![]() These experiences can also overload adults’ capacity to engage productively in work, families, and communities. But frequent or prolonged experiences that cause excessive stress activation can be toxic to the architecture of children’s developing brains and other biological systems. ![]() However, not all stress is bad-children need to experience manageable amounts of adversity with help from supportive adults to develop coping skills and healthy stress response systems. The biology of stress activation explains why significant hardship, threat, or trauma (e.g., from abuse, neglect, extreme poverty, systemic racism, or interpersonal discrimination) can lead to physiological and behavioral disruptions that can have lasting impact. ![]() And all of these environments are shaped by the policies, supports, and structural inequities that create the conditions in which families live. The degree to which these environments are health-promoting, supportive, and responsive-or not-directly affects prenatal development, child well-being, and family life. Throughout life, our ability to thrive is affected by our relationships, experiences, and interactions with our physical and built environments (including, for example, access to nutritious food and exposure to toxic chemicals). This is how the interpersonal relationships young children experience with adult caregivers (within and outside the family) get “inside the body” and influence lifelong learning, behavior, and physical and mental health-for better or for worse. Scientists have discovered that the experiences children have early in life-and the environments in which they have them-not only shape their brain architecture, but also affect whether, how, and when the developmental instructions carried in their genes are expressed across multiple biological systems. This science-based framework offers a guide for generating new ideas to address these challenges-and, in the end, achieve significant improvements in outcomes for the children and families who are the foundation of our communities and our shared future. These and other long-standing inequities continue to create lifelong challenges for children and make it extraordinarily difficult for adults to thrive as parents and breadwinners. At a systemic level, policies can reduce structural inequities and institutionalized sources of stress, such as unequal access to high-quality health care and child care, disparities in school funding, and bias in lending. At the human services level, systems might focus on the critical role of relationships in promoting healthy development, supportive parenting, and economic productivity. At the individual level, services can focus on active skill-building for both kids and adults. Moreover, these principles can lead policy-makers to think about changes at all levels that could lead to better outcomes for young children. The principles point to a set of key questions: What are current policies, systems, or practices doing to address each principle? What could be done to address them better? What barriers prevent addressing them more effectively? Grounded in science, these three principles can guide decision-makers as they choose among policy alternatives, design new approaches, and shift existing practice to best support building healthy brains and bodies.
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