This is Roundtable.
Most of us don't remember the first few years of our lives, but the very early stage matters in a person's growth in more ways than we think.
While most parents in urban areas, better informed and having received good education themselves, invest considerable efforts in early stage childcare, the same cannot be said for parents who must leave their children behind in rural areas.
What can be done to narrow the urban -rural gap in early stage childcare?
Better practices in rural areas?
Again, now the relevant authorities are trying to push this to the wider scale on the belief that early intervention and early care, better care for children at the early stage might have benefit for their long -term and future growth.
Is there any science with this?
Yes, exactly. I think it's now a universal consensus, especially among scientists and experts, that the first five years of a child's life is a period of a very fast brain growth.
That has significant connection in the future, especially when it comes to the child's ability to learn, to adapt, and very importantly, process emotions that can lead to further questions when it comes to your mental health when you grow up and how you interact with people around you, how you learn,
especially how fast or slow you can learn.
Every link for the rest of your life is dependent on these first few years.
Ninety percent of a child's brain develops by the age of five.
Not fully developed, still a little bit to go, but the majority of the work is done by the age of five.
Newborns, they have all the brain cells or neurons that they'll have for the rest of their life.
The thing with babies is that the connections between those cells, those things that enable us to move, or think, or communicate, those are formed during the early years of our lives.
And then some of the essential connections like motivation and self -regulation, problem solving, self -esteem, that can be a little bit more difficult to form later on in life.
Yeah, we do agree, Faye.
I agree, and everybody agrees, that the foundation for later learning and skill building, well, that foundation comes from a child's earliest experiences.
But the issue I think that experts have is, what does early mean?
What's the actual definition of early?
Our brains grow faster between the ages of zero and three that at any later point in our lives, babies form more than one million neural connections every second.
I look at babies sometimes and I think they're not really doing anything.
It's all happening inside their brains.
One million a second.
And when babies have nurturing relationships and early learning experiences and good health and good nutrition, those neural connections I was talking about, they're stimulated, they're strengthened, and that lays a strong foundation for success in school, and then much later on in the workforce.
Yeah. Keyword here is stimulation.
And the speed, I think, as Steve has already underpinned for us, and the speed at which the connections are being built, but the stimulation is crucial here.
I think that defines the gap between urban and rural parenting styles.
Because I think for those of us who have been parents, I'm sure you agree that when you expose your child to a different environment, other than the environment in which they've gone accustomed to, for instance, if you keep your kids at home and you bring them outside to a park, a park that they haven't
been to before, you will see them opening their eyes and then very wide and then they will be observing everything they can see.
And I don't know what's going on in their brain, but when you bring them back home, you notice something different.
And also, I think, especially when you are raising a baby, you realize that they tend to fall asleep after, for example, you're visiting a park together.
And I checked with the doctor, I mean, what's the problem here?
Does that mean that I didn't put him or her on the right sleeping schedule?
And the doctor told me that the baby got really tired after absorbing so many stimulations in that park, the colours, the sounds, the wings, the touch, everything is so much for them so that they got tired.
Yeah, I read about that as well, that when babies make a fuss or when they cry, not sure they're telling you that they're tired or they're hungry, but they're also at different times trying to tell you that they're either overstimulated or understimulated.
So, they're either bored or there's too much going on and they can't handle it emotionally.
Really fascinating babies are.
This is from the uschamberfoundation .org.
They say that most of our investments in early childhood start too late at ages four or older.
And by that time, the most crucial years of early brain development have already passed.
For example, research shows that at age two, toddlers from low income families are already six months behind in their language processing skills at two years old, already falling behind by six months.
And without greater investment in the first three years, many children will miss the opportunity to reach their full potential.
So, yes, early development is not just important, it's crucial, it's critical.
And for Chinese children, kindergarten begins at the age of three.
And before that, parents will have to take their task upon themselves or try and find solutions in the market.
I mean, but the market doesn't necessarily supply enough service for everybody, for every child to have access to preschool education.
But that is the case in urban areas, even.
Well, I think there is also a developing curve when it comes to early childhood education in urban areas.
For example, in cities like Beijing right now, I have two children and I think each of them, how we track their development before the age of three are very different.
So for my little ones who is still going through this process at the moment - How old?
He's about 10 months old.
So my community tracked his development very, very timely, closely.
Like every three months, I need to take him to a nearby hospital to have him to have the medical techs, his growth situations.
Like length or height?
Yes, length, height, and how you are feeding him, what about his nutrition?
Oh really? And then - You have to report all of this.
I need to report that.
And they need to keep a record of that.
And if I didn't report him to a medical institute on time, they will send a family doctor to check on me, what's the problem?
Do you need help? And then they also have a doctor to check on the cognitive development of that child, giving him some tests of your toys to see how he plays around with them and to see if he responds to your certain calls, and then they give me feedback on how your child has been developing and how
you can improve if he or she is showing signs of slowing down in certain areas.
It's like a Gaokao for babies.
More like monthly examinations, just more quarterly examinations.
Boy, China's testing starts at a very early age.
It can be stressful.
I mean, I'm like on alert, like, am I doing wrong here?
Did I not do enough especially when it comes to cognitive development parts?
But then I also saw doctors telling a mother or about how her baby is not able to stand on his own at the age of almost one year old.
And the doctor is very serious about this, is saying, your baby is slowing down in terms of move independently, and it can have very serious later on impact on his life.
And you need to take it seriously.
You need to tell him and give him the space and opportunity to move around by himself.
So there's a tremendous amount of support by the sounds of things from the medical community, from the local governments at a community level in the urban areas, in big cities.
But this is the city of Beijing, the nation's capital.
Resources are concentrated where there are probably more doctors than, well, other second -tier cities, not to mention the urban areas.
So this is the issue, right?
The rural areas. And they're talking about the gap that could be children's early separation from their parents that causes part of this gap.
It's mentioned in a CCTV report that many children in rural China are separated from their parents before the age of three and are raised by their grandparents instead while their parents go off to work in cities.
And these gaps in early childhood education in rural areas and also some urban areas as well.
This is according to research conducted by China Development Research Foundation, or CDRF, and this is causing the development in rural areas of kids to differ considerably from those raised in urban areas.
That seems to be the issue.
Like I said earlier, preschool or kindergarten started, starts at the age of three, and before that is a family -based child care.
And for urban areas, perhaps especially the most crowded and most populous cities where you see a lot of young folks traveling from their hometown to seek opportunities and set up shop and settle down and start a life, more often than not, you see the elderly grandparents coming over to help.
And that could be an issue, that is because there are gaps or differences between generations with regard to how children are supposed to be engaged and taken care of.
And so when we talk about family -based child care, of course the presence of parents is crucial here.
But for parents in urban areas, I mean even though they may work very hard, they have to work overtime, but they come home at the end of the day and they get to be with their children at the end of the day and they could stand to make important decisions with regard to the child's care and engage with them.
Whereas, unfortunately for parents in rural areas, more often than not, they look for job opportunities in a different city.
And early childhood kids can be very difficult to deal with and the common practice is to leave the kids in the hometown with the grandparents and that is an issue.
And this isn't to criticize parents in rural areas because they're trying to move to a bigger city to create work and create a better life for their child, right?
But you make a good point in cities, bigger cities in China.
That doesn't really happen because you'll get that family support perhaps in the same community or at least perhaps within the same city a lot of the time if you happen to be from one of those big cities.
Professor Tao Sha from State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning at Beijing Normal University said that when they visited some of the rural areas here in the country and the professor saw children who seemed to be extremely shy and she believes it's largely due to the limited social
interactions that the children had during critical periods of growth.
We mentioned between zero and three years old and I guess that's kind of what we're talking about.
I'm trying to think why would they have limited social interactions in rural communities versus urban areas?
Is it because they don't have things like pre -kindergarten in the rural areas?
Well pre -kindergarten is hard to find even in urban areas like we mentioned earlier there's not enough supply in the market.
So parents who can afford to spend big money to send their kids to pre -kindergarten child care.
We call them daycare centers and sometimes in Beijing the amount could add up to 10 ,000 yen a month basically at least three five thousand yen a month in Beijing.
But then I think another part with this social interaction is how you talk with the baby even though you think maybe the baby is not responding to you but he or she is listening and so in cities there are professionals doctors or you know your friends are telling you you need to constantly talking to
your baby you know telling him or her what you are doing and sharing your feelings with them.
But when it comes to rural areas I think the awareness about talking to your baby is communicating with them is kind of low at the moment.
So you can see that a lot of the grandparents when they are staying with the baby they are very quiet.
There is not a lot of sound going on.
There are not a lot of toys.
They are not telling stories showing picture books and these are all part of you know the daily activities that are basically routinely carried out in cities like Beijing.
In rural communities grandparents are probably often busy on a daily basis as well.
Right this is the reason why I under underlined the the rule of parents earlier on because parents often are better educated than the grandparents given this speed of development within China in the past few decades.
Parents may have better know -how may be better informed with regard to child care if they were around to execute these ideas and then the the children can stand to benefit.
Whereas if I mean I'm not here to blame the grandparents for not knowing what how to deal with a children I mean parents grandparents in fact generations of grandparents and parents have been taking care of children in whatever country following whatever tradition they already have but it's just that certain traditions
they don't necessarily they are not necessarily good for the development of the children.
For instance the old fashioned way of thinking might believe that all a child needs is for his or her every need to be taken care of when he or she needs to eat when he or she needs to poop when he or she needs a diaper change.
Well in traditional sense a very competent caregiver should be able to look into each care each need of the child and seek to it as soon as possible.
I've seen one example of a friend of mine who been complaining that her son somehow hasn't been able to pick up speaking as fast as other kids of his generation and she actually took the kid to a professional doctor and the doctor said this is precisely because his every need was taking very good care of and she
had no and he had no no necessity to communicate whatever need he had it and so it's another it's a scenario based when you don't feel the need to communicate then you don't develop you don't practice.
Wow that's fascinating so in the rural communities what exactly what steps are being taken what action is being taken?
Well there are a couple of them for example there is this one ongoing measures called starting point of sunshine action plan from 2024 to 2025 and in Chinese and is initiated by the China Development Research Foundation this May and this program not only integrates parental guidance and nutritional
advice for children aged below three in underdeveloped areas of rural China it also provides founding funding and training for necessary personnel so that these projects can provide comprehensive early childhood education and care services for about a hundred thousand rural children aged between zero
to three and they are seeing some very good they are also having a lot of very good partners you know giving the funding for these activities and plans so that these plans I think it's more sustainable when it comes to going further because I mean financing is the base for everything.
Sure yeah and this project is a big one it has a total budget pardon me of about 300 million yuan that's 42 roughly 42 million US dollars and two -thirds of the budget is jointly raised pardon me by foundation and the foundation and its partners and the remaining one -third is provided by local governments
in the pilot countries so this is good news because it means it's not just one organization that's on board with this there are multiple organizations that are working together and they're investing a lot a lot of money into this the plan has received financial support as well from nine different companies
as corporate initiators that's what they're called over 80 scholars and professionals with donations exceeding 60 million yuan so again a lot of money from a lot of different places.
You've got the resources then the following question is what do they do with the resources gathered so far?
Well they're trying to train local child care advisors from within the villages to have them visit rural families once a week and provide early childhood education and parenting support which is it's basically like step number one I suppose is getting the proper training for people.
Yes and so that I think now the CDRF the foundation they are also trying to you know sort of expand their plan to more rural areas in China and also I think they're including more people for example some moms in rural areas can participate in this action as a sort of child care advisors so that they
can give guidance and provide services to families in need and help those children to grow better.
In some cases they're giving each child an hour of lessons every week so they're getting they're engaging the children they are following what the kids and how well these children are developing and what help they need.
It's been piloted in 19 counties across 10 provinces and this is benefiting over 40 ,000 rural children so this is addressing the needs of a lot of different kids and it's considered a really effective approach to addressing gaps in early childhood care in these rural areas.
Once a week perhaps it could be argued for an hour a week is is not enough but of course there are a lot of communities and a lot of children that need this attention so it's not as easy to provide full -time care for all of these kids.
Well one hour a day is one hour oh one hour of lesson every week I mean that's not enough but it's enough to give parents and grandparents the the infro that they need and perhaps they can do something about it and also even for children who are aged below three they don't have a lot of daily active
hours. That's true.
They'll sleep oftentimes.
Yeah I believe there was one story of an instructor who traveled quite far to get to the community and then upon arrival the baby was sleeping at the time and there's really nothing you can do about that but what the instructors do they they provide like puzzle games and a tailored curriculum designed
for various age groups.
One of the instructors Zhang Yan is overseeing the program in the Gujiang am I pronouncing that correctly county and she explained that the instructors are primarily local moms who speak the same dialect and can therefore establish smoother communication with the children.
That's something that I wouldn't have considered to be a very important point but there are lots of different dialects around this huge country of China and being able to communicate in those dialects is I guess a really important thing.
Right and some local kindergarten teachers also take on part -time roles as instructors in these campaigns and so but again there are different limitations for different families in rural areas like we mentioned earlier in many cases the parents have to travel to a different city they live in in a different
city than the than the Trojan and also when when they leave the children behind there are not necessarily a lot of people to take care of the children the grandparents might have to work in the field and they can't just honestly leave the kids at home in bed and so they take naps after naps in some
cases they have to take the kids to to the field to to you know not to work but to just have them there just to just keep an eye on that kind of thing and so even with the efforts that this campaign is trying to put in there is still more that needs to be done and I think simply given the parents know
how it's not enough perhaps some other ways to for instance expanding the hours where these children are gaining active stimulation can be a solution but that will require considerable much more considerably much more input yeah and it would require more people and more teachers I mean currently they
undergo multiple rounds of training before getting their professional guidance so of course they're qualified but you would need a lot a lot more people we're just talking logistically speaking right it's a it's a big challenge in Canada I was wondering if we had a similar issue and I found a story
from the CBC about 10 years ago from the province of Prince Edward Island do you know Anne of Green Gables I wonder if that's a popular story long red hair I think anyway that's the province Prince Edward Island and the issue that they were having there was not government funding for the programs for kindergartens
or students who were younger but just an enrollment problem and the government the Canadian government at that at that time said we're willing to invest money into these child care centers but you have to have a minimum I think they said 40 students to enroll and in a rural community I think they said
they could get 20 students but there weren't 40 kids to enroll so therefore the government said no we can't give you the funding for that so it's an issue in Canada as well that was a while ago but the issues continue to I guess the solution is to acknowledge that investment in rural areas is in fact
is more costly you need to you can't really balance it out you can use the same equation that you use for urban areas where population is more concentrated and just know what to expect
