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Early Child Care Linked to Increases in Vocabulary, Some Problem Behaviors in 5th and 6th Grades |
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Institute for the Study of Children, Families and Social Issues: The most recent analysis of a long-term NIH-funded study found that children who received higher quality child care before entering kindergarten had better vocabulary scores in the fifth grade than did children who received lower quality care. The study authors also found that the more time children spent in center-based care before kindergarten, the more likely their sixth grade teachers were to report such problem behaviors as "gets in many fights," "disobedient at school," and "argues a lot." The 1,364 children in the analysis had been tracked since birth as part of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, the largest, longest running, and most comprehensive study of child care in the United States. Families were recruited through hospital visits to mothers shortly after the birth of a child in 1991 in 10 locations in the U.S. The children studied were not a representative sample of children in the U.S. population. An evaluation of the children in fifth grade showed that the children who had higher quality child care continued to show better vocabulary scores, a correlation that was seen previously from kindergarten to third grade. These behaviors were listed on The Child Behavior Checklist Teacher Report Form, which consisted of 100 problem behaviors. It would not be possible to go into a classroom and with no additional information, pick out which children had been in center care, Dr. Belsky explained. Dr. James Griffin, the NICHD Science Officer for the Study, noted that the persistence of these findings demonstrates the importance of longitudinal research studies that follow children from infancy onwards.
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