2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: No. Hillary Clinton did not call people on welfare, "deadbeats." (edit: internet slooow) [View all]JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)development of the brain and personality of the very, very young child aged one to three.
That child needs a caregiver who is really focused on developing the child's patience, sense of safety, caution, language skills and even number skills.
I played number games with my children before they were one year old. They are great at math. But then I was at home with my children. No money, but I was at home with them, teaching them, making sure they felt safe and helping them develop the ability cope in their lives.
Having a society of well grounded, secure, intellectually prepared children is worth more than saving the tax money in order to spend it on another drone or bomber.
We need to have more of an understanding of what very young children need and what happens to them and our society when very young children don't get what they need. I suspect we would discover that a number of our problems, from rampant addiction to violence go right back to the way we encourage the neglect of very young children and the separation of children from their parents prior to the age of three.
So we need a lot more research on this issue. If mothers must work, what needs do infants up to age three have, and how can they be satisfied when the mother is working?
I will never forget the mother who brought her two-year-old who was being raised by a nanny to work. I have worked in day care with two-year-olds. That child was having emotional problems already. He was far too quiet for a two-year-old, far to still.
You never, ever get to redo your first months and years of life. And most of us remember the events in those months and years only in our deepest selves. We cannot easily dredge them up from our subconscious and deal with them. A lot of hurt, a lot of injury happens in those forgotten days.
As I have said, the epidemic of addiction, of anger, of violence -- to what extent is it due to the fact that children have too little or the wrong kinds of stimulation during those decisive thousand plus days of very early childhood.
How much would it be worth to know what really is best for children in that age group?
I stayed home with mine. They are great. And it's very important that they are really close to me and my husband. That's another thing that needs to be studied. Is a child raised in those early years by strangers as capable of making strong, lasting attachments as one raised by its mother or adopted mother?
I think that we need to think about the child's needs and not our own desire to keep that little bit of money that it would cost to keep mothers who want to stay home with very young children home with those children. We should have done a lot more research before reforming welfare at the very least.