Serve & Return Interaction Shapes Brain Circuitry
This 2-minute video explains why “serve and return” interaction between children and significant adults in their lives is one of the most essential experiences in shaping the architecture of the developing brain.
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Young Children Develop in an Environment of Relationships
This working paper from the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child explains why an environment of relationships is crucial for the development of a child’s brain architecture, which lays the foundation for later developmental outcomes.
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InBrief: The Science of Neglect
This brief explains why neglect, or the absence of responsive, supportive care, can affect the formation of the developing brain, impairing later learning, behavior, and health.
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The Science of Neglect: The Persistent Absence of Responsive Care Disrupts the Developing Brain
This working paper from the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child explains why young children who experience severe deprivation or neglect can experience a range of negative consequences.
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InBrief: The Science of Neglect
This 6-minute video explains why significant neglect is so harmful in the earliest years of life and why effective interventions are likely to pay significant dividends in better long-term outcomes in learning, health, and parenting of the next generation.
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From Best Practices to Breakthrough Impacts
This report synthesizes 15 years of dramatic advances in the science of early childhood and early brain development, analyzes evidence generated by 50 years of program evaluation research, and presents a framework for driving science-based innovation in early childhood policy and practice.
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MOOC: The Best Start in Life: Early Childhood Development for Sustainable Development
This online course draws from research in neuroscience, psychology, economics, anthropology, and program implementation and evaluation in order to discuss ECD and explore its role in achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.
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5 Steps for Brain-Building Serve and Return
Serve and return interactions make everyday moments fun and become second nature with practice. By taking small moments during the day to do serve and return, you build up the foundation for children’s lifelong learning, behavior, and health—and their skills for facing life’s challenges.
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InBrief: The Science of Early Childhood Development
This brief explains how the science of early brain development can inform investments in early childhood. These basic concepts, established over decades of neuroscience and behavioral research, help illustrate why child development—particularly from birth to five years—is a foundation for a prosperous and sustainable society.
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Training Module: “Talk With Me Baby”
Learn how to empower and support families so that they can engage in meaningful conversations with their young children and advance their language and lifelong learning. The eight-session “Talk With Me Baby” course is open to the public and available through Cox Campus and Read Right from the Start.
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Three Principles to Improve Outcomes for Children and Families
Understanding how the experiences children have starting at birth, even prenatally, affect lifelong outcomes—combined with new knowledge about the core capabilities adults need to thrive as parents and in the workplace—provides a strong foundation upon which policymakers and civic leaders can design a shared and more effective agenda.
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Building Babies’ Brains Through Play: Mini Parenting Master Class
In this Mini Parenting Master Class from UNICEF, Center on the Developing Child Director Jack P. Shonkoff, M.D., explains the importance of serve and return interactions like play—and how easy they are to do, especially through practice!
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How-to: 5 Steps for Brain-Building Serve and Return
This how-to video breaks down serve and return interactions into 5 simple steps and features adults and young children doing each step together.
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Play in Early Childhood: The Role of Play in Any Setting
In this video, learn more about how play can foster children’s resilience to hardship, and how the complex interactions involved when children play help build their brains.
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InBrief: The Science of Early Childhood Development
This video from the InBrief series addresses basic concepts of early childhood development, established over decades of neuroscience and behavioral research.
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About The Brain Architects Podcast
Healthy development in the early years provides the building blocks for educational achievement, economic productivity, responsible citizenship, strong communities, and successful parenting of the next generation. By improving children’s environments, relationships, and experiences early in life, society can address many costly problems, including incarceration, homelessness, and the failure to complete high school. But if you’re […]
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The Brain Architects Podcast: Serve and Return: Supporting the Foundation
What is “serve and return”? What does it mean to have a “responsive relationship” with a child? How do responsive relationships support healthy brain development? And what can parents and caregivers do in their day-to-day lives to build these sorts of relationships? This episode of The Brain Architects podcast addresses all these questions and more! […]
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Three Core Concepts in Early Development
This three-part video series depicts how advances in neuroscience, molecular biology, and genomics now give us a much better understanding of how early experiences are built into our bodies and brains, for better or for worse.
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Science X Design: Three Principles to Improve Outcomes for Children
Moving forward as a society depends on children developing to their full potential, and the science of early childhood development can help us figure out the best ways to make this happen. In this video, learn about three principles we’ve identified that community leaders, policymakers, and practitioners can use as a guiding star for designing […]
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Parenting for Brain Development and Prosperity
Philip A. Fisher, a senior fellow at the Center, presents at 2013 NBC News’ Education Nation Summit in New York City. His talk explains why positive, reciprocal interactions between caregivers and children can have enormous positive effects on children’s development and lay the groundwork for a prosperous future.
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What Is COVID-19? And How Does It Relate to Child Development?
This infographic explains the basics of what COVID-19 is, and what it can mean for stress levels in both children and the adults who care for them. It also offers some easy and concrete solutions to help caregivers ensure that both they and the children they care for don’t experience long-term effects of stress.
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FIND: Using Science to Coach Caregivers
This video focuses on Filming Interactions to Nurture Development (FIND), a video coaching program that aims to strengthen positive interactions between caregivers and children.
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How to Support Children (and Yourself) During the COVID-19 Outbreak
Even during this uncertain time, it’s a sure thing that our children are still learning, growing, and developing. But, supporting a child’s healthy development can be simple and free! (And, it may even help relieve your stress.) Here are four steps to focus on right now.
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The Brain Architects Podcast: COVID-19 Special Edition: Self-Care Isn’t Selfish
In the second episode, Dr. Rahil Briggs, National Director of ZERO TO THREE’s HealthySteps program, discusses the current state of pediatrics, and why caregiver health is child health.
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Child Development Core Story
This educational video series on the importance of the early years was created by the Project for Babies, a former initiative of the University of Minnesota Center for Early Education and Development.
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8 Things to Remember about Child Development
In this important list, featured in the From Best Practices to Breakthrough Impacts report, the Center on the Developing Child sets the record straight about some aspects of early child development.
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Vroom
Vroom is a set of tools and resources from the Bezos Family Foundation designed to inspire families to turn everyday moments into “brain building moments” by layering activities that are essential to healthy brain development onto existing routines. Vroom was developed with input from early childhood experts, neuroscientists, parents, and community leaders, as well as the Center on the Developing Child.