Thread by @R_Hughes1

Great to be at #RCPCH22 listening to Jack Shonkoff from @HarvardCenter talking about early childhood policy and practice. @RCPCHtweets

Three ways of thinking about early childhood development: 1) moral responsibility, 2) ecd as a foundational investment in society, and 3) untapped power of advances in science and lived experience.

TLDR: Start early 👇, #earlymomentsmatter

Fascinating insights into how early childhood science is advancing: 3 examples

Nice quote: (guess who?)

“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them”

Time for a mindset shift. ECD 1.0 is still relevant, but time for ECD 2.0.

[Comment: how much of this is really new? To my mind, most of this is/should be captured in a proper application of @NurturingCare shouldn’t it @LindaRichterECD @markskeptic & others? Is this just ECD ‘discovering’ public health? Good to highlight this, and racism, though]

The biology here is complex, fascinating and important: nice summary of role of cortisol/stress 👇

Resilience in the face of adversity: it can be built, and relationships are central.

1) support responsive adult-child relationships (with parents, and others too)
2) strengthen core skills and building blocks of resilience
3) reduce sources of significant stress

But the tricky bit isn’t know that these things need to be done, it’s working out how to do them. [strongly agree!]

Interesting example of the revolution in the treatment of ALL, and how we need to apply this to early childhood development.

Strong emphasis on the value of risk stratification. Greater precision in the response. No one size fits all model.

Now, learning from @Apple… and a catalogue of learning from failure to win big. Time to apply this to early childhood development?

Time to move beyond demonstration projects. We need to get better at learning from, and allowing, failure, and personalising/stratifying responses.

Fascinating discussion Q&A.

- why such a mismatch between “the science” and the investments in early childhood?

“We would do a better job of arguing for resources if we better communicate what works and don’t oversell what doesn’t”

💯this: “How often when things aren’t going well in a group do you wish everyone had 5 more IQ points vs having better social/emotional skills?”