support young people who have been harmed. Such an approach encourages us to think and act more boldly about how to restore young people and create places where they can truly flourish.

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The Future of Healing: Shifting From Trauma Informed Care to Healing Centered Engagement

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From time to time, researchers, policy makers, philanthropy and practitioners all join together in a coordinated response to address the most pressing issues facing America's youth. I've been...

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READ|Understanding Secondary Trauma and Stress in the Early Childhood Workforce

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READ|Understanding Secondary Trauma and Stress in the Early Childhood Workforce

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ZERO TO THREE Journal

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Understanding Secondary Trauma and Stress in the Early Childhood Workforce

Karen Ruprecht-ICF Child Care State Capacity Building Center Fairfax, Virginia; Angela Tomlin-Indiana University School of Medicine; Kelley J. Perkins-ICF Child Care State Capacity Building Center Fairfax, Virginia; Stephan Viehweg-Indiana University School of Medicine 2020-03-10 11:26:08

Abstract
Early care and education workers are increasingly recognizing their role in helping children who have experienced trauma, including extended parental separations due to incarceration. These children may have emotional reactions and behaviors that are particularly challenging in group settings. Moreover, early care and education professionals themselves have often had challenging experiences in their own lives. As a result, there is a need for training and support to help the workforce recognize the secondary trauma and stress associated with caring for these young children. This article will explore how to establish systems and policies that support the early care and education workforce who are on the frontlines of helping children cope with trauma.

Early care and education practitioners increasingly encounter families and young children who have a history of difficult life experiences (Osofsky, 2009; Yoches, Summers, Beeber, Jones Harden, & Malik, 2012). These experiences might include poverty, parental mental health challenges, living in unsafe housing or community environments, homelessness, child abuse and neglect, witnessing domestic or community violence, unpredictable and repeated separations due to parental incarceration, or foster care placement. Other traumatic events include serious accidents, fires, or natural disasters such as floods or hurricanes.

Recognition of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs; see Box 1) has drawn attention to the long-term impact of these events on children's emotional and physical well-being (Felitti et al., 1998). Exposure to traumatic events in early childhood is linked with immediate risks such as delays in development (Burke, Hellman, Scott, Weems, & Carrion, 2011; Cprek, Williamson, McDaniel, Brase, & Williams, 2020). In addition, ACEs can contribute to long-term mental and physical health problems including increased risk for cancer, diabetes, and early death (Felitti et al., 1998). The research on ACEs indicates these experiences are not uncommon, nor do they occur alone (Turney, 2018). According to national data, 10.9% of children younger than 6 years old have experienced two or more ACEs (Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative, 2017).
Box 1. What Are Adverse Childhood Experiences?
The original 10 adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) include:

1. Physical abuse

2. Sexual abuse

3. Verbal abuse

4. Physical neglect

5. Emotional neglect

6. A family member who is depressed or diagnosed with mental illness

7. A family member addicted to alcohol or another substance

8. A family member in prison

9. Witnessing a mother being abused

10. Losing a parent to separation, divorce, or other reason.

Other ACE surveys have included additional ACEs such as exposure to racism, gender discrimination, witnessing a sibling being abused, witnessing violence outside the home, witnessing a father being abused by a mother, being bullied by a peer or adult, involvement with the foster care system, living in a war zone, living in an unsafe neighborhood, or losing a family member to deportation.

Source: ACES Too High, https://acestoohigh.com/aces-101

The recognition of ACEs in young children has not only increased awareness of how trauma impacts young children, but it has also reinforced the need to develop the skills and competencies of the early childhood workforce who may encounter children and families experiencing trauma. Children exposed to trauma need adults who can provide environments that are consistent and help them feel safe (Holmes, Levy, Smith, Pinne, & Neese, 2015). Professional development resources and training offered by state and national organizations regularly address topics such as behavior management, social-emotional development, recognizing trauma in young children, and how to create environments for children who are exposed to trauma. Often, these trainings are focused on helping children cope or develop skills to help them manage their complex emotions. Some trainings also focus on what the early childhood professional can do to help mitigate the traumatic experiences through specific teaching practices, room arrangements, or teaching calming techniques.

States have also recognized the impact that childhood trauma plays in children's lives and have designed core knowledge and competencies to reflect the importance of understanding trauma and its impact on children. Professional credentials for those working with young children, including the Endorsements offered through the Alliance for the Advancement of Infant Mental Health (n.d.), include documentation of competence in trauma-informed practice. Organizations such as ZERO TO THREE, the National Association for the Education of Young Children, and others have produced position statements, webinars, or resources that help caregivers support and recognize the impact trauma has on young children (National Association for the Education of Young Children , n.d.; ZERO TO THREE, n.d.). These resources provide important information for parents and professionals on how to work with young children to help them cope through these difficult life circumstances. However, there is much less information available to help early care and education professionals cope with their own trauma. This article will focus on secondary trauma in early care and education fields, highlight the voices of early childhood professionals who work with children and families who have experienced incarceration and other difficult life circumstances, and suggest how systems and policies can help support the workforce. Finally, we offer a trauma-informed leadership perspective for early childhood organizations using an implementation science framework.

Professionals who support young children and families who experience trauma may experience secondary trauma, reacting in ways that challenge their well-being, health, and effectiveness. Secondary trauma-sometimes referred to as compassion fatigue or vicarious trauma-is defined as "the emotional duress that results when an individual hears about the firsthand trauma experiences of another" (National Child Traumatic Stress Network, 2011). As a result of secondary trauma, early childhood professionals can experience secondary traumatic stress, which is a progressive and cumulative process caused by prolonged and intense contact with families and children exposed to stress (Coetzee & Klopper, 2010).

Secondary traumatic stress can have the same effect on an early childhood professional as posttraumatic stress disorder, which can cause people to withdraw, feel angry and irritable, and have difficulties sleeping, among other symptoms (Perry, 2014). In addition, working daily with young children and families who face adversity can also trigger stress-related behaviors in adults, making it difficult for them to provide sensitive and responsive caregiving to the children they serve. While the effect of working with people who have experienced trauma such as police officers, firefighters, or emergency medical professionals is well documented, less well known are the effects that working closely with such families may have on early childhood professionals, including home visitors, teachers, and other child care professionals (Figley, 2012; Perry, 2014; West, Berlin, & Jones Harden, 2018).

Research from related fields exploring why people in helping professions such as the early care and education field may be prone to secondary trauma is limited and mixed. Some research has shown that social service providers tend to have a higher number of ACEs than the general population, which can contribute to susceptibility to secondary trauma (Esaki & Larkin, 2013), while other researchers have found no relationship between ACEs and secondary traumatic stress (Hiles Howard et al., 2015). Other research has found that child welfare workers and home visitors who have repeated and frequent exposure to families and children experiencing trauma may exhibit signs of secondary trauma symptoms. Some research has suggested that female social workers and social workers with higher levels of empathy and lower levels of perceived support have been found to have higher levels of secondary trauma (Choi, 2011; MacRitchie & Leibowitz, 2010).

There have been few studies on secondary traumatic stress in the early care and education field. Some studies have focused on workforce well-being and depression among early childhood professionals (Roberts, Gallagher, Daro, Iruka, & Sarver, 2019) and psychological well-being (Madill, Halle, Gebhart, & Shuey, 2018). These studies suggest that supportive workforce and organizational climates can benefit early childhood professionals and should be considered in quality efforts and as workforce supports. In a study of Early Head Start home visitors, researchers found that home visitors experienced varying degrees of secondary traumatic stress. Those that experienced secondary traumatic stress were more likely to have fewer years of experience (less than 5 years), reported more depressive symptoms, had greater empathetic personal distress, and had perceptions of higher job demands (West et al., 2018).

Perry (2014) provided additional reasons why early childhood professionals may be prone to secondary stress. First, early childhood professionals tend to empathize with the children and families they serve. Empathy allows the early childhood professional to understand a child's feelings and can help deepen the relationship, so the child knows their teacher is there for them when they need help or reassurance. However, empathizing to a point where the early childhood professional is consistently worried or overly anxious about a child or family may be unhealthy. Second, early childhood professionals may have some unresolved trauma in their own lives, and listening to similar trauma experiences with children and families in their care may trigger memories of their own experiences. Third, early childhood professionals who feel isolated, undervalued, and disrespected may not have the capacity to tolerate traumatic stress. When systems are fragmented and disjointed (e.g., when a child experiences something traumatic and the various professionals don't work together to develop a team-oriented approach to working with the child) early childhood professionals can feel more stress. Finally, a lack of resources within the system, such as training, reflective supervision, and leadership supports, can exacerbate secondary traumatic stress.

Young children living with a parent who has experienced incarceration is becoming increasingly common. National surveys estimate that 3.9% of children under 6 years old live with a parent who has been incarcerated (Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative, 2017). Multiple ACEs are likely for children with a parent who experienced incarceration. These children are exposed to nearly 5 times as many other ACEs as their peers who are not exposed to parental incarceration (Turney, 2018). Thus, children of incarcerated parents are a specific population that must be considered when planning for training for the early childhood workforce.

Young children are not the only ones impacted by incarceration. Data suggest that nearly 1 in 2 adults (45%) has had an immediate family member (parents, brothers, sisters, children, or current partner) spend at least one night in jail or prison (Fwd. US, 2018). Thus, many early childhood professional staff members may have direct experience with incarceration as well. It is important for early childhood leaders to recognize and effectively support staff members who may have experienced trauma in their own lives or may experience symptoms of trauma when working with young children and families facing adversity. The following section describes the results of a study focused on early childhood education (ECE) providers and their needs in working with children of incarcerated parents.

ECE Professional Needs

A mixed methods study on what ECE professionals need to work with children of incarcerated parents highlighted an urgent need for specific supports for the field (Ruprecht, Tomlin, & Spector, 2019). During a 6-week period in 2017, researchers sent an electronic survey to 3,242 known child care directors or owners who served prekindergarten-age children in a midwestern state. A total of 667 surveys were returned, representing a 21% return rate. The purpose of the survey was to determine the number of children from 3-5 years old in formal child care arrangements (i.e., licensed or regulated child care) who had a family member that was incarcerated.

Results from the survey indicated 51% of child care providers ( n = 338) had at least one child from 3-5 years old in their care who had an incarcerated parent, representing 1,397 children. Results also indicated that 41% identified as family child care providers, followed by 26% faith-based institutions, 21% licensed centers, 7% as school-based programs, and 5% as other. There was variation in participation in the state's quality rating and improvement system, with 27% indicating they were not enrolled in the state's voluntary system, 20% were at the first level, 8% at the second level, 28% as the third level, and 17% at the highest, or fourth level.

As part of the online survey, researchers asked providers if they were interested in participating in voluntary focus groups to better understand their experiences when working with children and families facing incarceration. Researchers conducted six focus groups with 25 child care providers. Providers represented family child care owners and directors of licensed child care centers, school-based preschools, Head Start, and faith-based child care programs. Researchers asked providers what they and their staff members needed to better support families experiencing incarceration. While most providers acknowledged that training was helpful, they noted that training is not sufficient in meeting their needs.
And it seems like a lot of trainings we go to, it's all upbeat. Everything is all unicorns. If you're doing it this way all the time, you won't have an issue. I don't know what kind of world they're living in. And I applaud their effort in trying to do training and the thought process behind it. But what works in academia doesn't necessarily work in the classroom. The training talked about children's trauma and the trainer gave an example of a thunderstorm. I know that can be traumatic for some kids, but come on, I'm working with kids in my classroom who've been sexually abused. We need real examples and real situations of children in trauma.
These comments echoed results from a previous study in which an Early Head Start home visitor expressed a need for more realistic training that highlights real families in real situations and not "the perfect family" (West et al., 2018).

Although training can be helpful, there was consensus that training was not enough to help the providers understand how to work with the children in their care. Focus group participants often spoke of needing specific supports that reached beyond training and wanting someone in the room to help them understand the child's behavior and to guide them to an appropriate response.
I want to know when you are sitting on the floor and this is the 10th time that this child has a meltdown, and you've exerted every option, what do you do next? In that moment, right then and there what are you doing to help me, so that I can help them?
One Head Start provider shared that while the training and resources are directed at helping children and improving teaching practices in the classroom, the staff also needs support.
I think a lot of times we think about a mental health specialist, and we place all of the responsibility on that mental health specialist, or that Head Start teacher. We had that. They were there for the children. Only the children. And if anything were to be sparked out of this opportunity, I would definitely want to advocate that mental health specialist not be funded just for children, but to ensure the support and resources, and almost just a listening person. A shoulder to cry on, on occasion, for our caregivers and teachers.
As evidenced by the research and focus groups, ECE professionals need support to help process their own complex emotions in working with families that face adversity. In order to effectively address the needs of the workforce, systems and policies need to be in place to help providers recognize secondary traumatic stress, help staff members engage in self-care, provide resources to staff members who need additional help, and develop ways to incorporate a leadership and organizational framework to support the staff as they work with children and families facing adversity. The following framework for staff support was adapted from Massachusetts "flexible framework" for trauma-sensitive practices and supports for K-12 schools (McInerney & McKlindon, n.d.; Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative, n.d.).

Develop a Trauma-Informed Culture and Infrastructure/Leadership

ECE administrators and leaders can develop a culture and climate to support the workforce through:

* Recognizing the impact and signs of secondary trauma and reviewing agency policies to ensure they reflect an understanding of the role of trauma in staff members. The leadership staff should be well-versed and knowledgeable about secondary trauma. There are a number of online resources available through the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (n.d.) and the Administration for Children and Families resource guide on secondary traumatic stress (n.d.) that can help the leadership staff understand and recognize secondary trauma.

* Engaging in thoughtful strategic planning. Involve staff members in developing the agency's strategic plan to ensure staff member voices are represented in the understanding of trauma and of the needs of the frontline staff who are working with children who experience trauma. Ensure that an understanding of the impact of working with families and children facing adversity is part of the strategic plan.

* Encouraging staff members to take care of their mental health as much as their physical health. Review agency policies to determine whether the importance of mental health and self-care for the staff is equated with physical health needs. Some agencies may be able to offer programs on staff wellness and self-care at the workplace or with a community-based program. Agencies can also weigh the number of paid time off days to the staff to account for secondary stress, particularly if staff members work with a number of children and families experiencing trauma. For example, agencies may want to examine whether staff members are allowed to take paid leave without producing documentation from a medical provider.

* Developing community partnerships. Agencies should review their community partnerships to ensure there are an adequate number of partnerships with organizations that can provide support and resources for the staff as well as for children and families. For example, an agency may want to partner with the local child welfare agency on specific training needs identified by the staff.

* Developing ways for staff members to talk and engage with each other within and outside of work. Promote and encourage a positive staff climate by providing space where they can decompress during the day, such as a comfortable staff lounge. Leaders can also recognize positive attributes in staff members by sending or posting notes of appreciation or recognition of the staff. Encourage staff members to build relationships with each other outside of the workplace by providing opportunities for social activities and team-building activities. When staff members feel connected and supported by their workplace, they may develop more coping strategies to address secondary traumatic stress.

Provide Staff Training and Professional Development

Incorporate agency-wide and individual training on how trauma affects the workforce through:

* Developing individual professional development plans with the staff. Most staff training needs focus on required trainings for licensing or certification. Consider working with staff members at the time of hire or throughout the year to develop a professional development plan that includes a discussion on self-care strategies, work-life balance, time management, and ways to address stress. Doing so can help keep the discussion open regarding individual staff needs.

* Assessing staff training needs and staff practices on an ongoing basis. Talk with staff members about what training would help them in their response to working with children and families experiencing trauma, and identify outside supports needed to help staff members receive those trainings. Ensure that these staff training needs are represented in the agency's strategic plan and that the training focuses on the workforce needs as well as on strategies to help the staff improve their practices in working with children and families. Observe staff members in action to assess their practices and whether secondary traumatic stress has an impact on them.

* Offering opportunities for the staff to engage in reflective practice and supervision. Reflective practice in early childhood is described as the ability to use reflective activities and reflective processes while actively engaged in work with young children and families (Brandt, 2014). Ideally, staff members would be able to slow down and think carefully in the moment in order to better understand what is happening in a given situation with a child and family. This level of skill is developed over time, with thoughtful effort and experience, and requires self-awareness. Gaining this level of skill requires the use of reflective activities and can include working with a trusted mentor within a reflective supervision or consultation relationship (Heffron & Murch, 2010) or individual reflective activities, such as journaling or other reflective writing (Brandt, 2014). Reflection promotes a focus on the present so that it is more possible for staff members to be truly aware of their own experiences, their responses to those experiences, and their responses to the experiences of other people. Taking time to reflect is thought to increase the quality of the work, leading to better decision making, increased confidence or feelings of effectiveness, and enhanced ability to take in and use new information (Tomlin & Viehweg, 2016). Reflection may be most helpful when situations are most complex, including those that involved interactions with traumatized children and families. During these highly charged moments, use of reflective skills can help early childhood professionals manage their own competing emotional and cognitive processes, take in and make sense of the complex family situations, and better tolerate the uncertainty inherent in these situations (Weston, 2005).

Offer Access to Resources and Services

Some staff members may need additional resources and services to help them cope with and process their feelings and emotions.

* Provide access to mental health consultation for the staff. Mental health consultation can help staff members understand their responses and provide them with the support they need to address the impacts of secondary traumatic stress. A mental health consultant can provide an opportunity for staff members to confidentially discuss specific instances with children and families to help them recognize and reflect on their experiences of secondary trauma and can help them develop coping strategies.

* Work with other ECE leaders and community organizations to support the staff. While a mental health consultant may not be in the budget, it is important to seek resources to provide this resource for the staff. Think creatively and reach out to local child welfare organizations, child care resource and referral agencies, local universities, local funders such as the United Way, or other entities to help develop a plan to secure this resource for staff members. For example, if several ECE agencies need a mental health consultant, there might be opportunities to co-fund a position. Local universities may have graduate training programs in counseling, therapy, or related fields that have students who need practicum experiences. Child care providers may want to reach out to their local school districts and suggest a partnership.

For many ECE leaders, implementing policies and procedures to support the workforce will be a new endeavor. Implementation of any new workforce initiative is complex and multifaceted. To address these difficulties, leaders must approach the stages of implementation for an initiative in an intentional manner. Implementation science offers many resources to consider as they begin a new initiative (Metz, Naoom, Halle, & Bartley, 2015).

Prior to implementing a new system focused on addressing secondary trauma, leaders should think about how it will integrate into the overall organizational structure. For example, implementing an organizational leadership approach that develops a culture focused on supporting the workforce who experience secondary trauma will require more than certain knowledge, supports, and resources of the leadership staff. It will require a systems approach with leaders who possess the following core capabilities of systems leaders (Senge, Hamilton, & Kania, 2015): (1) seeing and helping others see the larger system; (2) using reflection and enabling deep shared reflection and; (3) shifting thinking from being reactive to problem solving. Table 1 applies these core capabilities to the stages of implementation science (Emerging, Installation, Initial, and Full) within the context of workforce initiatives and shares questions for leaders to consider.

ECE practitioners are often on the frontline of helping children cope with trauma. When traumatic events happen in children's lives, ECE professionals need the same level of support and resources to help them recognize the emotional and physical toll it can take to work day in and day out with young children who have experienced trauma.

Recognizing and addressing the effects of secondary trauma are necessary for early childhood professionals to avoid becoming overwhelmed and to have the skills to respond effectively to the needs of children and families. ECE leaders should integrate a systems approach to implementing new programs of support for the workforce. Program leaders should also incorporate self-care and reflection methods into professional development activities for the early childhood workforce and ensure that organizational supports and processes are in place that continue to elevate the importance of caring for the workforce.

Karen Ruprecht, MPA, PhD, has worked in the field of early care and education at the local, state, and national levels. Her research and professional interests are focused on the intersection of research, policy, and practice. In her current role, Dr. Ruprecht manages a team that provides intensive technical assistance to state child care administrators and their staff to enhance their leadership skills and to help them meet Child Care Development Fund requirements. Her previous research and evaluation work focused on studying continuity of care for infants and toddlers; conducting Quality Rating Improvement System validation, implementation, and longitudinal studies; and evaluating a state-funded pre-k initiative. She has worked directly with state child care administrators and their teams to develop, design, and disseminate research. Dr. Ruprecht is an alumna of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Interdisciplinary Research Leader Fellow program where she researched the impact of parental incarceration on young children, families, and child care providers.

Angela Tomlin, PhD, IMH-E®, is a clinical psychologist and professor at the Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM). At IUSM, she directs the section of Child Development and Riley Child Development Center, Indiana's LEND interdisciplinary training program. Dr. Tomlin provides clinical services to families with children with neurodevelopmental disabilities, supervises graduate trainees, provides reflective consultation in the community, and is a frequent presenter on topics including autism, behavior management, and infant mental health. She is the author or co-author of 20 publications and with Stephan Viehweg authored Tackling the Tough Stuff: A Home Visitor's Guide to Supporting Families at Risk in 2016. With team members, Dr. Tomlin was selected to participate in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Interdisciplinary Research Leader Program, with a research focus on supporting children of incarcerated parents.

Kelley J. Perkins, PhD, currently serves as the managing director of the Infant/Toddler Specialist in the State Capacity Building Center. She is also the co-director of the Early Childhood Leadership Institute at Rowan University in New Jersey. She brings more than 20 years of experience in the field as a teacher, technical assistant, and faculty member. Dr. Perkins' research and evaluation efforts focus on professional development and early childhood policy in support of quality, supply, and access to services for young children and their families.

Stephan Viehweg, LCSW, ACSW, IMH-E®, CYC-P, is the associate director of the Riley Child Development Center, Indiana LEND at the Indiana University School of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, and the associate director of the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis Center for Translating Research Into Practice. He currently serves as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Learn the Signs. Act Early Ambassador to Indiana. He is founding chair of Infancy Onward (Indiana's association for infant mental health), founding president of Family Voices Indiana, treasurer of Mental Health America of Indiana, and serves a governor appointment to the Indiana Behavioral Health Professions Licensing Board. He is co-author of Tackling the Tough Stuff: A Home Visitor's Guide to Supporting Families at Risk.
Learn More
Following are some resources to help early care and education leaders think about implementing these systems and policies.

* The National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NTSN) has resources to help early care and education professionals learn about secondary traumatic stress ( https://www.nctsn.org/trauma-informed-care/secondary-traumatic-stress/nctsn-resources). Among its resources is a set of core competencies and a self-rating scale for professionals who provide trauma-informed supervision to rate where they feel comfortable in their skill set, where they may need more training, or if a competency is not yet in their skill set. ( https://www.nctsn.org/resources/secondary-traumatic-stress-core-competencies-intrauma-informed-supervision-self-rating-tool)

* Support for Teachers Affected by Trauma ( https://statprogram.org) is a series of five free online modules that describe secondary traumatic stress, risk factors for teachers, the impact it can have, and self-care skills. Although created for preschool-12th grade teachers, the information in the modules is applicable for professionals who work with young children. Trainers or technical assistance providers may want to view the modules in advance to help understand the content in each module and to use it as a way to begin a conversation with staff members about secondary traumatic stress.

* Teaching Tolerance offers a free toolkit for early care and education professionals to learn self-care strategies. ( https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/fall-2015/toolkit-for-i-thought-about-quitting-today)

* The Professional Quality of Life (ProQOL) measure can help professionals assess and learn how compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress may impact them. The website offers sample presentation slides, tools, and handouts for trainers to use, as well as information on how to administer and score the ProQOL. ( https://proqol.org/Home_Page.php)

Administration for Children and Families. (n.d.). Resource guide to trauma-informed human services. Retrieved from https://www.acf.hhs.gov/trauma-toolkit

Alliance for the Advancement of Infant Mental Health. (n.d.). Licensing. Retrieved from https://www.allianceaimh.org/endorsement-licensing

Brandt, K. (2014). Transforming clinical practice through reflection work. In K. Brandt, B. Perry, S. Seligman, & E. Tronick (Eds.), Infant and early childhood mental health: Core concepts and clinical practice (pp. 293-307). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.

Burke, N., Hellman, J., Scott, B., Weems, C., & Carrion, V. (2011). The impact of adverse childhood experiences on an urban pediatric population. Child Abuse & Neglect, 35, 408-413. doi: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2011.02.006.

Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative. (2017). 2017-2018 National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH) data query. Data Resource Center for Child and Adolescent Health supported by Cooperative Agreement U59MC27866 from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration's Maternal and Child Health Bureau (HRSA MCHB). Retrieved from www.childhealthdata.org. CAHMI: www.cahmi.org https://www.childhealthdata.org/browse/survey/results?q=7205&r=1

Choi, G. (2011). Organizational impacts on the secondary traumatic stress of social workers assisting family violence or sexual assault survivors. Administration in Social Work, 35, 225-242.

Coetzee, S. K., & Klopper, H. C. (2010). Compassion fatigue within nursing practice: A concept analysis. Nursing & Health Sciences, 12(2), 235-243. http: //dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1442 2018.2010.00526x

Cprek, S. E., Williamson, L. H., & McDaniel, H., Brase, R., & Williams, C. (2020). Adverse childhood experiences (ACES) and risk of childhood delays in children ages 1-5. Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal, 37(1), 15-24. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10560-019-00622-x

Esaki, N., & Larkin, H. (2013). Prevalence of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) among child service providers. Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services, 94(1), 31-37.

Felitti V. J., Anda R. F., Nordenberg D., Williamson D. F., Spitz A. M., Edwards V., Koss M. P, & Marks, J. S. (1998). Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults: The adverse childhood experiences (ACE) study. American Journal of Preventative Medicine, 14, 245-258.

Figley, C. R. (2012). Helping that hurts: Child welfare secondary traumatic stress reactions. CW360: Secondary Trauma and the Child Welfare Workforce, 4-5. Retrieved from http://cascw.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/CW360_2012.pdf

Fwd.US. (2018). Every second: The impact of the incarceration crisis on America's families. Retrieved from https://everysecond.fwd.us/downloads/EverySecond.FWD.us.pdf

Heffron, M. C., & Murch, T. (2010). Reflective supervision and leadership in infant and early childhood programs. Washington, DC: ZERO TO THREE.

Hiles Howard, A., Parris, S., Hall, J., Call, C., Becker Razuri, E., Purvis, K., & Cross, D. (2015). An examination of the relationships between professional quality of life, adverse childhood experiences, resilience, and work environment in a sample of human service providers. Children and Youth Services Review, 57, 141-148. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2015-42972-018

Holmes, C., Levy, M., Smith, A., Pinne, S., & Neese, P. (2015). A model for creating a supportive trauma-informed culture for children in preschool settings. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 24(6), 1650-1659. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-014-9968-6

MacRitchie, V., & Leibowitz, S. (2010). Secondary trauma stress, level of exposure, empathy, and social support in trauma workers. South African Journal of Psychology, 40(2), 149-158.

Madill, R., Halle, T., Gebhart, T., & Shuey, E. (2018). Supporting the psychological wellbeing of the early care and education workforce: Findings from the National Survey of Early Care and Education. OPRE Report #2018-49. Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

McInerney, M., & McKlindon, A. (n.d.). Unlocking the door to learning: Trauma-informed classrooms & transformational schools. Retrieved from the Education Law Center, https://www.elc-pa.org/resource/unlocking-the-door-to-learning-trauma-informed-classrooms-and-transformational-schools/

Metz, A., Naoom, S. F., Halle, T., & Bartley, L. (2015). An integrated stage-based framework for implementation of early childhood programs and systems (OPRE Research Brief OPRE 2015-48). Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

National Association for the Education of Young Children. (n.d.). Coping with stress and violence. Retrieved from https://www.naeyc.org/resources/topics/coping-stress-and-violence

National Child Traumatic Stress Network. (n.d.) Secondary trauma stress. Retrieved from https://www.nctsn.org/trauma-informed-care/secondary-traumatic-stress

National Child Traumatic Stress Network. (2011). Secondary traumatic stress: A fact sheet for child-serving professionals. Retrieved from https://www.nctsn.org/resources/secondary-traumatic-stress-fact-sheet-child-serving-professionals

National Survey of Early Care and Education Project Team. (2013). Number and characteristics of early care and education (ECE) teachers and caregivers: Initial findings from the National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE). OPRE Report #2013-38, Washington DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Osofsky, J. D. (2009). Perspectives on helping traumatized infants, young children, and their families. Infant Mental Health Journal, 30(6), 673-677.

Perry, B. D. (2014). The cost of caring: Secondary traumatic stress and the impact of working with high risk children and families. Retrieved from https://7079168e-705a-4dc7-be05-2218087aa989.filesusr.com/ugd/aa51c7_074a47ab66ea47f2a2768cc2c36a774b.pdf

Roberts, A., Gallagher, K., Daro, A., Iruka, I., & Sarver, S. (2019). Workforce wellbeing: Personal and workplace contributions to early educators' depression across settings. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 61, 4-12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2017.09.007

Ruprecht, K., Tomlin, A., & Spector, S. (2019). Child care providers experiences with children of incarcerated parents. [Unpublished raw data].

Senge, P., Hamilton, H., & Kania, J. (2015). The dawn of system leadership. Stanford Social Innovation Review, Winter, 27-33.

Tomlin, A. M., & Viehweg, S. A. (2016). Tackling the tough stuff: A home visitor's guide to supporting families at risk. Baltimore, MD: Brookes.

Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative. (n.d.). The Flexible Framework: Six elements of school operations involved in creating a trauma sensitive school. Retrieved from https://traumasensitiveschools.org/trauma-and-learning/the-flexible-framework

Turney, K. (2018). Adverse childhood experiences among children of incarcerated parents. Children and Youth Services Review, 89, 218-225. https://doi.org/10/1016/j.childyouth.2018.04.033

Weatherston, D. J. (2000). The infant mental health specialist. ZERO TO THREE Journal, 21(2), 3-10.

West, A., Berlin, L., & Jones Harden, B. (2018). Occupational stress and wellbeing among Early Head Start home visitors: A mixed methods study. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 44, 288-303. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2017.11.003

Weston, D. (2005). Training in infant mental health: Educating the reflective practitioner. Infants and Young Children, 18(4), 337-348.

Yoches, M., Summers, S. J., Beeber, L. S., Jones Harden, B., & Malik, N. M. (2012). Exposure to direct and indirect trauma. In S. J. Summers & R. Chazan-Cohen (Eds.), Understanding early childhood mental health: A practical guide for professionals (pp. 79-98). Baltimore, MD: Brookes.

ZERO TO THREE. (n.d.). Trauma and stress. Retrieved from https://www.zerotothree.org/espanol/trauma-and-stress

©ZERO TO THREE. View All Articles.

Understanding Secondary Trauma and Stress in the Early Childhood Workforce
/article/Understanding+Secondary+Trauma+and+Stress+in+the+Early+Childhood+Workforce/3622573/652842/article.html

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Understanding Secondary Trauma and Stress in the Early Childhood Workforce

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Karen Ruprecht-ICF Child Care State Capacity Building Center Fairfax, Virginia; Angela Tomlin-Indiana University School of Medicine; Kelley J. Perkins-ICF Child Care State Capacity Building Center Fairfax, Virginia; Stephan Viehweg-Indiana University School of Medicine 2020-03-10 11:26:08 Abstract Early care and education workers are increasingly recognizing their role in helping children who have experienced trauma, including extended parental separations due to incarceration.

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From National Child Traumatic Stress Network

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The National Child Traumatic Stress Network

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Children whose families and homes do not provide consistent safety, comfort, and protection may develop ways of coping that allow them to survive and function day to day. For instance, they may be overly sensitive to the moods of others, always watching to figure out what the adults around them are feeling and how they will behave. They may withhold their own emotions from others, never letting them see when they are afraid, sad, or angry. These kinds of learned adaptations make sense when physical and/or emotional threats are ever-present. As a child grows up and encounters situations and relationships that are safe, these adaptations are no longer helpful, and may in fact be counterproductive and interfere with the capacity to live, love, and be loved.

Complex trauma can affect children in a multitude of ways. Here are some common effects.

Attachment and Relationships

The importance of a child's close relationship with a caregiver cannot be overestimated. Through relationships with important attachment figures, children learn to trust others, regulate their emotions, and interact with the world; they develop a sense of the world as safe or unsafe, and come to understand their own value as individuals. When those relationships are unstable or unpredictable, children learn that they cannot rely on others to help them. When primary caregivers exploit and abuse a child, the child learns that he or she is bad and the world is a terrible place.

The majority of abused or neglected children have difficulty developing a strong healthy attachment to a caregiver. Children who do not have healthy attachments have been shown to be more vulnerable to stress. They have trouble controlling and expressing emotions, and may react violently or inappropriately to situations. Our ability to develop healthy, supportive relationships with friends and significant others depends on our having first developed those kinds of relationships in our families. A child with a complex trauma history may have problems in romantic relationships, in friendships, and with authority figures, such as teachers or police officers.

Physical Health: Body and Brain

From infancy through adolescence, the body's biology develops. Normal biological function is partly determined by environment. When a child grows up afraid or under constant or extreme stress, the immune system and body's stress response systems may not develop normally. Later on, when the child or adult is exposed to even ordinary levels of stress, these systems may automatically respond as if the individual is under extreme stress. For example, an individual may experience significant physiological reactivity such as rapid breathing or heart pounding, or may "shut down" entirely when presented with stressful situations. These responses, while adaptive when faced with a significant threat, are out of proportion in the context of normal stress and are often perceived by others as "overreacting" or as unresponsive or detached.

Stress in an environment can impair the development of the brain and nervous system. An absence of mental stimulation in neglectful environments may limit the brain from developing to its full potential. Children with complex trauma histories may develop chronic or recurrent physical complaints, such as headaches or stomachaches. Adults with histories of trauma in childhood have been shown to have more chronic physical conditions and problems. They may engage in risky behaviors that compound these conditions (e.g., smoking, substance use, and diet and exercise habits that lead to obesity).

Complexly traumatized youth frequently suffer from body dysregulation, meaning they over-respond or under-respond to sensory stimuli. For example, they may be hypersensitive to sounds, smells, touch or light, or they may suffer from anesthesia and analgesia, in which they are unaware of pain, touch, or internal physical sensations. As a result, they may injure themselves without feeling pain, suffer from physical problems without being aware of them, or, the converse - they may complain of chronic pain in various body areas for which no physical cause can be found.

Emotional Responses

Children who have experienced complex trauma often have difficulty identifying, expressing, and managing emotions, and may have limited language for feeling states. They often internalize and/or externalize stress reactions and as a result may experience significant depression, anxiety, or anger. Their emotional responses may be unpredictable or explosive. A child may react to a reminder of a traumatic event with trembling, anger, sadness, or avoidance. For a child with a complex trauma history, reminders of various traumatic events may be everywhere in the environment. Such a child may react often, react powerfully, and have difficulty calming down when upset. Since the traumas are often of an interpersonal nature, even mildly stressful interactions with others may serve as trauma reminders and trigger intense emotional responses. Having learned that the world is a dangerous place where even loved ones can't be trusted to protect you, children are often vigilant and guarded in their interactions with others and are more likely to perceive situations as stressful or dangerous. While this defensive posture is protective when an individual is under attack, it becomes problematic in situations that do not warrant such intense reactions. Alternately, many children also learn to "tune out" (emotional numbing) to threats in their environment, making them vulnerable to revictimization.

Difficulty managing emotions is pervasive and occurs in the absence of relationships as well. Having never learned how to calm themselves down once they are upset, many of these children become easily overwhelmed. For example, in school they may become so frustrated that they give up on even small tasks that present a challenge. Children who have experienced early and intense traumatic events also have an increased likelihood of being fearful all the time and in many situations. They are more likely to experience depression as well.

Dissociation

Dissociation is often seen in children with histories of complex trauma. When children encounter an overwhelming and terrifying experience, they may dissociate, or mentally separate themselves from the experience. They may perceive themselves as detached from their bodies, on the ceiling, or somewhere else in the room watching what is happening to their bodies. They may feel as if they are in a dream or some altered state that is not quite real or as if the experience is happening to someone else. Or they may lose all memories or sense of the experiences having happened to them, resulting in gaps in time or even gaps in their personal history. At its extreme, a child may cut off or lose touch with various aspects of the self.

Although children may not be able to purposely dissociate, once they have learned to dissociate as a defense mechanism they may automatically dissociate during other stressful situations or when faced with trauma reminders. Dissociation can affect a child's ability to be fully present in activities of daily life and can significantly fracture a child's sense of time and continuity. As a result, it can have adverse effects on learning, classroom behavior, and social interactions. It is not always evident to others that a child is dissociating and at times it may appear as if the child is simply "spacing out," daydreaming, or not paying attention.

Behavior

A child with a complex trauma history may be easily triggered or "set off" and is more likely to react very intensely. The child may struggle with self-regulation (i.e., knowing how to calm down) and may lack impulse control or the ability to think through consequences before acting. As a result, complexly traumatized children may behave in ways that appear unpredictable, oppositional, volatile, and extreme. A child who feels powerless or who grew up fearing an abusive authority figure may react defensively and aggressively in response to perceived blame or attack, or alternately, may at times be overcontrolled, rigid, and unusually compliant with adults. If a child dissociates often, this will also affect behavior. Such a child may seem "spacey", detached, distant, or out of touch with reality. Complexly traumatized children are more likely to engage in high-risk behaviors, such as self-harm, unsafe sexual practices, and excessive risk-taking such as operating a vehicle at high speeds. They may also engage in illegal activities, such as alcohol and substance use, assaulting others, stealing, running away, and/or prostitution, thereby making it more likely that they will enter the juvenile justice system.

Cognition: Thinking and Learning

Children with complex trauma histories may have problems thinking clearly, reasoning, or problem solving. They may be unable to plan ahead, anticipate the future, and act accordingly. When children grow up under conditions of constant threat, all their internal resources go toward survival. When their bodies and minds have learned to be in chronic stress response mode, they may have trouble thinking a problem through calmly and considering multiple alternatives. They may find it hard to acquire new skills or take in new information. They may struggle with sustaining attention or curiosity or be distracted by reactions to trauma reminders. They may show deficits in language development and abstract reasoning skills. Many children who have experienced complex trauma have learning difficulties that may require support in the academic environment.

Self-Concept and Future Orientation

Children learn their self-worth from the reactions of others, particularly those closest to them. Caregivers have the greatest influence on a child's sense of self-worth and value. Abuse and neglect make a child feel worthless and despondent. A child who is abused will often blame him- or herself. It may feel safer to blame oneself than to recognize the parent as unreliable and dangerous. Shame, guilt, low self-esteem, and a poor self-image are common among children with complex trauma histories.

To plan for the future with a sense of hope and purpose, a child needs to value him- or herself. To plan for the future requires a sense of hope, control, and the ability to see one's own actions as having meaning and value. Children surrounded by violence in their homes and communities learn from an early age that they cannot trust, the world is not safe, and that they are powerless to change their circumstances. Beliefs about themselves, others, and the world diminish their sense of competency. Their negative expectations interfere with positive problem-solving, and foreclose on opportunities to make a difference in their own lives. A complexly traumatized child may view himself as powerless, "damaged," and may perceive the world as a meaningless place in which planning and positive action is futile. They have trouble feeling hopeful. Having learned to operate in "survival mode," the child lives from moment-to-moment without pausing to think about, plan for, or even dream about a future.

Long-Term Health Consequences

Traumatic experiences in childhood have been linked to increased medical conditions throughout the individuals' lives. The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study is a longitudinal study that explores the long-lasting impact of childhood trauma into adulthood. The ACE Study includes over 17,000 participants ranging in age from 19 to 90. Researchers gathered medical histories over time while also collecting data on the subjects' childhood exposure to abuse, violence, and impaired caregivers. Results indicated that nearly 64% of participants experienced at least one exposure, and of those, 69% reported two or more incidents of childhood trauma. Results demonstrated the connection between childhood trauma exposure, high-risk behaviors (e.g., smoking, unprotected sex), chronic illness such as heart disease and cancer, and early death.

Economic Impact

The cumulative economic and social burden of complex trauma in childhood is extremely high. Based upon data from a variety of sources, a conservative annual cost of child abuse and neglect is an estimated $103.8 billion, or $284.3 million per day (in 2007 values). This number includes both direct costs-about $70.7 billion-which include the immediate needs of maltreated children (hospitalization, mental health care, child welfare systems, and law enforcement) and also indirect costs-about $33.1 billion-which are the secondary or long-term effects of child abuse and neglect (special education, juvenile delinquency, mental health and health care, adult criminal justice system, and lost productivity to society).

A recent study examining confirmed cases of child maltreatment in the United States found the estimated total lifetime costs associated with child maltreatment over a 12-month period to be $124 billion. In the 1,740 fatal cases of child maltreatment, the estimated cost per case was $1.3 million, including medical expenses and productivity loss. For the 579,000 non-fatal cases, the estimated average lifetime cost per victim of child maltreatment was $210,012, which includes costs relating to health care throughout the lifespan, productivity losses, child welfare, criminal justice, and special education. Costs for these nonfatal cases of child maltreatment are comparable to other high-cost health conditions (i.e., $159,846 for stroke victims and $181,000 to $253,000 for those with Type 2 diabetes).

In addition to these costs are the "intangible losses" of pain, sorrow, and reduced quality of life to victims and their families. Such immeasurable losses may be the most significant cost of child maltreatment.

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Children whose families and homes do not provide consistent safety, comfort, and protection may develop ways of coping that allow them to survive and function day to day.

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REGISTER|Arizona's Child Care Providers - Perspective and the State of the Network

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REGISTER|Arizona's Child Care Providers - Perspective and the State of the Network

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These sessions have been referenced in several of the COL's here are the links to register if you would like to attend one.

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Join us for Regional and County-based focus groups designed to capture the state of Arizona's child care network. We will be hearing directly from providers on issues that matter to you - staffing, hiring, availability of open slots, resource needs, modernization and other business practices that will help DES and its partners continue to invest in the most important challenges and opportunities emerging for child care providers today.

Child Care providers are encouraged to include program directors and staff. The meeting will feature live polling, and opportunities to share directly with DES Child Care leadership.

For those unable to participate in the live polling, please consider sharing your perspective by clicking on this form.
**We are encouraging regional and county-based groups as we plan for an ongoing series offered in person and virtually. To the extent you are able, please register for the call in the county you provide child care in below** Phoenix/Maricopa County Session 1 - Tuesday, April 26th at 9am CLICK HERE TO REGISTER Phoenix/Maricopa County Session 2 - Wednesday, April 27th at 6pm CLICK HERE TO REGISTER Pima County, Pinal County - Thursday, April 28th at 12pm CLICK HERE TO REGISTER Cochise, Gila, Graham, Greenlee, Santa Cruz - Saturday, April 30th at 10am CLICK HERE TO REGISTER Coconino, Navajo, Apache, Yavapai - Tuesday, May 3rd at 12p CLICK HERE TO REGISTER La Paz, Mohave, Yuma - Wednesday, May 4th at 6pm CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

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Arizona's Child Care Providers - Perspective & the State of the Network: Phoenix/Maricopa County Session 2 | Arizona Early Childhood

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Join us for Regional and County-based focus groups designed to capture the state of Arizona's child care network. We will be hearing directly from providers on issues that matter to you - staffing, hiring, availability of open slots, resource needs, modernization and other business practices that will help DES and its partners continue to invest [...]

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AZ Department of Education

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Arizona Department of Education

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ChildTrauma Academy contains a set of free resources for parents, caregivers, educators and professionals.

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ABOUT CTA

With a long history of working with high-risk children through education, research and the dissemination of innovation, CTA's insight remains online as a shared resource.

​

During its long tenure, a major activity of the CTA was to translate emerging findings about the human brain and child development into practical implications for the ways we nurture, protect, enrich, educate and heal children. The "translational neuroscience" work of the CTA resulted in a range of innovative programs in therapeutic, child protection and educational systems.

Etienne Wenger, a leading social learning theorist, defines communities of practice as groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. This model has been discussed as optimal for promoting social change in our current complex world. The CTA worked to create these collaborative working relationships between organizations and individuals to most effectively promote positive change for children.

​

The CTA started as a typical center of excellence in an academic setting, initially at The University of Chicago and later at Baylor College of Medicine. Over time however, it was clear that the problems of abuse and neglect in children were much more complex and multi-dimensional in ways that our medical model was unable to address.

​

A medical school centered work group investigating and solving physiological problems in humans makes sense. Solving problems which involve parenting, education, the law, child protection systems, mental health, law enforcement and a host of related systems across every professional discipline is more challenging. In response to this challenge we created this collaborative, interdisciplinary virtual Center of Excellence, The ChildTrauma Academy.​

THE HISTORY OF OUR MISSION & STRATEGY

The ChildTrauma Academy set out to help improve the lives of traumatized and maltreated children - by improving the systems that educate, nurture, protect and enrich these children. We focused our efforts on education, program consultation, research and disseminating innovations in the field.

Essential to this process was the collaboration of all sectors of society. As such, we engaged in a continuous process of identifying key partners, drawn from academia, the corporate world, private organizations and public sector systems. While each partnership had a distinct focus- identifying best practices in child protection, evaluating the latest research in child development, defining optimal ways to provide resources to parents or creating a novel therapeutic approach with traumatized children- all engaged in the continuous process of testing, refining and distributing innovations that can improve children's lives.

OUR EVOLUTION

In late 2018, the Neurosequential Network was formed to develop a whole host of online trainings for front-line professionals working in education, mental health, coaching, early childhood and research. The new entity continues to serve professionals from around the world at www.neurosequential.com.

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ABOUT CTA With a long history of working with high-risk children through education, research and the dissemination of innovation, CTA's insight remains online as a shared resource. ​ During its long tenure, a major activity of the CTA was to translate emerging findings about the human brain and child development into practical implications for the ways we nurture, protect, enrich, educate and heal children.

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FREE TRAINING|Cox Campus Trauma Informed Practice 

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FREE TRAINING|Cox Campus Trauma Informed Practice 

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Video Courses

In this collection of videos, Dr. Renée Boynton-Jarrett, pediatrician and social epidemiologist, lays the foundation and framework for trauma-informed practice.

Time to complete

0.48 Hours

All prospective and current Cox Campus educators ​

By the End of This Course You'll Be Able To

By supporting children through trauma, you help them to reach their full potential in the classroom​
NOTE: THIS COURSE DOES NOT CURRENTLY CONFER A CERTIFICATE

Learn at Your Own Pace

You don't have to finish the course all in one sitting. In fact, we recommend you take this course a little bit at a time, incorporating what you've learned in the classroom.

Free Guided Resources

As you go through a course, we'll introduce you to free resources that will help you implement what you're learning.

Never Learn Alone

Have a question on what you're learning in the course or how to use a resource? Reach out to the Cox Campus community for advice or to lend a helping hand to others.

What is Cox Campus?

The Cox Campus is the digital outreach platform for the Rollins Center for Language & Literacy. Our team is composed of experienced teachers, early learning and language experts, neuroscientists, school leaders, speech language pathologists and authorities in adult learning and curriculum design to give all children access to the Science of Reading to change the odds for all children.

What do I get when I sign up for Cox Campus?

When you sign up for the Cox Campus, you'll get access to interactive, video-based courses, hundreds of free printable resources, virtual workshops and webinars from early childhood development experts, and a community of child-pacing professionals and families.

Who should join the Cox Campus?

The Cox Campus is for all child-facing adults to work to improve child outcomes and positively impact learning. We have courses and content designed for educators, school district leaders, medical professionals, childcare providers, families, and more.

How much is the Cox Campus?

Everything on the Cox Campus is available at no cost - ever. Thanks to generous partner investments and grant funding, the Cox Campus creates online courses and resources for child-facing adults so literacy is a reality for every child.

How are the courses and resources created?

All the resources and courses on Cox Campus are created based on the latest research and science in early childhood development. Childhood development experts at the Rollins Center for Language and Literacy at the Atlanta Speech School create all of the content based on strategies they implement in real classrooms.

How often is new content released?

New courses, resources, and teaching guides are released frequently. All of the content on Cox Campus is designed to help teachers, families, and community leaders with challenges they may be facing right now.

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Video Courses In this collection of videos, Dr. Renée Boynton-Jarrett, pediatrician and social epidemiologist, lays the foundation and framework for trauma-informed practice.

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READ|Unsmiling Faces: How Preschools can Heal

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READ|Unsmiling Faces: How Preschools can Heal

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Book recommendation by a Technical Assistant Provider

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Description

The first edition of this indispensable book set the standard for high-quality intervention and prevention programs in early childhood practice. Since its publication, many new forces have impacted the landscape of early childhood education, presenting both great opportunities and great risks for today's emotionally fragile young children. Once again making complex psychological concepts accessible to classroom teachers, this thorough revision:

Incorporates important understandings gained since the tragic events of 9/11.

Addresses many of the challenging issues that confront educators in the current high-pressure climate focused on academic performance.

Includes recent scientific research that supports the concepts underlying high-quality intervention and prevention in early childhood practice--concepts that were the basis for the first edition of this book.

Provides an essential framework to help teachers understand the emotional lives of the young children they serve.

Praise for First Edition

As a teacher educator, I am convinced by this powerful and moving book that every teacher needs to be more therapeutic with all children. Nancy J. Zollers, Boston College for the Disability Studies Quarterly

About the Author

Lesley Koplow, M.S., C.S.W. is a psychotherapist, the Director of the Center for Emotionally Responsive Practice at Bank Street College, and the author of numerous books on child mental health, including Creating Schools That Heal: Real-Life Solutions.

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Unsmiling Faces: How Preschools Can Heal (Paperback)

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The first edition of this indispensable book set the standard for high-quality intervention and prevention programs in early childhood practice. Since its publication, many new forces have impacted the landscape of early childhood education, presenting both great opportunities and great risks for today's emotionally fragile young children.

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By QFA

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SUPERVISOR SESSION|What are the Five Dimensions of Curiosity

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SUPERVISOR SESSION|What are the Five Dimensions of Curiosity

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Supervisors, you will find a link to the workplace dimensions within the article.

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Discovering new ways to cope

For over 20 years, I have been studying curiosity. I didn't plan to be a curiosity researcher. I entered graduate school in 1998 to study how panic attacks emerge. Upon interviewing people suffering from panic disorder I became less interested in what led them to panic and instead intrigued by their unmet desires. An impending fear of panic attacks led them to avoid certain situations, people, and objects. Asked about these feared situations, they responded with regret. The pain of unfulfilled, residual curiosity.

Still wondering whether they missed an opportunity with the attractive guy carrying the little black book with his poems in at the back of the classroom...which they never attended again...

Still wondering how Nirvana would have sounded on stage, their one chance before Kurt Cobain died ...

To my surprise, only a small number of researchers studied curiosity when I started graduate school, and how excessive anxiety impedes human lust for the new. I switched my focus in the first semester. In my very first graduate school course, the title of my literature review paper was "A multidimensional model of curiosity." It was a promise to integrate the isolated strands of research on curiosity into a single model. It took a few iterations before I kept that promise.

In 2004, as a graduate student, my colleagues and I created The Curiosity and Exploration Inventory. This paper has been cited over 500 times, describing two dimensions of curiosity. Curiosity is about recognizing and seeking out new information and experiences, a dimension that we referred to as Exploration. The problem was with the second dimension that we referred to as Absorption - the tendency to be fully engaged in activities such that attention is focused and time moves slower. This happens when we are curious, but also when listening deeply to an Explosions in the Sky concert with eyes shut, or when slowly chewing a 007 sushi roll. You could be feeling confusion, joy, craving, or awe, and not necessarily curiosity. Please stop using this scale. It sucks. I listed it as one of my 5 least favorite publications.

In 2009, we created a second version of the scale with two curiosity dimensions - the motivation to seek out knowledge and new experiences (Stretching) and a willingness to embrace the uncertain and unpredictable nature of everyday life (Embracing). This is still a useful scale for measuring a slice of curiosity, which happens to be the largest, influential slice. The slice that happens to match common definitions and use of curiosity.

During the same year, I wrote a book for the general public titled Curious? A book that captured fundamental discoveries about what curiosity is and the underappreciated, broad, downstream influences. As a greater number of scientists started studying curiosity, additional discoveries emerged. For instance, my research team initiated new studies on the dark side of curiosity and how close friends and strangers view curious people (download it here), how curiosity breeds intimacy (download it here), how curiosity might serve as an antidote to aggression (download it here), and an intriguing study of how curiosity boots well-being upon making progress toward one's goals (a paper that has been relatively ignored - download it here).

Finally, six years later, I delivered on the promise I made in my first semester of graduate school to capture the full bandwidth of curiosity. Meet The Five-Dimensional Curiosity Scale(download it here).

Upon collecting data from a nationally representative sample of 508 adults, and then 403 adults online, and then another nationally representative sample of 3,000 adults, we uncovered 5 dimensions of curiosity:

1. Joyous Exploration - this is the prototype of curiosity - the recognition and desire to seek out new knowledge and information, and the subsequent joy of learning and growing.

2. Deprivation Sensitivity - this dimension has a distinct emotional tone, with anxiety and tension being more prominent than joy - pondering abstract or complex ideas, trying to solve problems, and seeking to reduce gaps in knowledge.

3. Stress Tolerance - this dimension is about the willingness to embrace the doubt, confusion, anxiety, and other forms of distress that arise from exploring new, unexpected, complex, mysterious, or obscure events.

4. Social Curiosity - wanting to know what other people are thinking and doing by observing, talking, or listening in to conversations.

5. Thrill Seeking - the willingness to take physical, social, and financial risks to acquire varied, complex, and intense experiences.

It is time to stop using my Curiosity and Exploration Inventory and if you only want to capture the first dimension of curiosity in this new model, you can still use the Curiosity and Exploration Inventory-II. I ask that you consider the new, improved, comprehensive Five-Dimensional Curiosity Scale. If not, you will be missing central elements of curiosity.

And upon treating these dimensions as part of a single profile, we found evidence for 4 types of curious people:

1. The Fascinated - high on all dimensions of curiosity, particularly Joyous Exploration

2. Problem Solvers - high on Deprivation Sensitivity, medium on other dimensions

3. Empathizers - high on Social Curiosity, medium on other dimensions

4. Avoiders - low on all dimensions, particularly Stress Tolerance

By using these dimensions to look at types of curious people, we can ask "How curious someone is?" and also "What makes someone curious?"

In a final refinement, we recognized that treating social curiosity as a single entity is a problem. We revised the Five-Dimensional Curiosity Scale to effectively separate overt and covert social curiosity. Overt social curiosity is an interest in other people's behaviors, thoughts, and feelings. It is defined as an underlying motivation to understand what makes people tick. We found overt social curiosity to be linked to healthy psychological outcomes including open-mindedness, extraversion, agreeableness, low negative emotionality, interpersonal competencies, and low levels of loneliness. With covert social curiosity, information is gathered by surreptitious routes such as gossiping, snooping, spying, and other indirect means of discovering what other people are like. Covert social curiosity was linked to much less adaptive psychological outcomes such as a motivation to avoid errors and mistakes in the workplace, and a tendency to complain to friends, family, and co-workers. To truly capture curiosity, stop using my older scales and use the briefer, nuanced, psychometrically sound Five-Dimensional Curiosity Scale-Revised. The 5DCR has fewer items as we removed the worst item of each subscale. Because of this, we ended up with a shorter scale with stronger validity.

The scale is designed to capture general elements of curiosity and can be modified to any domain of interest. For example, we created a work related variant of the scale and found that curiosity in the workplace outperforms dispositional mindfulness in predicting job satisfaction, work engagement, job crafting behaviors, work relationships, and innovation.

Curiosity is far more sophisticated than descriptions in scientific articles, business books, and media stories. Only by better appreciating this sophistication can we do justice in cultivating curiosity in ourselves, the organizations we work in, and the schools dedicated to raising the next generation.

Download all the details of this research and our new measure here:
Kashdan, T.B., Disabato, D.J., Goodman, F.R., & McKnight, P.E. (in press). The Five-Dimensional Curiosity Scale Revised (5DCR): Briefer subscales while separating overt and covert social curiosity. Personality and Individual Differences Of the curiosity scales created by our team, this is the only one we recommend for researchers and practitioners. Keep us posted on what you discover and improve upon.
Download the work-related version here:
Kashdan, T.B., Goodman, F.R., Disabato, D.J., McKnight, P.E., Kelso, K., & Naughton, C. (in press). Curiosity has comprehensive benefits in the workplace: Developing and validating a multidimensional workplace curiosity scale in United States and German employees. Personality and Individual Differences Dr. Todd B. Kashdan is a public speaker, psychologist, professor of psychology and senior scientist at the Center for the Advancement of Well-Being at George Mason University. His latest book is The upside of your dark side: Why being your whole self - not just your "good" self - drives success and fulfillment. For more, visit: toddkashdan.com

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What Are the Five Dimensions of Curiosity?

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For over 20 years, I have been studying curiosity. I didn't plan to be a curiosity researcher. I entered graduate school in 1998 to study how panic attacks emerge. Upon interviewing people suffering from panic disorder I became less interested in what led them to panic and instead intrigued by their unmet desires.

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SUPERVISOR SESSION|The Business Case for Curiosity

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SUPERVISOR SESSION|The Business Case for Curiosity

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by Francesca Gino

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Although leaders might say they value inquisitive minds, in reality most stifle curiosity, fearing it will increase risk and inefficiency. Harvard Business School's Francesca Gino elaborates on the benefits of and common barriers to curiosity in the workplace and offers five strategies for bolstering it. Leaders should hire for curiosity, model inquisitiveness, emphasize learning goals, let workers explore and broaden their interests, and have "Why?" "What if...?" and "How might we...?" days. Doing so will help their organizations adapt to uncertain market conditions and external pressures and boost the business's success.

The Five Dimensions of Curiosity

Psychologists have come to realize that curiosity is not a monolithic trait. George Mason University's Todd B. Kashdan, David J. Disabato, and Fallon R. Goodman, along with linguist and educational scientist Carl Naughton, break it down into five distinct dimensions: deprivation sensitivity, joyous exploration, social curiosity, stress tolerance, and thrill seeking. They explore which dimensions lead to the best outcomes and generate particular benefits in work and life.

From Curious to Competent

The executive search firm Egon Zehnder has found that executives with extraordinary curiosity are usually able, with the right development, to advance to C-level roles. But that development is critical: Without it, a highly curious executive may score much lower on competence than less curious counterparts. Egon Zehnder's Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, Andrew Roscoe, and Kentaro Aramaki describe the types of stretch assignments, job rotations, and other experiences needed to transform curiosity into competence.

The complete Spotlight package is available in a single reprint.

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Although leaders might say they value inquisitive minds, in reality most stifle curiosity, fearing it will increase risk and inefficiency. Harvard Business School's Francesca Gino elaborates on the benefits of and common barriers to curiosity in the workplace and offers five strategies for bolstering it.

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Adapted from Todd Kashdan's research (2020)

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A project to support language preservation and documentation around the world

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The Endangered Languages Project is a collaborative online platform for sharing knowledge and resources for endangered languages. Join this global effort to conserve linguistic diversity.