Rhode Island preschoolers are learning to manage their feelings
When a thoughtless driver cut her off, Michelle Santurri had some choice words. But what happened next left Santurri speechless, “Mom, calm down,” said her daughter Mia, 5. “Take a breath. Talk nicely to people.”
Mia’s social skills did not appear overnight, her mother says. She developed them in the Cranston Head Start program, where preschool children learn how to manage their feelings through a cast of puppet characters who come to life on the arms of teachers twice a week during the school year.
Maggie McNamara, a preschool teacher, uses the puppet Molly to emphasize skills in sharing to children at Cranston Head Start preschool.
Recently, teacher Maggie McNamara taught about sharing with the assistance of Molly, a life-sized three-year-old doll who sat in McNamara’s lap while McNamara got down on the floor for “circle time” with 18 preschoolers.
While McNamara stroked Molly’s long flaxen yarn-hair, Molly told the class about the argument she had had with her brother, Wally, over a bicycle at home. In the end, McNamara’s class helped Molly figure out ways to share the bicycle — taking turns and playing with a scooter when Wally has the bike.
Children’s behavior shows measurable improvement
In 12 Cranston Head Start preschools serving about 190 3-year-olds to 5-year-olds — an age when temper tantrums and aggression can be common — teachers have not had to remove one child for disruptive behavior during the current academic year, according to Susan Mooney, education program manager.
That is one small measure of the success of the puppet-assisted curriculum, called “The Incredible Years,” now in its fifth year at Cranston Head Start preschools.
While the effectiveness of the Cranston program is still undergoing outside evaluation, research over the last three decades, including a five-year study of 765 children in Ramsay County, Minn., found Incredible Years effective at teaching the kind of emotional self-control and social skills in early childhood that are prerequisites for later academic success.
Childhood mental health during early years was initial focus
Cranston Head Start had been looking for a comprehensive approach to classroom management five years ago when it received a mental health grant and asked Bradley Children’s Hospital to train its staff in implementing the Incredible Years program.
Now the same Bradley researchers who introduced Incredible Years to Cranston Head Start are gearing up for a much broader application of the principles of prevention and early intervention to promote healthy emotional development in young children, particularly in the preschool years. The state Department of Health has asked a team at Bradley, led by psychologists Susan Dickstein and Ronald Seifer, to implement a five-year grant totaling $4.48 million from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to redefine the way the community thinks of childhood mental health, especially in the early years.
The effort, including a preschool emphasis on social and emotional wellness, is called Project LAUNCH. Rhode Island was one of the first six states to get grants for Project LAUNCH (Linking Actions for Unment Needs for Children’s Health).
Preschoolers health and wellness are the focus of the program
“People say mental health, but they think mental illness,” Dickstein said. “Mental health is about health and wellness,” she said. “For little kids that means expressing emotions appropriately and having good relationships.” Dickstein and her colleagues promote healthy emotional development, but they also watch out for symptoms of imbalance. “People have a hard time thinking that little kids can sometimes have big problems,” she said. “Babies can show us they are in an emotionally unhealthy state by being listless or lethargic,” she said.
If a toddler is having a few tantrums a day in preschool, that each lasts five minutes, but then regulates himself or herself after that initial outburst, he or she is displaying normal behavior for that age, Dickstein said. “But if the tantrum lasts two hours, and they can’t regulate, but they escalate to biting or head banging … that’s extreme,” she said. “We have to start to think about how to intervene with that child.” Preschool teachers
Children’s health issues are supported in numerous ways
Dickstein also watches out for children whose family, school, or economic situation put them at risk for developing problems as they grow older. Poverty alone is “potentially very bad for kids’ development,” she said, although neither economic status or any other single factor in a child’s life determines whether they will have later problems in school or elsewhere.
But the greater the number of factors interrupting a child’s need for love and security — for example, parental anxiety or depression, poor quality child care, domestic abuse — the greater the risk that normal social and emotional development will falter and give way to problems that can become increasingly difficult to address.
In Rhode Island, Project LAUNCH plans to offer screening for social and emotional development as part of well-child check-ups in pediatricians’ offices, beginning with primary care clinics in Providence. Parenting classes also will be available through the pediatricians’ offices, as well as an expanded number of Incredible Years preschool programs like the one in Cranston.
Dickstein said that initially, the project will focus on Providence, the area with the highest concentration of children at risk because of poverty and other factors. “Once we figure out how to do it in Providence, hopefully we will bring it statewide,” she said.
Marked decrease in whining, tattling and bickering allows more time to teach
In Rhode Island, Cranston Head Start is the only early childhood program to implement Incredible Years in a comprehensive manner, according to Mooney, the education manager. At the outset, five years ago, preschool teachers expressed a reluctance to take on yet another responsibility, she said.
But Maggie McNamara says she’s glad she put in the time to learn not only the performance part of the curriculum but ways to purposely reinforce lessons in turn-taking, sharing, and cooperation while working on language development and other skills related to academics.
“It’s second nature to me now,” McNamara said. The puppet-assisted curriculum “cuts down on whining, tattling, and bickering,” McNamara said. “The children are developing faster. It gives me a chance to teach rather than putting out fires all day,” McNamara said.
Parents get to learn alongside their children
Kim Baxter, the mental health specialist for Cranston Head Start preschool, coordinates weekly meetings for parents so they can learn how to apply the principles of the curriculum at home. Both parents and teachers learn how to praise positive behavior and ignore tantrums, unless there is a threat a child will harm himself or others.
Mika Chandler, the mother of 4-year-old Scarlet, said she was a “polite doubter” about that approach when she signed up for the parent group last fall. But Scarlet has responded so well to the positive reinforcement that Chandler has become convinced. Both she and Santurri signed up to repeat the parenting course with Baxter, figuring they could get even more out of it the second time. “We come from a society where we have to be in control; we have to be these domineering people,” Santurri said of the traditional parental role. “It doesn’t work.… They will want to control you back.”
“We’re going another way. What you do in the beginning will pay off in the long run in healthy, independent adults,” Santurri said.
