in the classroom
Early intervention
Storytelling triples resilience among at-risk kids .
Leonie Segal interviewed by Eleanor Campbell
A new study has found that reading out loud to at-risk children can triple their resilience before they start school .
Researchers from the University of South Australia took data from over 60,000 kids aged between 5 and 6 , focusing on kids who had suffered abuse or neglect .
They found children who had been mistreated were developmentally behind their peers when starting kindergarten .
Study lead , UniSA Professor Leonie Segal , says only a tiny portion of the government ’ s budget for the child and adolescent mental health service is directed to infants , toddlers and young children .
This places increased pressure on teachers and early childhood educators to intervene , she told Education Review .
“ It ’ s shocking how few services of quality there are available for our infants and young people who are distressed ,” she said .
Segal , who teaches Health Economics and Social Policy at the University of South Australia , joined Education Review to discuss early childhood resilience .
ER : How does child mistreatment affect the pivotal early school years ? LS : When we ’ re talking about child maltreatment , we ’ re talking about child abuse and neglect . Child abuse is when a child is physically abused , emotionally abused , really not nurtured at all , and treated in a way where they ’ re often scared , quite fearful , and their basic needs such as food , clothing and medical care aren ’ t being met .
We know from the research over the last 30 years that this affects the way their brains develop . For our brains to develop properly we need to be in a nurturing environment , which includes the food and the physical attributes we get as well as the emotional connections that we have .
These infants and young children often develop a very threat-based understanding of the world and become quite hypervigilant ; very over-alert to threats , and don ’ t settle easily . You can imagine how these things might play out when a child is moving towards attending school .
Your study found that young boys were found to be developmentally behind girls , particularly if they had been neglected or abused . Why is this ? I ’ m not sure that we entirely know those answers . Often boys do develop somewhat differently to girls in a different timeframe .
I think the other issue we have particularly in the early childhood sector is that there ’ s very few males ; so it ’ s not clear that when children are in preschool or in an early childhood setting that the boys are getting the support that they especially need .
There ’ s no doubt that if we had more men in the early childhood space that would assist considerably in helping boys with what ’ s going on for them . There is some other genetic evidence that suggests males inherently are less resilient than females , so it is some very complex factors that go into what we ’ ve seen .
How significant is that early learning environment in the later life outcomes of children who had suffered abuse or neglect in their younger years ? I think it ’ s essential . As we know , how people are doing at school in the early years sets you up for both your school trajectory and then your life trajectory . So if in a first year of school children are struggling to focus , or to socially and emotionally get on with their peers , if they ’ re struggling to understand instructions and follow them , then that sets up a pattern that can be difficult to break .
Some children will go on and be fine , but there ’ s others that will be set on a path . Children with abuse and neglect histories are often very shame-based , so
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