• Friendships play a critical role in children’s social and emotional development.
• Children with autistic traits have difficulty with socioemotional skills, putting them at risk for peer rejection.
• Autistic children who are also aggressive or disruptive are particularly vulnerable.
• Parents and teachers can support children with autism through early interventions targeting socioemotional skills and lessons about peer acceptance for all children.

Friendship and acceptance by other children are vital ingredients for thriving young lives and are at the heart of growing up. They help children get out of bed in the morning, and encourage them to look forward to attending school, playing and learning, and building relationships. In contrast, loneliness, isolation, feeling awkward, and being bullied make everything more problematic. How do we ensure that the lives of children with autistic traits are not harmed by rejection?

Children with autism typically experience challenges developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships. They want friendships but struggle to make them. Mostly, they have difficulties adjusting their behavior to suit various social contexts.

Children with autistic traits who also have behavioral problems need the most support with their peer relationships.

They may not be able to communicate in ways that lead to friendship or understand how to share imaginative play in the same ways as typical children do. How does this impede acceptance and fruitful relationships at school? What can be done to improve this aspect of life for children with autism?

My colleagues and I have been studying five- and six-year-olds in primary schools in the Netherlands (called elementary schools elsewhere). The children had varying levels of autistic traits, often at such low levels that it was not clinically diagnosed. We know that young children with autistic traits are more likely to experience rejection and non-acceptance, even when the traits are at a low level.

The impact can be considerable. Studies show that having a friend at school can protect a child from an unwanted situation or behavior. A friend can act as a source of emotional support, providing a safe space to express thoughts, experiences, and opinions.

Photo: Wallpaper Flare.

Being without a friend at school can lead to feelings of loneliness and isolation, which can, in turn, make children vulnerable to bullying and negative behaviors. These experiences can have lasting effects on overall well-being, leading to low self-esteem and poor academic performance.

Risk of aggressive behavior

Our study identified a particularly vulnerable group of young children with autistic traits: those who are also aggressive and disruptive. Children with autistic traits who also have behavioral problems need the most support with their peer relationships. Other children tend to isolate them or make them targets of bullying.

Schools can address these matters through programs designed to improve peer relationships in inclusive classrooms. Some programs focus on reducing children’s behavior problems (e.g., aggressive acts, poor temper control, sadness, anxiety, fidgeting, impulsive acts), especially when the problems are above and beyond the autistic traits that most convincingly predicted poor relationships in our study.

In many cases, children with autistic traits can and do have friendships and experience acceptance.

Successful friendships

Our study also considered children with lower levels of autistic traits (whose autism may not have been diagnosed) and with non-aggressive behaviors. As noted earlier, their condition was associated with less peer acceptance and more rejection. It may be hard for these children to carry out basic social skills such as starting and maintaining conversations, taking turns, and responding appropriately to social cues. They may find it difficult to understand others’ minds, and to decode others’ intentions, emotions, and thoughts, leaving them confused, so it is important to help these children navigate social situations more effectively.

In many cases, children with autistic traits can and do have friendships and experience acceptance. Other children seem to find ways to engage with them. In some cases, particularly in inclusive environments, a peer understands that a child has autism. A teacher might explain the condition and the peer develops a friendship with the child, accepting that it will be a different kind of friendship that is less reciprocal than their friendships with neurotypical children.

Photo: Leeloo Thefirst. Pexels.

How to support young children

Our findings suggest many opportunities for improving the relationships of children with autistic traits. The first step is recognizing and accepting the trait, not denying it. Parents should be alert: A child who initially responded to their name might suddenly, around 18 months, cease to respond. That can be a red flag.

Much can be done to help a child with autistic traits interpret a world that can seem confusing. With children as young as three, flashcards attached to everyday activities – waking up, having breakfast, taking a nap – can help build a vital vocabulary.

Likewise, photos of parents or caregivers highlighting labelled emotions – such as happy, sad, tired – can help train a child to better recognize facial expressions, improving the reciprocity and responsiveness of their interactions. Parents can role play what happens when other people visit, going through the language of meeting and greeting. It helps to start early.

The message from our research is that friendship and acceptance matter a great deal to each child’s development, both socially and academically. Adults can help children enjoy friendships by spotting traits of autism early and intervening in appropriate ways. Such interventions should address aggression, which is most harmful to children’s chances of having successful relationships.

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• Parents, peers, and schools all represent crucial influences that shape how white¹ adolescents make sense of racism and their actions toward social justice.
• Having explicit conversations with white youth about racism and embedding children in racially diverse environments that acknowledge race are essential to countering the dominant color-blind narrative that race “doesn’t matter.”
• Conversations about race with white youth must go beyond simply acknowledging historical and contemporary racism toward encouraging anti-racist attitudes and actions to address inequities.

Children receive messages about race and color-blindness from multiple sources

There is no “neutral” in racism. All youth learn to either reinforce or disrupt systems of inequality that uphold and maintain a racist status quo. As such, shielding white children from learning about race and the United States’ racist history encourages a way of knowing that is untethered to the country’s racial realities and further sustains white supremacy and racism.

Contrary to the color-blind narrative that positions racism as a thing of the past and “everyone as equal,” racism is embedded in structural forces (e.g., law, institutions, housing) and continues to shape all people’s experiences (though differently). The color-blind narrative is pervasive among white parents and caregivers and within predominantly white institutions (including school settings). For instance, only 53% of white parents believe schools should teach about the ongoing effects of slavery and racism in the United States, while 82% of Black parents hold this belief.

For white youth, social environments that counter the color-blind narrative and instead address racism may be integral to fostering social justice action.

Regardless of whether children receive explicit messaging about race, they interpret the various experiences, interactions, and (un)intentional messages in their lives. Parents, peers, and schools are three interrelated influences that shape how children make sense of race during adolescence. For white youth, social environments that counter the color-blind narrative and instead address racism may be integral to fostering social justice action.

What social contexts about race and racism do white adolescents in the United States experience?

In our research study, we examined the myriad influences that shape how white youth make sense of racism and the resulting impacts on their social justice behaviors. We used survey data from the Maryland Adolescent Development in Context Study to examine 323 white adolescents’ racial environments (i.e., the social contexts that may shape their beliefs and attitudes about race and racism), with particular attention to conversations with parents about race and racial attitudes, cross-race friendships, and conversations with peers about race.

We also looked at the diversity of youth’s schools with respect to racial composition and curriculum. We then explored how these different racial environments during adolescence (16-17 years old) related to white youth’s social justice actions two years later in young adulthood. All participants in the study lived in a racially and socioeconomically diverse county in the Eastern United States.

Photo: cottonbro studio. Pexels.

The racial environments of most adolescents (80%) were characterized by silence or passivity about race. Such environments align with a color-blind narrative in which racism is downplayed or ignored, limiting white adolescents’ ability to disrupt and challenge racism. However, the racial environments of some adolescents (20%) were more race conscious, meaning that race-related conversations occurred more frequently, schools were racially diverse and acknowledged race and racism in the curriculum, and adolescents had cross-race friendships.

How did different racial environments affect white adolescents’ social justice action?

White adolescents in race-conscious environments were engaged in more social justice behaviors during young adulthood than were white adolescents in racial environments characterized by silence. These behaviors included participating in civil rights or women’s rights groups. Our findings suggest that when white youth are in environments that are racially diverse and that acknowledge race and racism, they are more likely to take action in young adulthood to promote and foster social justice.

How can parents foster social justice attitudes and behaviors in their white children?

The findings of our study, in conjunction with other recent findings, challenge the often-espoused color-blind belief that not talking about race promotes equity. Instead, they suggest that having explicit conversations about racism and inequality, and embedding children in environments (e.g., schools) that are racially diverse or conscious of racism, can foster white adolescents’ reflection and actions toward creating and maintaining equitable social conditions for all people.

How can parents and caregivers foster a race-conscious environment for white youth?

First, parents and caregivers of white children should reflect about their own racial attitudes and beliefs. As we saw in our study, even parents who believed they had “positive” racial attitudes may foster a color-blind racial environment for their children.

Parents and caregivers must talk early and often with their white children about racism.

Thus, parents should challenge themselves to think critically about race in the United States and how their own racial identity relates to the ongoing perpetuation or disruption of racism. Numerous resources are available to prompt such critical reflection, including engaging with the works (e.g., film, books, art) of authors and artists of color that portray the racial realities of the United States.

Second, after such reflection, parents and caregivers must talk early and often with their white children about racism. For instance, when children bring up or notice race, parents should discuss what their child is noticing rather than silence them or communicate that noticing race is bad.

Building white adolescents’ skills

Discussing race and racism, celebrating and recognizing the contributions of people of color (which are often excluded from mainstream narratives), addressing racialized police killings and violence, and reflecting on the history and current manifestations of white supremacy are integral to building white adolescents’ skills for anti-racism work and for actively communicating the racial realities of the United States. (See EmbraceRace raising young white allies for more resources.)

Finally, the results of our study highlight the multidimensional nature of children’s racial environments. In other words, it is not just parents who play a role in how children make sense of racism, but rather a multitude of influences, including but not limited to peers and school. As such, fostering white youth’s social justice behaviors means embedding children in racially diverse environments in which cross-race friendships can form and where school curricula acknowledge and affirm people of color.

Photo: Ron Lach. Pexels.

White parents and caregivers can also promote change in their children’s schools by standing with parents of color as allies and teaching their children to stand up against racism. Parents can also support candidates in local and national elections who recognize the importance of discussing racism in educational settings. (Read more information on the debate about critical race theory in schools here.)

In conclusion – racial justice requires reckoning with whiteness and countering narratives

The take-home message is that reaching a state of racial justice requires reckoning with whiteness and countering the pervasive color-blind narratives that produce false and inaccurate understandings of racism in the United States. In particular, our study demonstrates how race-conscious environments can counter the racist status quo by building white youth’s efforts for social justice. Our findings also underscore the role of white parents and caregivers in ensuring that the next generation strives for an equitable and anti-racist society.

¹ Although the style of the Child & Family Blog is to capitalize ‘White,’ the authors have intentionally not capitalized the word when it refers to skin color. For information supporting this rule, please see The Associated Press.

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• Building healthy relationships with technology involves not only protecting youth, but also supporting their positive experiences online.
• Helping middle schoolers navigate the digital world involves strategies similar to those used for their in-person activities: monitoring, spending time on the internet together when possible, educating them about risks, and communicating.
• Ongoing communication is critical. Talk about your values and expectations, ask what young users are doing online, and listen to how they feel about those experiences.
• Parents cannot do it alone. Digital technology companies and policymakers need to ensure that the online spaces where young people spend their time support healthy development while also keeping them safe.

Protecting and supporting youth on the internet are both important

Parents often ask what they can do to protect their children online. This is a good question. But another important question that should be asked is how can we better support our youth on the internet?

As mothers to tweens and teens, we are always looking for ways to protect our children from harm. One of us is also a developmental psychologist who has studied adolescents’ mental health for more than two decades, learning that we need to both protect and support our children – particularly around the middle school years as they make the transition to adolescence and into online spaces.

This is why we recently released a report on what research tells us about amplifying the benefits of digital technology for this age group and calling on technology companies and policymakers to adopt an evidence-based approach to protecting and supporting youth. But even as we urge technology creators to do better, there are steps parents and other caregivers can take to both protect and support positive digital technology use for young people.

Promoting healthy development and well-being with positive online experiences

Early adolescence (from about 10 to 13 years old, or the middle school years) is an important window when positive experiences that support learning and connection can affect development. Going on the internet to create, contribute, or connect can be a positive experience for young people. Online experiences offer new spaces for adolescents to express their creativity, explore who they are and where they fit in, support causes they care about and connect with peers in ways that can enhance their relationships.

Co-viewing, creating, and participating in online spaces can open opportunities for positive joint experiences and allow parents to identify any risks or content that makes them uncomfortable.

Encouraging these kinds of positive experiences online does not require an entirely new set of parenting skills. Instead, parents can use strategies similar to those used when children walk out the door to go to school or hang out at the park with their friends. Parents cannot be everywhere or see everything. But they can find out who their children are with, what they are doing, and how they feel about it, which can reduce problems. This kind of monitoring and communication can also help youth as they navigate the online world.

Keeping youth safe on the internet

Parents should consider some critical issues to ensure their children are engaging with online content safely. During early adolescence, when youth are particularly sensitive to social feedback and belonging, increased exposure to bullying, pornography, unhealthy body images, and harmful targeted advertising can have amplified effects.

Parents should also be aware that some adolescents, for example, those with mental health problems and those who may already be struggling with body image issues, may be more susceptible to viewing negative content on the internet and having negative online experiences than their peers. Knowing your child is key.

Caregivers should also understand that technology use also leaves a digital trace that can follow young people into adulthood by creating a type of permanent record of images and comments that would otherwise be forgotten or excused due to age and immaturity.

Moreover, sleep is critical to physical health, mental health, and learning during adolescence, so families should limit late-night technology use that gets in the way of youth getting more than eight hours of uninterrupted sleep each night.

Photo: Andrea Piacquadio. Pexels.

How parents and caregivers can support and protect youth by making the internet a safer place

Parents and caregivers can make the internet a safer place by:

1. Monitoring and being aware
2. Going on the internet together when possible
3. Educating young people
4. Communicating with young people
5. Using helpful resources

1. Monitoring and being aware

Unlike physical places youth may go that are out of parents’ sight, digital technology provides opportunities to monitor where youth have been online, ideally with youths’ knowledge and consent. Parental controls – such as content filters, time limits, and applications that allow monitoring of online activities – can help.

2. Going on the internet together when possible

Viewing, creating, and participating in online spaces together can open opportunities for positive joint experiences and allow parents to identify risks or content that makes them uncomfortable.

3. Educating young people

Parents can explain the potential risks of digital technology use, discussing the importance of keeping personal information safe and of moderating screen time to make room for in-person activities. Developing a family media plan with your child can help start a conversation about the types of activities and platforms children are allowed to spend time on, and will allow young adolescents to have input into any rules that may govern their use.

4. Communicating with young people

Talking to your child about what they are seeing or experiencing on the internet should become part of daily conversations. When youth are exposed to age-inappropriate content or encounter problematic experiences like cyberbullying or social rejection, having an adult to talk to can make a difference. (Common Sense Media offers prompts to start talking, from conversations about activities to more specific concerns about emotional health and negative feelings.)

5. Using helpful resources

Parents and teachers can access a growing list of resources to help support children online, including:

• The One Mind PsyberGuide provides a teen-specific guide to online mental health applications.
• Common Sense Media resources support parents navigating traditional and new forms of media engagement.
• The American Academy of Pediatrics has a guide to creating a family media plan.
• Teens and Tech Center provides education and resources for parents, educators, and teenagers.

Designing technology to support young people

Even with parents’ best efforts, it is impossible to oversee children’s every online interaction. As parents, we have limited influence over how our children’s data are handled and stored, the types of targeted advertising they are exposed to, and the features intended to encourage them to stay on the internet for long periods of time.

Talking to your child about what they are seeing or experiencing online should become part of your daily conversations.

We expect that the physical spaces where our children spend time, like community parks, sports fields, and classrooms, help them grow and learn while keeping them safe. Digital spaces should be the same. Some lawmakers are working toward this.

For example, last year, California passed a bill that will require digital technology companies to protect young users’ privacy and personal data, limit dangerous content, and maintain default settings that prioritize safety. New York is considering similar legislation. While changes that would enhance safety are important, companies and policies must also consider regulations and design features that intentionally promote positive development in online spaces where youth congregate.

What do caregivers need to know about equitable access to digital technology?

Research is clear that children in families and schools with fewer resources receive less guidance tailored to learning as they begin to navigate the online world than do their peers in families and schools with more resources. Adolescents from minoritized and marginalized communities – such as youth of color and LGBTQ+ youth – are at the greatest risk for experiencing harassment and victimization online, even as they report positive experiences like finding “spaces of refuge” and community on the internet that may not be available to them in their physical environments.

Although discussion of technology tends to focus on limiting screen time, too many students are unable to access the basic benefits of technology, particularly for learning and education. Black and Hispanic students and those from families with lower incomes are more likely to have limited access to devices and the Internet than their peers.

Photo: Omar Ramadan. Pexels.

To help address these gaps, many school districts are working to provide free or reduced-cost WiFi to students. Families who need help to afford reliable Internet access and connected devices can contact their local school district or apply for the Affordable Connectivity Program.

In addition, digital technology companies and policymakers need to establish digital solutions and innovations that make the online world a place of opportunity rather than posing added risks for our most vulnerable youth.

Conclusion

Early adolescence brings new opportunities for building connections, education, and healthy learning and exploration. If we focus the conversation around “teens and tech” only on protection, we may miss opportunities to meet young people where they are and build online environments that match their needs.

Parents and caregivers have an important role in helping our children develop a healthy relationship with digital technologies. That includes talking directly with them about potential risks of online interactions and how to moderate digital technology use, providing oversight where possible to see what children are doing on the internet, and setting limits to ensure that technology does not interfere with sleep and other activities important to well-being. Most importantly, it means building strong relationships with our children so they tell us what is going on and when they are struggling.

But we cannot do this on our own. It is time for the owners, designers, and creators of the online spaces where young people spend their time to step up and build environments that support young people while also keeping them safe. We need to ask different types of questions so we learn not just how to protect but also how to support our children’s healthy development in an increasingly digital world.

The post Making the internet safer, engaging and evidence-based for tweens appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

• Puberty is not a singular process, so girls’ feelings about each change will not be uniform. Parents can celebrate changes their daughters are excited about while also making space for negative feelings about other changes.
• Girls who feel more prepared for menarche are less distressed by it. Parents can engage in multiple conversations with their daughters about practical information in handling menstruation, and also the feelings, physical pain, and social stigma associated with the change.
• Girls who mature earlier than their peers seem to struggle to make sense of these changes in a way that increases their psychological distress. Parents can model how to draw helpful conclusions from the changes happening in girls’ lives to support their daughters’ emotional development.

Puberty is often viewed as an awkward transition for both parents and their daughters

In the first episode of My So-Called Life (a mid-1990s U.S. television series about the teen years), teenager Angela laments that “My dad and I used to be pretty tight. The sad truth is, my breasts have come between us.” Many parents and adolescents can relate to this sentiment.

Puberty brings with it many dramatic changes that are exciting and difficult, public and private, and dramatic and subtle for youth. When faced with these changes in their child, many parents may not know exactly what to say, so they defer to outside sources like physicians.

Parents should talk with their daughters to see how they feel about specific changes.

Since puberty is broadly considered the start of adolescence, it can be tempting to view the first major pubertal change as a cue that your daughter needs space and privacy because she will soon be a moody teenager. It is important that parents do not avoid such topics just because they are awkward. In fact, researchers have found that youth prefer their parents as their source for sensitive topics like sex education over other sources such as school, peers, or media.

But where should parents start when talking to their daughters about puberty? And how can they better help girls make sense of the changes happening to them? One way to answer these questions is to ask girls themselves how they feel about puberty.

What views about puberty do girls express when asked to write about the experience?

In a recent study, my co-author and I asked 10- to 13-year-old girls to describe their experiences of changes with their bodies, families, and friends during puberty. Over four consecutive days, girls wrote in journals for 20 minutes on a specific prompt related to change during puberty. After the four days of journaling, they responded to survey questions about their level of symptoms of depression, conflict with peers, and conflict with parents. They completed the same survey about four months later.

Girls may view puberty as both a positive and a negative experience

While puberty often carries negative connotations in pop culture, we found that writing about most physical changes, including breast development, was not related to negative outcomes in mood or relationship conflict. In their journaling, girls tended to voice multiple perspectives on the same issues.

Photo: Zen Chung. Pexels.

For example, when writing about relationship changes with youth their own age, one girl said she felt that her “relationship with kids my age did not really change, we just have our ups and downs sometimes.” In contrast, another girl wrote, “I have noticed that you can’t just be friends with boys. Other people, apparently, think you are dating if you hang with a boy. This makes friendships with boys extremely hard.”

Based on these findings, parents should talk with their daughters to see how they feel about specific changes rather than assuming which changes girls view positively or negatively.

Menstruation is uniquely stressful for girls; talking to them about it can help

In our study, girls were most distressed by menstruation. Girls who wrote about menstruation more than any other topic were more likely to report more symptoms of depression four months after the first survey, regardless of their level of physical development or the timing of puberty.

This is important because it means that girls did not simply write about menstruation because they experienced it and other girls did not, but that some girls fixated on menstruation in a way that may be maladaptive.

Menstruation is a unique change. In addition to being private and beginning all at once rather than gradually, it is a change that has monthly consequences for most girls that continue until menopause. Many girls wrote about feelings of isolation or helplessness around the idea of experiencing period pain or inconvenience for years to come. For example, one girl summed up this feeling by writing, “One of the only things I am not looking forward to during puberty while growing up is cramps.”

In our study, girls were most distressed by menstruation.

Given these findings, parents should talk through these feelings with girls and provide information about handling menstruation before girls begin menstruating. Researchers have found that girls who are well-informed about menstruation are less likely to be distressed by it. This may be because girls can replace misinformation or fears (e.g., “I will hurt all the time and I can’t stop it.”) with accurate information and potential solutions (e.g., “I can take pain medications for cramps.”).

Parents can help teens view puberty as a meaningful life transition

In addition to examining girls’ thoughts and feelings about individual changes, we also recorded each time girls demonstrated meaning making by searching for meaning or trying to make sense of the changes happening to them.

Sometimes this took on a negative tone when girls reflected on their helplessness (e.g., “Puberty is just something that happens to you and you have to go through it. It’s life.”). Other times, girls reflected on how changes in their lives might benefit them or others (e.g., “Going through puberty now means I’ll be better prepared to help my daughters in the future.”).

The more early-maturing girls engaged in making meaning, the more symptoms of depression they reported. Girls who mature earlier than their peers may struggle with meaning making that is positive or constructive, or at least that does not exacerbate psychological distress. This may be because early-maturing girls are among their first in their classes to start puberty, so they may have fewer examples or frames of reference to draw from when making sense of these changes.

Research with adults suggests that the more people engage in adaptive meaning making, the better their mood and well-being tend to be. However, children and adolescents tend to have a more difficult time generating such adaptive meaning making on their own. Adaptative meaning making may look like finding benefits in the situation, recognizing personal growth that has come out of the changes, or reappraising negative events in positive ways more generally. Parents can engage in scaffolding during conversations about changes or challenges with their children to help them practice better meaning making strategies.

Photo: Karolina Grabowska. Pexels.

For example, parents may follow up a daughter’s statement that “wearing a sports bra sucks” by reframing the conclusion (e.g., “It may suck that you have to wear an additional piece of equipment, but your sports bra is no different than your cleats or racket. It is equipment that helps you preform safely.”). Alternatively, parents may use questions to guide their teens to elaborate or reframe the concept on their own (e.g., “What does the sports bra help you accomplish?”).

Research directions

Overall, our research suggests that girls are particularly distressed by menstruation when describing their experiences of change during puberty. They may also struggle to make meaning of the changes and challenges related to puberty in a way that can help them cope with this transition.

While it can be difficult or awkward for parents to know what to say, our findings suggest that parents can support their daughters during puberty by engaging in more and frequent conversations about pubertal change. However, researchers need to examine how parents’ conversations about particular topics directly influence girls’ adaptive meaning making about pubertal changes.

We also need research to determine how these results apply to other groups’ experiences with puberty, such as boys and adolescents from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Adolescents from different backgrounds may focus on different experiences and concerns, and these may map differently onto teens’ psychological difficulties.

The post What is puberty like for girls? – Making sense of puberty appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

However, the three are, in fact, playing nicely together. They are communicating, though not through back-and-forth verbal dialogue. Each closely follows the others’ hand movements in the construction process, and these hand actions are like taking turns in a conversation. Bursts of songs signal togetherness. One child hums the famous “Halleluiah” section of “The Messiah,” while another follows by humming, in falsetto, a less well-known part of the oratorio. One child rolls the die and declares in imitation of Fortnite, “I am the One.” Another child does something with her hands. “Wow,” exclaims her friend.

This type of close observation highlights how autistic children do, indeed, relate to each other, but not in neurotypical language or in ways that neurotypical people instantly recognize. It can be difficult for people unfamiliar with children with autism to understand what is happening. This can easily result in erroneous conclusions, such as the mistaken view that autistic children dislike social relationships and prefer to play alone. Such misunderstanding can endanger autistic children because a major threat to their quality of life is loneliness and a dearth of friendships. Play-based social learning can help them avoid these dangers.

Parallel play among autistic children is a route to social play, not at odds with it.

Differences in autistic children

Autistic children value play with their peers and many are able to play with each other. However, they may communicate more visually and with their hands, rather than in the more verbal way of other children. They may need different facilitation strategies and more support than their neurotypical peers.

The benefit of carefully watching how autistic children play is that it can help others create environments that support the way they actually play, rather than spending time and effort instructing them how to play in neurotypical ways.

Inside parallel play

Some autistic children like to play in parallel. In general, the neurotypical world does not consider this type of play “social” play, but rather as an isolated, solo activity. But in our observations, we have seen that parallel play can be very social. For example, we watched three children building on their individual Lego boards. One was building a house, another was constructing a forest, and the third was building a TV set. We realized that the third child was watching the TV inside the house in the forest. This experience shows the need to cherish parallel play and let it continue until windows of connection occur, as they inevitably do. If we ask ourselves how we can support and strengthen these opportunities for connection, we will recognize that parallel play among autistic children is a route to social play, not at odds with it.

Photo provided by the author.

Understanding this can help teachers support the social dynamics of autistic children and tinker with those dynamics to support togetherness. In one game, we gave each child a Lego board and suggested that they build a bridge and they had to meet in the middle. In another game, children built a tower. Each child had bricks of a particular color, but the game stipulated that they should not place a brick of one color on top of a brick of the same color. As a result, the children enjoyed open-ended play, which gave them agency. The color rule supported the interaction of their parallel play. Simple games like this may be repeated with slight variations to create learning environments that are predictable, but not tedious, to support autistic children in developing their unique ways of socializing through hands-on experience.

Helping articulation of frustration

Accepting that autistic children can and do communicate  – albeit in atypical ways that may eschew direct language  – helps us support them when they become frustrated. In our work, we try to encourage children to tell the stories of their frustrations, recognizing that verbal explanations may not come easily. For example, in a play session involving a child with two younger children, the older and more experienced child became frustrated with the slowness of the others. To explain, he built a train track with three children on the platform, communicating that he felt like he was waiting for a train, which was frustrating. By ensuring that he had a way to express his feelings practically, we made it easier for him to manage his emotions and be patient.

Try to understand the social strategies the child uses to play with others. Create environments in which those strategies are easy for the child to use.

Suggestions for parents and teachers

We offer three suggestions for those who want to support children who are on the spectrum to ensure that they have access to play-based social learning. First, try to understand the social strategies the child uses to play with others. Create environments in which those strategies are easy for the child to use.

Second, do not be concerned if a child seems to play in parallel with others. At some point, as in the examples mentioned, a window between two parallel players will open. See parallel play as a route to social play.

Third, always assume that children are competent. Whether someone is silent, says “um,” or repeats a sentence, it is all meaningful. Think carefully about what children are doing because their actions provide a window into the way they are interpreting the situation. For example, when a child is tapping, there is something behind that. Behavior is communication.

We think of play as a way of learning – and not just for children. It is also a way for adults to learn about children. Just as we want children to learn from the play situation, so should adults. Be curious in the same way you want children to be curious. Try to adjust the environment to fit how the child is feeling that day – no day is ever the same as another and you never know in advance how a child is feeling.

If you wish to learn more, we have a resource tool kit for playing with children on the spectrum.

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The mental health of stressed young people was transformed at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic: Many felt better. Anxiety and symptoms of depression dropped among older, high-achieving children in the United States. That was particularly true for students about to graduate from high school, our research in U.S. schools has found.

Why? Children relaxed … for a bit. COVID-19 provided a full stop to the busyness of some teenage lives. The treadmill of pressure, activities, and commitments halted. Out went crisscrossing among band practice, sports clubs, social activities, and hours of homework into the small hours. Lockdowns brought that high-octane life to a sudden standstill.

Children got more sleep – they weren’t leaving home at 7 am. Many schools had staggered hours and reduced the pressure, shifting from grading assignments to awarding a pass or fail. Social anxiety was reduced – a teenager didn’t need to worry about being left out of the lunch table or not being invited to parties that no longer happened. Missing out on a romantic relationship didn’t matter as much – kids were not seeing seemingly happy couples at school or at social gatherings.

But this break didn’t last. As we worked with schools through the arrival of summer, we found that anxiety and depression had risen again among older high school students. Their initial relief morphed into feeling that life was unsettling, scary, and lonely — young people experienced grief about incomplete endings and fears about what might lie ahead.

“Anxiety and depression dropped initially for older, high-achieving children in the United States.”

Middle school children less relieved

Children in middle school did not have even the initial relief – in our survey, anxiety and depression stayed at previous levels for them. That’s probably because virtual communication is more challenging for children of this age. Their peer groups are less well formed and less stable than those of 16- to 18-year-olds. If you are an awkward, insecure 12-year-old with few social connections, it can be easier to casually share confidences with friends at soccer practice or while walking around than to do so from home via Zoom. Self-consciousness kicks in: “Will they like my room?” “Will they see my family?”

We’ve learned a lot about what helps children of all ages feel good in a period characterized by prolonged uncertainty, with no end in sight. Two predictors of their well-being stand out: the well-being of parents and the supportiveness of teachers.

Photo: kris krüg. Creative Commons.

Parents and teachers vital for resilience

First, we found strong, unique links between adolescents’ depression and anxiety and whether they felt their parents were coping well. When children felt their parents maintained a calm, stable home and were in good enough shape to provide emotional support, they were likely to be doing well. This was true across ages, genders, and races. Our finding is in sync with a major report published last year on children’s well-being by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Its take-home message: If you want children to do well, the single most important step is to ensure that the parents are doing well themselves.

“When children felt their parents maintained a calm, stable home and were in good enough shape to provide emotional support, they were likely to be doing well.”

Second, our research found that the support of key adults – and teachers in particular – was vital to children in maintaining their well-being. In open-ended questions on what was going well in their schools, children and youth responded most often with answers such as, “My teacher cares about me and reaches out to me,” and ‘I really like that my teachers check in on how I’m feeling and not just my school work.”

Parents need proper care 

These two observations should inform practice and policy. The first highlights that we need to expand the focus of policy and practice beyond just styles of parenting. Children’s well-being depends not simply on quality of care but is linked directly to parents’ own well-being. During the pandemic, adults – just like children – also require love, gentleness, comfort, and stability. This helps the adults ensure that their children feel well looked after.

“Burned out” teachers need help, too

Teachers’ welfare is also important, not just for its own sake, but also because these adults provide valuable care and support for students. During the pandemic, we surveyed U.S. teachers’ well-being. Stress rates stayed steady, but clinically significant burnout has risen sharply among educators since March 2020. The risk factors seem to be lack of clarity about what they are required to do and blurry boundaries between work and recreation. These findings reflect how many teachers have worked long hours and had few breaks over the summer. Their needs should also be supported, especially if they are to play their role in bolstering children’s resilience.

Which aspects of home life were most helpful?

Our research about children during the COVID-19 pandemic identified three factors, , that reliably predicted anxiety and depression in children. By far the most important was having a low-quality relationship with parents. Following this was lack of structure to the day (separating time for leisure or fun), and high levels of distraction or inability to focus on schoolwork.

Parents and schools can help address each of these factors. For parents, the challenge in these very difficult circumstances is to stay well themselves. Stress levels have risen for all and it is important that parents share their burdens with others and, where necessary – and if they can – seek professional help.

Manage technology, expectations, and assignments

For schools, an important task is to support their teachers well. Professional development programs must address directly the psychological burdens educators take on as they support their students through the pandemic. For students, schools should ensure that their days are well-structured and that lessons are not too long. Online technology should be streamlined so children are not juggling between different platforms. Educators should scale back expectations and focus on the core skills children need, letting go of much of the rest. Teachers should coordinate with other teachers when making assignments and scheduling due dates. It doesn’t take much figuring out to ensure, for example, that Monday is science homework day, Tuesday is math homework day, and so on. This helps children have a predictable and manageable week.

None of us should forget, if life begins to return to how it once was, that there was something wrong with the overly busy schedules of many children’s lives. The figures for serious anxiety and depression tell the story. COVID-19 has brought its own problems, but the temporary sense of relaxation it has offered some children shows that life was not that healthy beforehand. Children deserve better than the old normal.

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Children need to be empowered to seek help about bullying and to be helpful.

When my daughter was in the second grade, the boys started a silly game during recess of grabbing the girls’ coats at the neck to stop them in their tracks. Of course, after a few days, the girls “told on them” – complaining to the teacher on playground duty about the boys choking them. The teacher’s well-meaning response was to tell the girls to play near her so they would be safe. The girls went on to tell their own teacher who, in turn, told the boys’ teacher, but the game continued. My daughter then told me – a child psychologist who is supposed to know what to do! We decided to write to the principal for help. My daughter dictated and I wrote it all down. She took the note to the principal and the game stopped. What is the point here? Seeking help is important for children, and the other side of this interaction is that adults need to respond to children’s requests for help.

“Our children deserve to feel safe at school. How can schools and parents work together to prevent conflicts before they become bullying?”

Conflict is normal in children’s interactions with their peers at school – just as it is normative in our interactions with other adults at work, at home, and in the grocery store. Not all peer conflict is bullying or results in bullying, but repeated aggression that targets children who are perceived as less powerful or different in some ways (often due to gender, race, ethnicity, disability, behavioral problems, or mental health) is bullying. Our children deserve to feel safe at school. How can parents work with their own children and schools to prevent conflicts before they become bullying?

Our own research highlights two social behaviors of children that make a difference in reducing aggression and emotional problems and in enhancing school climate. We call these social responsibility and prosocial leadership. The former is essentially about being a cooperative social member of a classroom or family, while the latter is about facilitating others’ work and well-being, and looking for opportunities to help. These two protective factors are incompatible with bullying and victimization of peers, and they can be enhanced by both home and school activities.

Photo: ihtatho. Creative Commons.

Consider how these two prosocial behaviors of children might work in families. Does your family generally cooperate in making your family environment positive, safe, and fair? Do the children in your family generally have opportunities to make valued contributions to your family’s everyday life? Sometimes? No? Yes?  Creating a positive family climate is a lifelong endeavour that encounters both smooth winds and heavy storms. It is not static. All family members from all kinds of family structures have changing needs and different abilities to contribute to overall family well-being. Children’s abilities to contribute reflect differences in their ages, but also differences in their sense of belonging to a cooperative team that is trying to create well-being for everyone.

How? One factor that can make a difference is to find a way to open conversations about conflict and conflict resolutions. Being part of your family’s well-being requires that you have input into its functioning. Responding to conflicts and aggressions with silence allows conflicts to be repeated unchanged. Having a family plan for managing the inevitable day-to-day conflicts of interpersonal interactions is as important as having a plan for fire prevention or emergency responses. In my intervention research, we have developed and tested a plan that is working in schools, with family support. The WITS Programs open conversations about conflict by using a common language. WITS stands for Walk Away, Ignore, Talk it out, and Seek help. When adults respond with this practiced, common language, we present conflicts as solvable. “Did you use your WITS?” or “What WITS did you try?” The program also identifies “WITS PICKS,” children’s books in the popular domain that present conflicts in which children have opportunities to talk about how they handled them and what else they could do. Many of the books are read online and are free to access.

“One thing that can make a difference is to find a way to open conversations about conflict and conflict resolutions.”

Using your WITS is not the only way to have open conversations about conflict. Many families establish their own routines, like reflecting on and talking out conflicts when everyone is calm or at bedtime, making a siblings plan for taking turns, and valuing family kindnesses and contributions Families can also talk about movies and TV programs in which the characters resolve conflicts. Thinking about what you do in your family and making these routines visible to children is important. Young children like to know what is the right thing to do. Seeking help can be rejected as “tattling” or embraced as problem solving.

Children need to be empowered to seek help and to be helpful. Parents can create opportunities and family cultures that make a difference in their abilities to resolve conflicts, and they can support schools in their efforts to do the same. By opening conversations about resolving conflict at home and in school, you can help your own children enhance their social responsibility and prosocial leadership, which can make a difference in improving school cultures.

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Children learning from each other in hunter-gatherer societies promotes collaborative problem-solving and can help us rethink approaches to child development.

The phenomenon of children learning mainly from each other – a typical practice in many hunter-gatherer communities – may provide important lessons about how to prepare children in post-industrial societies for rapid change and uncertain futures.

We have found that when children learn from other children in two sub-Saharan African forager societies, it fosters independence and collaborative problem solving. Such learning systems help children to be flexible in their behaviour. That’s a crucial skill for adapting quickly to changing seasons and environments—while also promoting cooperation, such as the sharing of knowledge and resources.

These findings are based on observational research of children learning among the Hadza people of Tanzania and the BaYaka people of Congo. Both societies still rely on hunting and wild fruits, vegetables, and tubers for a majority of their subsistence. The Hadza and BaYaka are also highly egalitarian, share food widely, and live in tightly knit camps. These cultural and subsistence features lead to very different childhoods for hunter-gatherer children when compared to children in the post-industrialized West.

Children learning together through play and work

A striking feature of childhood in hunter-gatherer societies is how much time boys and girls spend together in multi-aged peer groups away from adults. Even when adults are close by, they rarely guide children’s activities. Instead, children learn through child-to-child teaching and by imitating adult activities in their play. In doing so, children can find new, creative ways to perform adult culture.

“A striking feature of childhood in hunter-gatherer societies is how much time boys and girls spend together in multi-aged peer groups away from adults.”

For example, children regularly make small camps beside adult camps. They cut leaves and vines, bending them to make little huts. The boys will frequently go hunting, sometimes bringing back butterflies that they hand over to the girls, who then pretend to cook them over the fire. This play-food is then shared, following the same conventions as adults’ meat sharing. In the process, children develop cooking skills while also learning about cultural norms surrounding food sharing.

Children’s play will often seamlessly transition into foraging work. Hadza children are active foragers, often using small bows and digging sticks, made for them by parents or older siblings, to collect food close to the camp. BaYaka children also participate in food collecting, with some young adolescent boys maintaining their own trap lines.

Children learning from children

Away from the eyes of their busy parents, children regularly engage in child-to-child teaching. When children are cutting down a tree, another child might say, “No, hold the knife like this”. Or they might say: “Let me show you.” Perhaps, they grab a vine and discuss whether it’s the right kind to use for shimmying up a tree. “Should we cut footholds in the tree like dad?” asks one.

Photo: BaYaka parents sometimes make small versions of tools to encourage children’s participation in subsistence activities. Sarah M. Pope.

Children also delegate tasks to one another. It can be as small a task as asking another child to bring a plate of food across the camp, or as big as sending children to collect cassava leaves or to go hunting with their father. Children will invite each other to participate in tasks: “Let’s go and collect tubers,” they might say, or “Let’s fetch water”. There might be commands like: “Add water to the cooking pot.” In all of these activities, children are teaching each other through questions, instructions and demonstration.

Parents value children learning autonomously

Another striking feature of childhood in hunter-gatherer societies is that parents value children’s autonomy. For example, BaYaka parents explained to us that they see children as being in charge of their own education: they believe that telling children what to do might prevent children learning other equally meaningful skills. Because BaYaka parents view children as developing autonomously, they frown on pushing children to hit a milestone for which they might not be developmentally ready. Parents also know that when children are acting autonomously, they will often do something helpful, like cooking. They don’t want to get in the way of that.

“As we face an impending environmental crisis, we could learn from how hunter-gatherer child-rearing promotes problem-solving skills.”

Thus, while parents are often aware of their children’s whereabouts, they refrain from interfering in their activities. Parents play important roles in teaching children in later adolescence, particularly hunting and other complex skills.

Lessons from hunter-gatherers for child development

Hunter-gatherers do not rely on stored crops or domestic animals for subsistence. The autonomy afforded to hunter-gatherer children may help develop the behavioural flexibility necessary for living in their unpredictable environments. In turn, collaborative learning may ensure that knowledge and food are shared within the community. As we face an impending environmental crisis, we could learn from how hunter-gatherer child-rearing promotes problem-solving skills.

We need not become hunter-gatherers to foster collaborative problem-solving in the global North. Whether in school or out of school, encouraging children to spend more time in multi-age peer groups, where they can try activities just beyond their skill level without interference from adults, can provide more creative opportunities for learning.

For hunter-gatherers, autonomous work, play, and children learning from each other foster the skills necessary to thrive in shifting environments. By adopting aspects of hunter-gatherer learning systems in the global North, we may well give all children the skills necessary for solving tomorrow’s problems.

Header photo: BaYaka children often emulate adult activities, such as spirit dances, during play.

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Rolling out a ‘Western’ model of early childhood education and care (ECEC) is a wasted opportunity to build relevance, excellence and trust.

African cultural wisdom about child development and good parenting can and should contribute to building local relevance, trust and excellence in early childhood education and care (ECEC). But the current surge of ECEC programming on the continent pays little attention to that indigenous wisdom, preferring to “roll out” a package of Western practices in a way that is reminiscent of the missionary and colonial past.

Research in many African societies has found that indigenous child-rearing practices are rooted in the view that “intelligence” is broader than the Euro-American psychometric concept emphasised in many school curricula. Incorporating that perspective into ECEC programming would generate innovations that could also be relevant in the global north.

However, failure to re-evaluate the current roll-out model in African countries risks turning ECEC into an expensive failure, with children missing out on learning and becoming immersed too soon in English or French medium teaching, thus hindering their long-term development.

Strengths of child development in Africa

The case for “Africanising” ECEC springs from three arguments. The first highlights research into the values and strengths embedded in the context of child development in rural African communities and shows the potential benefits of incorporating those values and strengths into ECEC. Widely recognised features of that context are a rich repertoire of stories, music and dance, and frequent engagement of children and adolescents in the nurturant care of younger siblings.

The second argument concerns scepticism among many African parents about – and hence resistance to – ECEC practices that focus on mother-child interaction through didactic play, commonplace in middle-class Western families but alien to many low-income African families. Studies of children’s play in Africa show that adults are generally excluded. The benefits of guided play for early childhood development are therefore more likely to be appreciated by African parents if ECEC programmes assign a guiding role to older children.

The third argument concerns an additional impact of parents seeing ECEC as having little in common with home life. This view of ECEC as a foreign import and related to the modern, technological world often leads African parents (especially in urban areas) to press for the nation’s “language of power” (English or French) to be the medium of instruction, supposedly giving their children a “head start” in that “modern” world.

However, research across many different nations clearly demonstrates that accelerated introduction to a second language is unhelpful to most children: home languages are much more appropriate for early literacy and numeracy learning. That’s why many African governments have introduced a policy of using the “mother tongue” or a familiar local language as medium of instruction in the first few grades of primary school. Moreover, using a locally familiar indigenous language in ECEC opens the children’s access to stories and songs which are known to the community’s adults, enabling them to participate more readily in implementation of the curriculum.

Benefits of ECEC adaptability

My research with colleagues in Zambia throws light on opportunities for innovation in African ECEC that could make it more relevant, successful, acceptable and affordable. In the northern Zambian town of Mpika, pre-adolescent children in primary school, who would typically take care of younger siblings at home, were assigned by a group of innovative class teachers to study the growth chart printed on the standard health record card kept at home for a sibling or a neighbour’s child, aged under five years.

“Research throws light on the opportunities for innovating ECEC in African contexts that could make it more relevant, successful, acceptable and affordable.”

Each primary school learner escorted his or her “adopted” under-five child to the local clinic where they learned how the chart was updated. In class they learned how to interpret the young child’s growth curve plotted on the chart, and they were taught about the nutritional care of young children, including oral rehydration using fluids, sugar and salt to treat diarrhoea. ECEC project work both in the classroom and outside was organised in study teams. This promoted cooperative learning as students co-constructed solutions to problems assigned by their teacher – a departure from the teacher-directed, individual learning typically practiced in primary and secondary schools.

Photo: Gertrude Mwape, 1997.

Parents liked sibling child care training

In our case-study of the Mpika initiative, we found that many parents of children enrolled in classes using this child-to-child approach considered it a natural and welcome extension of a practice embedded in Bemba culture that they used with their children at home and had experienced themselves as children in an earlier generation.

Later, we followed up with these children as adolescents in ninth grade and again as adults, 14 years after their participation in the ECEC project. We found that those enrolled in the child-to-child project classes had a higher success rate in the public exam for admission into secondary school, compared with children enrolled in other classes at the same school.

As adults in their early 20s, these young people spoke about how they had enjoyed their primary education and said they regretted that the cooperative learning with peers, which they experienced in the Mpika project, was later discouraged at secondary school. Several of the young men, now fathers, said that the experience had taught them about egalitarian participation of men and women in domestic life, inspiring their own commitment to be more hands-on in raising their own children.

The Mpika Child-to-Child ECEC initiative was adopted as a national model in Zambia for about a decade but then upstaged by other programmes, and it has not been sustained. Another Child-to-Child ECEC initiative was launched, with UNICEF support, in Ethiopia; it focussed more on the benefits to younger children. The primary school children were trained and deployed, with some support, to conduct pre-literacy activities for the younger children at weekends in their home villages. The Ethiopian ECEC evaluation found a measurable improvement in the learning readiness of these younger children when they began school, and some suggestive evidence of a positive impact on the older children’s academic and social development similar to what we found in Zambia.

Broad definition of ‘intelligence’ in African societies

Underpinning this work is my ECEC research – and that of colleagues – showing that African agrarian societies, when questioned about what constitutes “intelligence”, have a broad concept that includes two complementary dimensions. There is the quickness, cognitive alacrity and cleverness that Western intelligence tests emphasise. The other dimension is about children’s cooperativeness and social responsibility, and includes their capacity to be given instructions, sent off on a task and achieve an assigned goal reliably.

Together, these capacities are known among Zambia’s Chewa people as nzelu. My study asked parents which of the two dimensions of nzelu was most important – cleverness or social responsibility. The most common response was that you can’t have one without the other. In other words, somebody cannot be judged intelligent if they don’t exhibit both quick thinking and social responsibility.

Broader concept found across Africa

This African concept of intelligence – common to agrarian societies and broader than the Western academic focus on cognitive skills – has also emerged from studies of other peoples, including the Bemba and the Lozi in Zambia, the Makonde people of Tanzania and the Baoulé people of Côte d’Ivoire. Eleanor Grigorenko and Robert Sternberg have replicated the methodology I used in my Zambian ECEC study and found similar conceptualisation among the Luo people in Kenya. Cooperative learning is part of the social responsibility dimension, which helps to explain the enthusiasm of those who took part in the Mpika project.

“African agrarian societies have a broad concept of ‘intelligence’ that includes two complementary dimensions – cleverness and social responsibility.”

None of this means that there is one simple African notion of how to raise children. Foraging communities, relying on hunting and gathering, put a high value on developing autonomy in children, as described in Sheina Lew-Levy’s study of the BaYaka and Hadza peoples. In contrast, African agrarian societies demand more compliance and cooperation.

ECEC should respect indigenous child-rearing

However, there are clearly child-rearing philosophies that are distinct from those in the global north and have developed because they fit Africa’s contexts. Some of these risk being overlooked and repressed by Western cultural innovations such as ECEC, if those innovations are deployed inflexibly.

So, for example, Professor Bame Nsamenang, one of Africa’s leading psychologists, who died in 2018, highlighted how Western agencies promoting education typically criticise the high level of participation of adolescent girls in caring for their younger siblings. They see it as a diversion from the girls’ education and a mark of exploitation by mothers who should be doing the infant caring. However, Nsamenang pointed out that the girls were not being kept at home just to reduce the mother’s burden of caring for the baby, but rather as part of a positive socialisation agenda for the girls, rooted in African concepts of healthy child development and intelligence that includes social responsibility.

ECEC in Africa faces the challenge of how to integrate such important insights into its practice. So it might, for example, support responsible sibling care as part of the educational agenda of ECEC and primary schooling, so that older girls are not faced with a binary choice between participating in an indigenous system of child-rearing or getting a school education.

ECEC intellectual foundations questioned

Making ECEC more open to adaptation is particularly important because the intellectual foundations that shaped ECEC in Western and other industrialised societies, before it was confidently transferred to Africa, are coming under increasingly critical scientific analysis. The focus of the dominant ECEC package on mother-child interactions reflects the neo-Freudian concept that healthy child development requires exclusive attachment to one adult in the first year. The incompleteness of this theory is demonstrated by successful child-rearing practices in Africa and Asia that distribute responsibility for child care among various adults and the child’s elder siblings.

ECEC orthodoxy in the global north has also tended to reflect literature on the so-called “Word Gap”, which posits that children from less privileged Western backgrounds lack sufficient exposure to language, which hampers their speaking and reading development. That orthodoxy, which has powered early years’ interventions, is now challenged by more recent research showing that language exposure in less privileged groups is, in fact, sufficient for the language development required to achieve future competencies.

In short, ECEC, as translated from its origins in Western societies, can afford to shed some of these already shaky cultural assumptions and be open to insights and practices that have proven adaptive and successful in the societies to which it is being transferred.

Creative next steps for ECEC in Africa

A good start, for example, would be for ECEC initiatives in Africa to consider how to build more child-to-child delivery into care, as exemplified by the Mpika project. This would make ECEC less costly to parents, could be educationally beneficial to older children delivering some of the care, and might help alter parental perceptions that ECEC is just another branch of a form of schooling which is culturally alien to them.

Such rethinking and experimentation with ECEC has the potential to develop models that could be applicable in the global north. There, many prominent social commentators are recognising that social responsibility – and not just cognitive skills – is an important outcome of child development. African experience could offer the global north some suggestions about how to nurture that vital element of child development, neglect of which poses a global challenge for the future of humankind.

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