Building Blocks Magazine 2018-19

MAKING A DIFFERENCE How Brain Bags, Parent Outreach are building change BRAIN BUILDERS Tips to build your baby’s brain every day TMW UPDATE Pensacola parents part of research

ENHANCING LIVES SINCE

1936

The unwavering spirit, hardworking character, and confidence that we all can succeed is what makes our community so great. Pen Air is proud to be a strong community partner in an area where we all live, work, and play together. Learn more about our local history at penair.org/AboutUs.

Š 2019 Pen Air FCU. Insured by NCUA.

850.505.3200

| 1.877.4PENAIR

The more you listen, the more you learn At The Studer Family Children’s Hospital, we listen to get to know your child and you. Then our care teams create a personalized experience that’s right for your family. With more choices in pediatric specialty care, we can meet your specific needs, when you need it most.

Get the care that’s right for your child at StuderFamilyChildrensHospital.com

Welcome... ... to the biggest adventure you will have in life — parenting.

The first 1,000 days of your baby’s life — from birth to age 3 — are a crucial window for how his or her brain will grow.

You have the power to make the most of that time.

The more words children hear by age 3, the more likely they are to have the language skills they’ll need to succeed in school.

We hope this magazine can be a guide to help your whole family make the most of those first three years of your child’s life.

We hope parents, grandparents and family members find some tips and tools here for how talking to your child can help develop your child’s brain.

The Studer Community Institute has several projects that aim to improve kindergarten readiness in the community by teaching parents how language and interaction build a child’s brain during the first three years of life.

That early brain development is key to the foundation of a child’s readiness for school, ultimately putting that child on a path to success in school and life. That is crucial in Escambia County, which state education data indicates has a kindergarten readiness rate of 46 percent (as of 2017, the most recently available data).

That means, of the roughly 3,000 children who enter Escambia

County School District as kindergartners, about 1,577 of those children don’t have the fundamental language and academic skills they need to be ready for school.

We can’t let that continue.

Studer Community Institute’s tools and content to build an Early Learning City are informed by research-backed strategies to help parents understand why it is important to talk more with their children, and how that is the key to healthy brain development, school readiness and a better quality of life for all of us.

Our passion is to make our community the best place to live and raise a family. To us, that means giving parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles a deeper understanding of how important the first three years of life are to a child’s intellectual and emotional development.

Children are our lifeblood. They are the future of their own families — and they are the future of our entire community.

We hope this magazine — and all of our work — is part of the roadmap to becoming the kind of community our children will be proud to inherit.

Because when you build a brain, you build a life — and you build a community.

Shannon Nickinson

STUDER COMMUNITY INSTITUTE

OUR MISSION To improve the quality of life by building a vibrant community.

The Studer Community Institute is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization The Studer Community Institute is a 501(c)(3) public charity (EIN 47-5657008) and is registered with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to solicit contributions (Registration #CH48388). Donors can deduct contributions under Internal Revenue Code section 170.

A copy of the official registration and financial information may be obtained from the division of consumer services by calling toll-free (800-435-7352) within the state.

Registration does not imply endorsement, approval or recommendation by the state.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS Cindy Bear-Bonner Becca Boles Patrick Elebash Randy Hammer Chad Henderson

Gail Husbands Stacy Keller Williams Jean Pierre N’Dione Lisa Nellessen-Savage Mort O’Sullivan

Scott Remington Julie Sheppard Josh Sitton Janet Pilcher Walter “Bruce” Watson

LEARN MORE BY VISITING STUDERI.ORG /STUDERINSTITUTE

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BUILDING BLOCKS, A PARENT MAGAZINE

Inside 4

WELCOME LETTER

12

PENSACOLA DASHBOARD

8 QUINT STUDER 10 FIRST WORDS GESTURES BY 16 11 16MONTHS

How early learning can feed the soul of a vibrant community

22

Why early screening matters

communication milestones that launch language learning and literacy

1,000 DAYS 14 FIRST WRAPUP

18

Make the most of “mommy brain” to empower parents to build a baby’s brain

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO RESEARCH

How Pensacola moms will help other parents build brains

20 22 LENA GROW DECALS

Making play smart one park at a time

Using technology to boost quality of care in Escambia centers

8 DEVELOPMENTAL 26CHECKLISTS Check your child’s development with these milestones

30 BRAIN BAGS 32 PARENT OUTREACH

Brain Bags working to change how parents view early brain development

Parent Outreach project helps build up parents as they build their child’s brain

34 ACHIEVE ESCAMBIA

32

34

High impact, big change projects to improve Escambia’s kindergarten readiness rate

BUILDING BLOCKS, A PARENT MAGAZINE

 5

Talking with your children, even during their first years, helps them build language and acquire the skills needed to be ready to learn. As your baby grows, provide a word-rich environment. Talk about the books you read, the places you go, and the PBS KIDS shows you watch together.

Guidelines from the Academy of Pediatrics point to PBS KIDS as a leading resource for educational programming and encourage parents to watch TV with their children and talk about it together, so make screen time family time and let it inspire other learning activities!

Children learn best by engaging in activities that allow them to explore, imagine, and strengthen their natural abilities, so take play seriously! The WSRE PBS KIDS Early learning Imagination Station is equipped with books, toys, and touchscreen computers loaded with PBS KIDS educational games. Think of it as a play room specifically designed for you and your child to engage in fun, learning playtime together.

Kids like to play games connected to their favorite shows and characters, so come to the Imagination Station or visit pbskids.org for educational games and videos from shows like Dinosaur Train, Curious George, Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood and The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!

Early learning is as simple as 1-2-3 … with help

Young children are “pre-readers” who pick up clues about reading from their environment. Reading aloud to your child strengthens the part of their brain associated with visual imagery, the ability to understand stories, and word meaning.

Ear

Early learning is as simple 1-2-3……with with help Early learning is as simple as as 1-2-3 helpfrom fro learning is as simple as 1-2-3 with WSRE! Early learning is as simple as …

1-2-3 … help with from help from WSRE! When kids sit next to a caring adult and hear engaging stories, they develop positive associations with books.

Encourage everyone in your family to read with your baby. As Dr. Seuss says, “You’re never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read to a child.”

Early learning is as simple as 1-2-3 … with help from WSRE!

wsre.org

Anytime. Anywhere. pbs.org/anywhere

6 

Anytime. Anywhere.

BUILDING BLOCKS, 45380-1118 WSRE Building Blocks Mag ad.indd 1 bs.org/anywhere

Anytime. Anywhere.

A PARENTpbs.org/anywhere MAGAZINE

Watch the WSRE PBS KIDS Channel 23.4 anytime and anywhere. It’s free over-the-air, streaming live at pbskids.org and on the PBS KIDS Video app.

WSRE PBS KIDS is also carried by cable providers: Cox Channel 695, Mediacom Channel 84, Bright House Channel 200, and Riviera Utilities Channel 826.

The WSRE PBS KIDS Imagination Station, located at Blue Wahoos Stadium, is free and open 9 a.m. to noon Monday–Saturday. The Imagination Station is also open during Blue Wahoos home games and at other times as publicized.

Blue Wahoos Stadium • 351 W. Cedar Street • Downtown Pensacola

g is as simple as 1-2-3 … with help from WSRE!

p from WSRE!

Explore new ways to keep your child learning at pbsparents.org—a trusted resource that’s filled with information on child development and early learning.

Help your child learn and grow with PBS KIDS activities, monitor progress with the PBS Parents Child Development Tracker, and sign up for the PBS Parents Newsletter for parenting tips, timely articles, and interactive games.

rly learning is as simple as 1-2-3 … with help from WSRE! Hundreds of free and fun early learning activities can also be found at florida.pbslearningmedia.org.. Enter “preschool” in the search field.

mom WSRE! WSRE!

PBS KIDS is the #1 educational media brand for children.

SOURCE: MARKETING & RESEARCH RESOURCES, INC. (M&RR), JANUARY 2017

PBS KIDS and the PBS KIDS Logo are registered trademarks of Public Broadcasting Service. Used with permission. DANIEL TIGER’S NEIGHBORHOOD © 2018 The Fred Rogers Company. All Rights Reserved. CURIOUS GEORGE and related characters, created by Margret and H.A. Rey, are copyrighted and trademarked by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. THE CAT IN THE HAT KNOWS A LOT ABOUT THAT! Dr. Seuss Books and Characters TM & © 1957, 1985 Dr. Seuss Enterprises, L.P. All rights reserved.

DINOSAUR TRAIN TM & © 2009 The Jim Henson Company. All rights reserved.

BUILDING BLOCKS, A PARENT MAGAZINE

 7 12/3/18

9:40 AM

Vibrant Community THE PATH TO A

BEGINS WITH SUPPORTING PARENTS IN

Building Babies’ Brains

BY Quint Studer STUDER COMMUNITY INSTITUTE

I

’m passionate about vibrant communities, and if there is anything I know for sure, they don’t happen on their own.

They have to be built through a series of intentional steps. I’ve spent the last few years trying to figure out what those steps are and creating a blueprint for communities that want to revitalize to follow. It’s outlined in my book “Building a Vibrant Community: How Citizen-Powered Change Is Reshaping America.” It’s not foolproof, but it does create the best odds for success. At the heart of this blueprint is education.

The most vibrant communities are those with healthy, well-educated, productive citizens.

These are the kinds of citizens who become successful business owners and a strong workforce — which attracts investors to the community — which brings in more great talent and more investors. That’s why I’ve come to believe that raising this kind of citizen is the most important job in the world. And it begins at birth.

I’m telling you all of this to explain why I’m such an advocate for early learning. In fact, Pensacola is on track to become America’s first Early Learning City™. What that means is that we are committed to building strong, healthy brains beginning at birth. Our goal is to move our kindergarten readiness score to the best in the state, and that begins with early brain development.

Let me back up a bit and share how I got involved in this area. I am a former teacher, so I naturally have a lot of interest in how to improve education. And it’s known that kindergarten readiness is a good indicator of a student’s future success. Statistics show that if you are ready for kindergarten, you are much less likely to drop out of high school. And we want to prevent dropout rates at all costs. Research shows that males who drop out have a substantially higher chance of being incarcerated at some point in their life, and female dropouts have a substantially higher chance of giving birth before the age of 18.

At Studer Community Institute, we think kindergarten readiness is so important that we’ve made it one of the metrics we track on our community dashboard. A few years

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BUILDING BLOCKS, A PARENT MAGAZINE

back, we noticed there was a correlation between Escambia County’s kindergarten readiness rate and its high school dropout rate. We knew that to impact the dropout rate, we needed to tackle it at the source.

We needed to address the issue of early brain development.

One of the experts we talked to was Dr. Dana Suskind with the University of Chicago Medicine Comer Children’s Hospital. Her book, “Thirty Million Words: Building a Child’s Brain,” reveals that children who hear more words in infancy are better prepared when they enter school. She told us that 85 percent of all brain development happens in the first three years of life.

To drill down to the root cause of our low high school graduation rates, we needed to reach our at-risk kids early on.

When we realized this, we partnered with the University of Chicago and formed a pilot program to make sure every mother who gives birth in one of the three hospitals in Escambia County gets an early intervention.

That’s 5,000 births a year. These hospitals — Baptist, Sacred Heart, and West Florida — distribute materials developed from the Thirty Million Words Initiative, designed to help new parents work more words into their interactions with their little ones.

This “Brain Bags” program is one of the cornerstones of our efforts to become America’s first Early Learning City. It’s a simple, relatively inexpensive investment with a huge ROI. As I’ve traveled across the country speaking about building a vibrant community, this program has generated a lot of interest. Communities want to help children, and this feels doable.

Another part of our early learning efforts centers on voluntary prekindergarten (VPK).

Locally, this statewide program is managed by the Early Learning Coalition and led by Bruce Watson, with classrooms hosted in private childcare centers, church-based centers, public and private schools and Head Start facilities. In our community, we have found that if a child goes to voluntary prekindergarten, there’s an 80 percent chance that they will be ready for kindergarten.

We wanted to get the community involved in our efforts, so SCI issued a “Be the Bulb” early learning challenge. Some great suggestions came out of this. One was an early learning bus that would bring educational, health and wellness resources

to small children in communities with the most need. Another idea was pop-up early learning fairs designed to bring educational games to community centers, churches, preschools and elementary schools.

One of my favorite sayings is, “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second-best time is today.” Sometimes we have to take action just because it makes sense and trust that results will come in the long term.

That’s why we are investing in early learning.

In the meantime, what can you do to help improve early learning? If you are a parent, grandparent or babysitter for small children, here are just a few brain-building suggestions you can try:

3. ENGAGE ALL OF THEIR SENSES IN PLAY (and get them outside if you can). The more kids can explore nature and get their hands dirty, the better. For example, the Bodacious Brew Thru in downtown Pensacola features an outdoor area designed to stimulate children’s cognitive development. It has a wooden log course decorated with letters and numbers, a sidewalk chalk station, butterflyfriendly plants and more.

1. READ TO YOUR CHILD EVERY DAY. If you can read 10 minutes every night before bed, you will expose kids to lots of words. And you’ll instill a love of reading that can last a lifetime.

4.VOLUNTEER IN DAYCARES or offer to care for children who need extra attention. If you don’t have small children of your own, this is a great way to give back. The time you spend reading to or playing with small children is deeply rewarding for both of you, and it can give stressed-out parents (and teachers) a much-needed break.

2.TALK TO THEM AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. Turn off the TV and get off the computer (or phone) and hold meaningful conversations with them.

Pay attention to what they are doing, ask them lots of questions and use lots of descriptive words. In our busy lives, it can be hard to find the time, but it is so important.

All parents want to raise happy, healthy, successful children. And because parents are also citizens, we most likely want to live and work in a thriving community. Build a brain, build a life, build a community… it all works together when we focus on early learning. Like parenting itself, this is a duty, a gift and a privilege. Let’s do it to the best of our ability.

Quint Studer is the founder of the Studer Community Institute. His career as a healthcare executive, entrepreneur, author and business leader spans decades. His latest book, “Building a Vibrant Community” looks at how to apply strategies that Quint has seen be successful in his business life and work in creating and sustaining a healthy, thriving community.

BUILDING BLOCKS, A PARENT MAGAZINE

 9

The FIRST

WORDS Project

OFFERS PARENTS RESOURCES TO HELP GUIDE A CHILD’S DEVELOPMENT

BY Amy M. Wetherby, Ph.D. COLLEGE OF MEDICINE AT FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

B

abies learn at an amazing rate. And all through those critical first years, they will be learning to communicate with you.

They go from sounds to words to sentences in the first two years. It all starts with that first cry at birth. By six months, babies can make different sounds to let you know how they feel. By their first birthday, most babies can say one or two words. They learn one new word each week until 18 months, when most children can say 10 to 20 words. Then, like magic, babies begin learning a new word each day. By 24 months, they can use between 100 and 200 words and put together simple sentences.

These early years offer a critical window of opportunity, like no other time, to launch language early and get a jump-start on school success.

Children learn to “talk” before they have words. Babies learn to use gestures, sounds, eye gaze and facial expressions to get your attention and let you know what they’re interested in, how they feel and what they want and don’t want.

That is why what you do and say matters — especially during this critical time when your baby's brain is developing the most rapidly and is shaped by the experiences you provide. Before they can talk, babies watch what you do, listen to what you say and learn to anticipate what you’re about to do. They try to figure out what you mean

10 

by using hints you offer in your voice, facial expressions and actions.

Babies learn to use gestures like giving, turning their head, raising their arms, waving, showing and pointing. They play with sounds and learn from what they hear around them. It is this growing collection of gestures and sounds that propels a child’s first words.

Babies are natural explorers. First exploring objects by mouthing, banging and dropping, then using functional actions like scooping, pouring and stacking. Learning what they can do with objects is the context for learning new words, leads to pretending and that launches imagination. It is this ability to talk, imagine, and create new ideas that launches their drive for lifelong learning and sets the stage for school success.

The First Words Project at Florida State University offers families the resources to help in this journey: • 16 BY 16 LOOKBOOKS — Flip through photos of the gestures and actions with objects children are learning each month … so they have 16 gestures by 16 months to launch language, imagination and much more. Launch our Lookbooks at firstwordsproject. com/about-16by16/ • SOCIAL COMMUNICATION GROWTH CHARTS — A new way to learn the early social communication

BUILDING BLOCKS, A PARENT MAGAZINE

milestones. Just click on an age and watch hundreds of video clips of children learning. Answer a few questions each month and chart your child’s social communication growth. Learn how you can join for free at scgc.FirstWordsProject.com.

• BABY NAVIGATOR CLASS — Find out what’s in store for your baby each month, and turn everyday activities into learning moments. Join our interactive online class for families of children 6-24 months. Find out how you can register at firstwordsproject. com/baby-navigator-class/.

• SCREEN MY CHILD — For parents of children 9-18 months, be part of our research. Screen your child by answering questions online for free and get a free membership to our Social Communication Growth Charts. We need families with young healthy babies and families who may have concerns about their child’s development. Go to FirstWordsProject.com and click the purple “Screen My Child” button in the top right corner to find out how to be in our research.

Amy M. Wetherby, Ph.D., is a distinguished research professor in the College of Medicine at Florida State University. She is director of the First Words Project and the FSU Autism Institute.

16 GESTURES 16 MONTHS BY

T

he First Words Project at Florida State University has developed these guidelines to help parents track the language development skills of their infants and toddlers.

But how can you do that before your child has words of their own to say?

You can use 16 Gestures by 16 Months — a project to help families, caregivers and others learn important early social communication milestones that launch language learning and literacy. The hope is that parents may use this guide as a roadmap to support their child’s early development.

What are the 16 gestures?

→ 9 MONTHS: Give, Shake head As children are able to control their hand movements, they learn from their parents holding out their hand to catch an object — and they learn to give it back. Children also learn to shake their head to say “no” about this age. → 10 MONTHS: Reach, Raise arms By 10 months, children learn to reach through experience with others as they reach to take an object and to be picked up. As they learn to anticipate the reactions of others, they use the reach gesture — first with their arm reaching out, then with an open hand facing up, and with their arms raised to ask to be picked up. → 11 MONTHS: Show, Wave At 11 months, children are motivated to share their interests with others. They learn to hold up and show objects to get others to look and notice what they’re interested in. They also learn to wiggle their hand to wave. → 12 MONTHS: Open hand, Point, Tap At this age, children use an open-handed point with fingers spread, and tap with their fingers together, to draw your attention to things of interest. Their gestures become more intentional and are produced with emphasis and are accompanied by grunts and early speech sounds. → 13 MONTHS: Clap, Blow a kiss At this age, children are copying what they see others do and say.

They learn to use gestures — clap their hands, blow a kiss — by watching others and mimicking them.

→ 14 MONTHS: Index finger point, Shh gesture At this age, children point with the index finger to reference things at a distance. They also use the index finger for the gesture. → 15 MONTHS: Head nod, Thumbs up, Hand up At this age, you see symbolic gestures that are like words — a head nod or thumbs up for “yes,” a wave in front of their face to indicate “stinky,” or a hand up to indicate “wait.” Gestures now reflect not only what the child is thinking about, but also that they know they are sharing ideas with others. → 16 MONTHS: Other symbolic gestures By this age, gestures such as “I dunno,” “high 5,” a peace sign, bolster the learning of spoken words.

16 Gestures by 16 Months can help parents, grandparents, caregivers and others notice small delays early to prevent bigger delays later on. Some children who are late in communicating outgrow delays, but others need extra help to reach their potential.

Detecting small gaps in early social communication skills can help parents get extra help to support a child’s development. If you have questions or concerns about how your child is developing, talk to your doctor, nurse or health care professional.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT: FirstWordsProject.com

BUILDING BLOCKS, A PARENT MAGAZINE

 11

2018 Cost of child care

PENSACOLA METRO

Dashboard

NO CHANGE

Escambia County 2016

49% of a parent’s monthly income

Unchanged from previous year

Santa Rosa County 2016

36% of a parent’s monthly income

Unchanged from previous year

Florida 2016

56% of a parent’s monthly income

Unchanged from previous year

This tracks average child care costs (for infant and preschoolers) as a percentage of median income for single-parent families.

SOURCE: US Census Bureau / American Community Survey

OBJECTIVE BENCHMARKS ARE VITAL TO GAUGING PROGRESS AND IDENTIFYING AREAS THAT NEED IMPROVEMENT

Free & reduced-price lunch Each year, the Studer Community Institute publishes a dashboard of key metrics that impact the quality of life in a community. The dashboard helps show where the community is improving and where work remains to be done.

Some metrics are improving, but still have a way to go. Some areas show a lack of progress that, ultimately, could hold our community back. All the measures reflect the most recently available data, with a lag time for some based on how the data is collected and reported.

The data is what it is. How we, as a community, respond to it is our choice. We can celebrate our progress and focus our efforts on moving all the indicators in a positive direction, or we can rationalize the areas that aren’t improving and blame others.

Let’s choose the former.

The dashboard is one aspect of SCI’s mission to improve the quality of life in the community. The other areas include professional development training to support job creation, parent outreach and projects to boost early brain development, and civic engagement.

VPK participation

NEGATIVE DIRECTION

Pensacola Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) Includes all of Escambia and Santa Rosa counties.

Escambia County

61.5%

Down 1.8%

Santa Rosa County

66.9%

Down .04%

Florida

76.7%

Down 1.3%

2016-17 2016-17 2016-17

from 2015-16

2016-17

from 2015-16

Santa Rosa County

45.9%

Down .4%

Florida

65.7%

Down 5.1%

2016-17 2016-17

Up 10%

from 2015-16 from 2015-16

This helps measure poverty in a community. Children living in households at or below 185% of the poverty level are eligible to receive free or reduced-price meals at their schools. SOURCE: Florida Department of Education

Crime rate

POSITIVE DIRECTION

Escambia County 2017

3,804 per 100,000 population

Down 3%

Santa Rosa County 2017

3,804 per 100,000 population

Up 4.7%

Florida 2017

3,804 per 100,000 population

Down 6%

This measures the number of crimes reported per 100,000 citizens, including both violent crimes and property crimes. SOURCE: Florida Department of Law Enforcement

Kindergarten readiness

from 2015-16

Single-parent households

NEGATIVE DIRECTION

Escambia County

46%

Santa RosaCounty

60%

Florida

54%

Since 2005, all Florida 4-year-olds have been eligible to attend voluntary prekindergarten for free. In Escambia County, during 2016-2017, 1,487 children who were eligible for the state program were not enrolled in it. In Escambia and Santa Rosa counties, participation rates lag behind the state rate.

High school graduation rate

Escambia County 2016

of families

38%

Unchanged from previous year

Santa Rosa County 2016

25.6%

Up .3%

Escambia County

79.5%

Up 3.4%

of families

Down .2%

Santa Rosa County

86.4%

Up .7%

Florida

82.3%

Up 1.6%

Florida 2016

36.5%

of families

Children living in single-parent families often face more economic and social hurdles than their peers from two-parent families. SOURCE: American Community Survey NOTE: Percent is all households with single parents w/children divided by all households with children.

12 

70.6%

from 2015-16

Since 2005, all Florida 4-year-olds have been eligible to attend voluntary prekindergarten for free. In Escambia County, during 2016-2017, 1,487 children who were eligible for the state program were not enrolled in it. In Escambia and Santa Rosa counties, participation rates lag behind the state rate.

POSITIVE DIRECTION

NEGATIVE DIRECTION

Escambia County

BUILDING BLOCKS, A PARENT MAGAZINE

POSTIVIE DIRECTION

in 2017 in 2017

in 2017

from 2016

from 2016 from 2016

This tracks the percentage of students who finished high school in four years. SOURCE: Florida Department of Education

BUILD A BRAIN BUILD A LIFE BUILD A COMMUNITY College graduates Escambia County

POSTIVIE DIRECTION

24.8% in 2016

Real per capita income

Up .3%

Escambia County

$39,582

Up $38,408

Santa Rosa County

$40,727

Up $40,240

Florida

$45,953

Up $44,429

from 2015

Santa Rosa County

26.8%

Up .2%

Florida

27.8%

Up .5%

in 2016

from 2015 from 2015

in 2016

Research shows that communities with higher percentages of collegeeducated residents have higher wages overall. Pew Research Center study shows people with a college degree earned about $17,500 more a year than those with just a high school diploma. SOURCE: Pew Research Center, American Community Survey

Median workforce age

STEADY

Escambia County

in 2016

Santa Rosa County

in 2016

Florida

37.1

Up from 38

41.6

in 2016

from 2015

from 2015

Up from 41.4 from 2015

Rent-burdened households

POSTIVIE DIRECTION

Santa Rosa County Florida

51%

in 2016

45.2% in 2016

57.4% in 2016

Down 1.2%

Middle class households

POSITIVE DIRECTION

Escambia County

64.6%

Up .1%

Santa Rosa County

67.2%

Up .2%

63.5%

Up .1%

Florida

in 2016 in 2016

POSITIVE DIRECTION

Santa Rosa County

59.2%

Down .6%

Florida

58.8%

Down .4%

from 2015

in 2016

from 2015 from 2015

in 2016

64.3%

Up 4.5%

in 2016

since 2013

Santa Rosa County

in 2016

70%

Up 9.1%

Florida

63.2%

Up .4%

since 2013

MISSION To improve the quality of life by building a vibrant community.

VISION

To make the Pensacola Metro community the greatest place to live in the world.

since 2013

in 2016

STUDERI.ORG/DASHBOARD /STUDERINSTITUTE

Voter turnout

NEGATIVE DIRECTION

Escambia County

73.9% voters

Down 1.6%

Santa Rosa County 2016

68.1% voters cast ballots in 2016

Down 2%

74.5% voters

Up 2.5%

Florida 2016

cast ballots in 2016

from 2012 from 2012

cast ballots in 2016

from 2012

How healthy is democracy in your community? Voter turnout is one way to measure that. SOURCE: Florida Department of State Division of Elections

309,574

Up 3.89%

Santa Rosa County

163,903

Up 7.81%

Florida

19,934,451

Up 5.81%

in 2016

Down .8%

in 2016

Two out of three people in the Pensacola metro area are either overweight or obese, meaning they have a body mass index of 25 or higher. Obesity-related health problems diminish worker productivity and add cost to the health care system. SOURCE: Florida Department of Health

from 2015

Escambia County

in 2016

NEGATIVE DIRECTION

from 2015

Population in 2016

61%

Escambia County

from 2015

The percentage of households considered middle class in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties has remained relatively flat from 1990-2015, as has the state rate. SOURCE: Woods and Poole Economics

from 2015

in 2016

Overweight and obesity rate

from 2015 from 2015

from 2015

The unemployment rate is often reported as a measure of joblessness, but it leaves out people who quit looking for work. Labor force participation shows how many people who are eligible to work are doing so.

SOURCE: US Census Bureau

Down 2.7%

The rule of thumb for affordability is that housing should cost no more than 30% of your monthly income. This point tracks the percentage of people who spend more than that on rent. SOURCE: American Community Survey

in 2016

NEGATIVE DIRECTION

from 2015

Down .9%

in 2016

Labor force participation Escambia County

39.5

from 2015

Real per capita income represents the total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of our area, adjusted for inflation and divided by the population. It measures the average person’s purchasing power and economic well-being. SOURCE: US Bureau of Economic Analysis

Down from 37.2

It is important to maintain — and increase — a healthy population of “young professionals” to add the intellectual and creative capacity that vibrant cities thrive upon. SOURCE: American Community Survey

Escambia County

POSITIVE DIRECTION

in 2016

2010 to 2016

2010 to 2016 2010 to 2016

Data shows that after steeply increasing every decade between 1970 and 2000, the population stagnated. SOURCE: American Community Survey

The Studer Community Institute is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

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 13

Mommy Brain MAKING THE MOST OF

TO EMPOWER PARENTS TO BUILD A CHILD’S BRAIN

BY Shannon Nickinson STUDER COMMUNITY INSTITUTE

T

he science is in — and “mommy brain” is real.

The forgetfulness, anxiety and “brain fog” feelings that many new parents report are real physical changes in the new parent brain.

And if we want to improve the quality of life for children, we need to learn to speak to “mommy brain.”

That research was shared as part of the second First 1,000 Days Summit in West Palm Beach Sept. 26-28, 2018. The conference was a mix of the science of early

14 

brain development; reinforcement of the importance of evidence-based practices that help build parents’ capacity to do better by their children; strategies to tackle maternal and infant health risks; best practices from programs around the state and more.

Dr. Sarah Watamura, co-director of the Stress, Early Experience and Development Research Center at the University of Denver, was one of several speakers who shared how research about brain development in the first three years of life shows more than ever the critical role that parent talk and

BUILDING BLOCKS, A PARENT MAGAZINE

interaction plays in building a brain.

“Parents are agents of change and a changing agent,” Watamura told the crowd of nearly 800 advocates and professionals who work with young children and their parents.

“We all want to do something for children.

Adults are a little less cute, but they are the person uniquely chosen to do this job. They need to know they can do this job.”

So as professionals consider projects, plans and interventions that aim to boost early brain growth in a child by changing parents’ behavior, they need to keep in mind that a new parent’s brain is changing, too.

First 1,000 Summit panel of parents

Watamura suggests asking, does your intervention: • Improve a parent’s sense that they have the power to do what you’re asking of them (enhancing parent efficacy)?

• Consider a parent’s mental bandwidth and emotional load?

• Make time for the parent as a person?

• Involve using tools, such as video coaching (and in-person coaching), so parents can see what right looks like?

Watamura shared research that outlines the impact that a parent’s voice and interaction have on a child’s brain, even while that baby is still in the womb. She also shared findings about how infants can sense stress in the faces and voices of parents, and the impact that stress has on a child’s cognitive, emotional and physical well-being.

For example, she shared that smoking, on average, takes 10 years off of a person’s lifespan. Children who experience toxic stress in early childhood lose 20 years of their lifespan.

Many speakers returned to the theme that helping young children means helping their parents learn better so that they can do better.

ELLEN GALINSKY is chief science of-

ficer at the Bezos Family Foundation.

She is the author of the books “Six Stages of Parenthood,” “Ask the Children,” and “Mind in the Making.” Her talk highlighted research from Princeton University, New York University, the University of Minnesota and others that all have focused on early brain development.

A key piece of that growth is the way that children build executive function.

“Executive function has been described as the air traffic controller of the brain,” Galinksy said.

It’s the part of your brain that helps you regulate your emotions, manage your behavior and set goals, solve problems and respond with mental flexibility when obstacles come up. These skills are predictors of academic achievement, physical health, financial health and emotional well-being, Galinsky said.

“If we are trying to make a difference for children, promoting life skills that promote executive function is a good place to start,” Galinksy said.

Galinksy noted there are seven skills parents can help reinforce that will develop executive function in a healthy way: • Focus and self-control.

• Perspective taking. Think of it as not only as trying to see things from another person’s point of view, but also as seeing the forest for the trees.

Helping children to see things differently allows them to solve problems on their own.

• Communicating.

• Making connections to other people.

• Critical thinking and promoting curiosity.

• Taking on challenges.

• Self-directed engaged learning.

“A baby’s brain is built for action,” Galinksy said. “It begins in the beginning, but it’s never too late.”

KATHERINE ROSENBLUM is director of the woman and infant mental health program at the University of Michigan.

Her talk, “Zero to Thrive!” focused on how science reinforces the idea that relationships are key to every aspect of a young child’s well-being.

“If we are trying to make a difference for children, promoting life skills that promote executive function is a good place to start.”

— ELLEN GALINSKY, CHIEF SCIENCE OFFICER AT THE BEZOS FAMILY FOUNDATION

“Early back-and-forth experiences are fundamental to building our brains,” she said.

Place-based services reduce barriers that keep parents from getting help, as does offering concrete strategies parents can take home that very day and put into practice, Rosenblum said.

Helping parents to do more and better for their kids truly builds a brain, builds a life and builds a community.

It is that kind of focus that is needed to make truly transformational change in Florida for our children. Or as State Rep. Erin Grall, R-Vero Beach, put it.

“We need to explain to all kinds of families to make those first 1,000 days meaningful,” Grall said.

Ideally, providers meet parents where they are and offer them concrete strategies

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 15

The crowd at the First 1,000 Summit

“areParents agents of change and a changing agent.”

— Dr. SARAH WATAMURA, CO-DIRECTOR OF THE STRESS, EARLY EXPERIENCE AND DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH CENTER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF DENVER

16 

they can take home that very day and put into practice.

Dara Griffin, a Project LAUNCH family and community engagement specialist, consults on strategies for engaging parents with respect and in a sense of partnership.

True family engagement, she noted, is not just inviting parents to be in the room and at the table as decisions are made about programs and projects that affect them and their children. It is inviting them into the conversation and making them part of the process from the beginning. This form of “transformational engagement” includes shared responsibility and strength-based collective actions with purposeful connections between providers and parents.

That’s opposed to what Griffin called “random acts of involvement,” one-time actions or events with a one-time purpose.

Helping parents break through the traumas or negative experiences of their own pasts to do more and better for their kids is truly engaging a family, Griffin said.

It can mean for providers, for example, looking hard for “what is beautiful and strong in the families I serve,” Griffin said.

“What is working already, and can I find it (in this family) and build on it?”

If you can find it and build on it, you can end up with parents like the four who participated in a parent panel at the conference.

The panel included: Sarah Sheppard, a mom who spent more than a decade in recovery for substance misuse and now has a

BUILDING BLOCKS, A PARENT MAGAZINE

bachelor’s degree and works as a parent partner with Healthy Start Coalition of Flagler/ Volusia; Talethia Edwards, a wife and mother of seven, including some with health complexities, who is a committed community volunteer and parent advocate in Leon County; Karina Banos, a mother of an autistic son and native of Colombia with a degree in biomedical engineering; and Devin Coleman, an author, consultant and advocate from Jacksonville, who is the communications director and executive board member of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition. He also serves on the board of the Duval Regional Juvenile Detention Center Advisory Council.

They each spoke about their struggles to become, as Edwards calls it, “bilingual and fluent in agency speak.”

They also spoke about the ways that each of them ultimately found one person, or one agency that truly engaged them. Usually by taking a moment to see the human being asking for help on the other side of that desk.

“Sometimes when we sit in front of you and ask for help, we just need you to see us as people,” Edwards said.

Coleman, who earned custody of his young daughter, said that he thinks of it now as being a glass poured full to the brim with water, that is now overflowing.

“Now I see it as my job to show as many men around me as I can to take up the overflow,” he said. “It challenges me to learn more to keep filling those glasses.”

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 17

Pensacola Parents ARE FINE-TUNING RESEARCH FOR

the University of Chicago RESEARCHERS WILL USE THEIR INPUT TO MAKE THE MOST OF MESSAGING FOR NEW PARENTS

H

ow does it feel to be on the cutting edge?

Pensacola-area moms have been, since the summer of 2018, part of a research project for the University of Chicago, thanks to the Studer Community Institute’s partnership with the TMW Center for Early Learning and Public Health at the prestigious university.

Pensacola is the first community to implement on a large scale the Newborn Intervention of the Thirty Million Words Initiative at the University of Chicago.

The Newborn Intervention is a video delivered during the universal newborn hearing screening every child undergoes before leaving the hospital.

The video uses footage of real families with their newborns and young children along with voice-over teaching about the fundamentals of how parent talk and interaction fuels healthy early brain development. It uses a pre- and post-survey to gauge what parents know about this important topic — and what they learned from watching the video.

That growth, research suggests, is the “secret sauce” of what helps a growing child’s brain wire itself for learning. Children who have more positive, loving interaction with their parents and families — in a word-rich environment full of play, reading, singing and more — are more likely to develop the early language skills they will need to learn to be good readers once they get to school.

TMW Newborn aims to measure what a mom knows about her child’s early brain development, and then increase her knowledge of the power that language has to build an infant’s brain.

The video was pilot tested with nearly

18 

600 families in two Chicago-area hospitals.

In 2018, Pensacola became the first outside pilot of the project.

Our mothers will be contributing to fine-tuning the messaging for research that is proving to be effective at increasing what parents know about brain development — and the role it plays in school readiness.

This summer, Baptist, Sacred Heart and West Florida hospitals began their participation.

In the study, moms are offered the option to complete a survey and watch a video on an iPad. The video includes important teaching points for parents and uses the survey tool to track parent knowledge before and after the video is played.

The participation rate for the pilot study in Chicago was 25 percent. As of Nov. 30, 2018, 560 Pensacola parents have completed the video project. Our participation rates are: • West Florida: 75% • Baptist: 78% • Sacred Heart: 47%

BUILDING BLOCKS, A PARENT MAGAZINE

BY Shannon Nickinson STUDER COMMUNITY INSTITUTE

Not only will local moms benefit from this video lesson, but also the feedback they give about the project will be used to refine it further.

That means that every parent touched by the video in the future will benefit from the feedback of Pensacola area mothers to help the research team maximize learning in as short a video-length as possible.

Nice work, moms!

Kristin Leffel is director of research operations and strategic innovations at the TMW Center.

“The Pensacola Project has been critical in the TMW Center taking its first steps into implementing its interventions through partners, which is central in its strategy for reaching families at scale across communities,” Leffel said. “Through this partnership, we learned about the training, supports and partnership building needed to support its interventions in a community.

“This partnership is informing TMW Center’s model for implementation across communities, so the contribution of Pensacola families, providers and SCI will impact on many more families beyond Pensacola, too.”

Investing in the future.

We believe in investing in the communities we serve — that’s why we support the Achieve Escambia movement and other education programs across Northwest Florida.

www.MyGulfPower.com

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 19

MAKING PLAY SMART

BY Shannon Nickinson STUDER COMMUNITY INSTITUTE

W

hat if play made you smarter?

Turns out, there’s research to suggest it does.

Play teaches us the social rules of our community. It teaches us about action and consequence, cause and effect. It teaches us to use our imagination, to interact with the world and nature — and to interact with each other.

When people think of school readiness, most of the emphasis is focused on academic-related skills. And those are vital.

But the lessons tought by play build a child’s equally important social and emotional development, the “soft skills” that adults will look for in them later on.

Can we solve problems, think critically and work together in a team? Do we quit when we meet adversity or if our idea isn’t chosen? Can we deal with disappointment? Can we manage our emotions and read the emotions of other people? Can we build a team and persuade others to work with us?

Are we a good sport — whether we win or lose?

At Studer Community Institute, we believe that children learn a lot from play — and so could adults.

20 

BUILDING BLOCKS, A PARENT MAGAZINE

All of our work supports efforts to teach parents, families and caregivers about the important role that talk and interaction play in early brain development.

One way we do that is through the design and installation of decals that support early learning and kindergarten readiness skills in public spaces and play areas.

These colorful, fun decals reinforce concepts that will be important for children when they start school. Skills like counting, letter naming, shape and color identification are built into the design of these decals.

But as they used to say on “Reading Rainbow,” you don’t have to take my word for it.

SCI has wonderful community partners in this project, starting with Cristina Williams, vice president of Pensacola-based Kool Graphics.

“What we love about being part of this project is that our children are our future,” Williams said. “We wanted to make a difference in their lives. We believe this teaches children to play together and builds their minds at a young age, which gives them the fundamentals in life to be successful as they grow older.”

Cantonment Rotary Club is among the first groups to commit to the decal project, sponsoring nine decals in Carver Park, a neighborhood park on Webb Street in Cantonment.

Club president Bobby King said the project was a great match for Rotary’s commitment to community, education and improving the lives of children.

“The research of Studer Community Institute on becoming an effective Early Learning City shows that focusing on early brain development of the children in our community will help tremendously,” King said. “The Make Play Smart decals will reach children and engage their minds while having fun playing at the same time.

“Carver Park has been recently renovated through the efforts of Cantonment Improvement Community (CIC). Their organization is dedicated to helping the children by improving this community. Their efforts and dedication has inspired us. For us at Cantonment Rotary, this was an easy and clear decision to utilize our Rotarian grant for this project. It is a piece of the puzzle in

making a difference. Seeing the smile on a child’s face while learning and interacting with the decals is special.”

The decals are a great project for civic groups, but individuals can sponsor them, too.

Pensacola resident Ella Manziek sponsored a set of decals at Henry Wyer Park on the corner of Belmont and Reus streets.

“The increasingly popular Belmont-DeVilliers neighborhood only has this one park, and we do not often see children in it. It is a pretty little park with very nice playground equipment, and it deserves to be better appreciated by the neighborhood,” Manziek said.

“We hope that this gift inspires children and their parents to come to Henry T. Wyer park and enjoy themselves and each other,” she said. “And we hope that it inspires others to support their neighborhood parks in this way.”

Why did she want to participate in the project?

“We would like to help Pensacola children prepare for school, and for life, while having a bit of fun at a park,” Manziek said.

For more information or to apply for one of these decals, email snickinson@studeri.org.

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 21

10/9/18 10:52 AM

LENA GROW Partnership helps Early Learning Coalition boost growth, development for childcare professionals

BY Reggie Dogan STUDER COMMUNITY INSTITUTE

F

or the past two years, Escambia County has been quietly blazing a trail to use data to help childcare professionals improve the quality of care they offer.

In turn, the hope is that this boost manifests itself in helping more children be better prepared for kindergarten once the time comes.

Because many children spend more than half of their waking hours in a childcare setting, it’s important for that environment to be as warm and rich with language and interaction as it can be.

Since its 2016 pilot, the Early Learning Coalition of Escambia County has been using LENA Grow as part of professional development initiatives in 10 cities, serving more than 100 classrooms at 43 centers across seven states.

Escambia County’s ELC began its seventh session in January 2018, with plans to cover 10 classrooms and about 20 teachers in five childcare centers across the county

by June 2018.

LENA is part of the Coalition’s “Grow With Me Initiative.” Grow With Me targets childcare teachers of children ages 3 and under with professional development to improve the quality of care and education delivered in those centers.

Among other outcomes, data from the first year indicate that classrooms using LENA Grow showed gains on Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) scores.

Results from ELC showed that teachers in the toddler classrooms have increased how much they are speaking to the children by 54 percent, and the children are responding back 88 percent more than before the program on average. The infant classrooms also

22 

show substantial increases in interaction.

Those teachers go through a CLASS observation three times a year. CLASS is an observation-based model that measures teacher-child interactions in three key areas: emotional support, classroom organization and instructional support.

Educators meet with a coach one-on-one or in group sessions, weekly or every other week, with flexibility to fit their schedules. The coaching sessions provide time to review the data on the interactive talk environment in each classroom, and use the data to set goals to talk more.

Vicki Pugh, Escambia’s ELC program director, hopes the project improves the quality of care in centers and eventually boosts kindergarten readiness rates.

“It’s exciting because you can’t argue with your own data,” Pugh says.

Kindergarten readiness is an important marker for a community’s social, educational and economic well-being. Especially in Escambia County, where in 2017, only 46 percent of Escambia County kindergartners were deemed ready on the first day of school, based on data from Florida Department of Education.

The Coalition is using the Language Environment Analysis, called the LENA system, in targeted centers to track the interactions between caregivers and infants and toddlers.

The LENA records up to 16 hours of audio.

The file is collected and uploaded to the cloud, where specialized software developed by the LENA Research Foundation in

BUILDING BLOCKS, A PARENT MAGAZINE

Boulder, Colo., automatically analyzes the number of conversational turns that took place with the child. No one listens to the audio, and it is deleted after processing.

Based on that observation, a teacher gets feedback and coaching on her strengths and strategies to build her areas of improvement.

That targeted coaching, Pugh says, can include for example, talking to children in a warm, respectful tone about what is going to happen throughout the day. Pugh says there are stipends built in based on their CLASS observations, and data from the LENA pilot will built into that at centers where the LENA is in use.

Pugh began the Grow With Me project by looking at which childcare providers accept children through the School Readiness program and which have a high number of infants and toddlers.

The Coalition was inspired to use the program in part by Dr. Dana Suskind’s Pensacola appearance, sponsored by Studer Community Institute. Dr. Suskind is the author of “Thirty Million Words: Building a Child’s Brain” and founder and director of the Thirty Million Words initiative.

Suskind’s work is based on research that shows the more words children hear in the first three years of life builds the brain structure that will be needed later to support reading and thinking skills. Those early language skills can also lead to continued academic success later in school.

Pugh visited center directors one on one about the program. The LENA piece was piloted in two centers — Kim’s Mini Blessings and Come Unto Me Preschool.

For Brenda Dean, director of Come Unto Me Preschool, Grow With Me was a no-brainer because she has been into the

power of words to build a baby’s brains for a long time.

“When my daughters first got pregnant, I told them, ‘Start reading to them. They hear you,’ ” Dean says. “You picked out a name already, go ahead and start talking.”

It’s a strategy she used with her two daughters when they were young, and one she helped ensure was passed to her grandchildren.

“My grandkids are very smart kids. Their vocabulary is outstanding,” she says. “My little one, he has more words than I can imagine. I told him the other day, ‘You cannot be in the kitchen when grandma’s cooking. Do you know why?’ And he said, ‘Yes ma’am, because the fire will burn me, and I will have to go to the hospital. And you would have to get in the car and drive me there.’ ” Steve Hannon is president of the LENA Research Foundation in Boulder, Colo., which was founded about 12 years ago.

LENA devices have been typically used in home-visitation based programs in a research setting to coach parents on how to increase the words they say to their young children. That includes some 300 projects,

“People forget that with babies, they focus on your face. You have to talk to them. The whole emerging reading and language starts in that baby room.”

— VICKI PUGH ESCAMBIA’S ELC PROGRAM DIRECTOR

such as Suskind’s Thirty Million Words Initiative at the University of Chicago and the Providence Talks project in Rhode Island.

But as Hannon noted, children who are in childcare spend as much as 60 percent of their day there. Making sure those environments are language-rich is important.

“We felt like (moving into childcare centers) was a natural progression,” Hannon says. “Those teachers are pretty critical, and many of them are also parents.”

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The reports for Early Learning Coalition providers focus on the number of conversational turns recorded per child. Based on the LENA Foundation's database, in an average home environment there are 20 conversational turns per hour for a 6-month-old and 33 turns per hour for an 18-month-old, Hannon notes.

“What I’m excited about with ELC is that they recognize the littlest ones and are focusing on lifting them up,” Hannon says.

“It’s also about the impact of these teachers over time. They will impact many children in their care over the years.”

The training should also, Hannon says, improve the providers’ personal and professional prospects. If they have more skills to help children build a better vocabulary, they could command a higher salary, be more marketable in their field and overall improve the quality of childcare in the community at large, he says. “(However) at the core of it, they love children and want to do the best for them,” he says.

Pugh says the project will impact 200 children in the first year.

“People forget that with babies, they focus on your face,” Pugh says. “You have to talk to them. The whole emerging reading and language starts in that baby room.”

Dean has seen a difference in her staff already, she says. Two of her teachers and six of the infants and toddlers in her care are part of the study.

“It has already enhanced my staff ’s vocabulary with the kids. They explain everything to them — everything. Even on the changing tables, they’re talking to them,” Dean says.

“When they’re at the table eating, they’re talking to them there, too: What color the food is, how it tastes.

“It’s rubbing off on my other classrooms,” Dean says.

At weekly staff meetings, the LENA teachers shared what they’re doing, so Dean has noticed teachers in the 2-year-old room have started talking more to their children, and using bigger words to expand the children’s vocabulary.

“I think it will be a great success,” she says. “I know it will stay within in the kids because they’re getting more words.”

The feedback for the classroom teachers will be a great asset for them, Hannon says.

“You can’t improve what you don’t measure,” he says.

“Most of us overestimate how much we talk to our children.

Those of us who talk the least tend to overestimate the most.

We found that in the LENA with parents. But we parent how we were parented.

“We told the practitioners what we tell LENA parents — what we’re looking for is growth. And we want those centers to be filled with brain-building moments.”

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 25

Developmental Checklist As a child grows and, it’s helpful to have signposts along the way to help track a child’s healthy development.

These checklists, developed by experts in health and childcare and shared from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, can help parents know what to look for in the first three years of a child’s life.

If you have questions about how your child is developing, talk with your nurse, doctor or healthcare provider.

To learn more, visit cdc.gov/ActEarly.

WHAT MOST BABIES DO AT THIS AGE:

4 Months

6 Months

COMMUNICATION

COMMUNICATION

• Starts to babble.

• Copies sounds he or she hears.

• Has a different cry to show hunger, pain or tiredness.

PROBLEM SOLVING

• Responds to affection.

• Recognizes familiar people at a distance.

• Watches faces.

• Uses hands and eyes together, for example, sees a toy and reaches for it.

HOW TO BUILD THAT BRAIN

• May be afraid of strangers and clingy with grownups they know.

• Responds when you say his or her name.

• Knows what “no” means.

• Starts to take turns with a grownup while making sounds.

• Begins to make sounds like “oh”, “ah” and some consonant sounds like “m” and “b”.

• Makes sounds that show she is happy or sad.

• Starts to respond to the emotions of others.

PROBLEM SOLVING

• Looks around at things nearby.

• Act excited and smile when your baby makes sounds.

• Turns to look for source of a loud sound.

• Play peek-a-boo and other games together.

• Brings things to his or her mouth.

• Reaches toward the baby in the mirror.

• Passes a toy from one hand to another and reaches for things that are just out of reach.

HOW TO BUILD THAT BRAIN

• Start to learn your baby’s moods. If your kiddo is happy, keep doing what you’re doing. If they’re upset, take a break and give a cuddle instead.

• Use “reciprocal play” — when he smiles, you smile; when he makes a sound, make a sound back.

• Build on those beginning sounds with words.

Say “ball” if she says “ba.”

• Point out new things and name them. If the baby looks at something, point to it and talk about it.

• Set aside quiet time to read together, even just 15 minutes a day to start.

26 

COMMUNICATION

• Responds to a sound by making a sound.

• Copy your baby’s sounds.

• Set aside quiet time to read together, even just 15 minutes a day to start.

9 Months

BUILDING BLOCKS, A PARENT MAGAZINE

• Copies sounds and gestures from others, points to things with their fingers.

• Makes sounds such as “babababa” and “mamama.”

PROBLEM SOLVING

• Watches something as it falls.

• Plays peek-a-boo.

• Looks for something if she sees you hide it.

• Starts to pick things up in a pincer grasp — between the thumb and index finger.

HOW TO BUILD THAT BRAIN

• Establish and keep routines for going to bed, going to childcare or other times. This helps kiddos cope with new situations.

• Give voice to what you think your baby is feeling. “You look sad, let’s see if we can make you feel better.”

• Describe what your child sees and add details, “Here’s the big, blue block.”

• Set aside quiet time to read together, even just 15 minutes a day to start.

• Play together — hide-and-seek, peek-a-boo, roll a ball back and forth.

• Ask for the behavior you do want, rather than only saying what you don’t want. Try saying, “time to sit,” rather than just saying “don’t stand!”

12 Months

18 Months

COMMUNICATION

COMMUNICATION

• Hands you a book when he wants a story.

• Responds to simple directions.

“Come here.” “Put that toy back.”

• Waves “bye-bye” or shakes head “no,” claps hands, or blows kisses.

• Tries to say words you say and make sounds with changes in tone.

• Says two-syllable words such as “mama,” “dada,” and expressions like “uh-oh.” By this age, most children have at least three words.

PROBLEM SOLVING

• Copies your gestures.

• Says at least eight words.

• Points to the right picture in a book when you say, “Where is the car?”

• Hugs a stuffed animal or doll while playing.

• Says two or more words to combine two ideas: “Dada play ball.”

• Likes to hand things to others as play.

• Plays simple make-believe, like feeding a doll.

• Points to show you what he wants.

• Understands and uses symbolic gestures such as a high five, a thumbs up, or the shhhh gesture.

PROBLEM SOLVING

• Finds things you hide.

• Knows where ordinary things are, such as a brush, cup or book.

• Looks at the right picture when you name it.

• Scribbles on her own.

• Points to one body part.

• Put things into and out of a container.

• Follows one-step directions.

• Explores things in different ways, such as banging, throwing, shaking.

• Turns the pages of a book on her own.

HOW TO BUILD THAT BRAIN

• Gives lots of praise for good behavior.

Give more praise for the behavior you do want rather than criticism for what you don’t want.

• To correct behavior you don’t want, use a firm “no.” Don’t yell, hit or give a long explanation.

• Stacks blocks on top of each other.

HOW TO BUILD THAT BRAIN

• Give more praise for the behavior you do want rather than give criticism for what you don’t want.

• To correct behavior you don’t want, use a firm “no.”

Don’t yell, hit or give a long explanation.

• Narrate what you are doing. Talk about washing dishes, picking up toys, sorting laundry, putting away groceries.

• Narrate what you are doing. Talk about washing dishes, picking up toys, sorting laundry, putting away groceries.

• Build on what your child says or tries to say and add to it. Every word you say builds a connection in that growing brain.

• Build on what your child says or tries to say and add to it. If he points to a cup, say “that is a cup of milk. Milk is cold and tastes good when we drink it!”

• Set aside quiet time to read together, even just 15 minutes a day to start.

• Set aside quiet time to read together, even just 15 minutes a day to start.

• Let your child use crayons and paper to begin scribbling and drawing.

• Singing “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and “Wheels on the Bus” can build vocabulary and motor skills. Help your child do the actions with you.

• Play with puzzles, blocks, shape sorters and toys that teach cause and effect. Blow bubbles and let your child pop them. Offer toys she can push or pull safely, and balls she can safely throw and kick.

• Encourage children to draw with crayons, and play pretend to fuel their imagination.

• Encourage your child to use a cup and a spoon, no matter how messy.

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24 Months

36 Months

COMMUNICATION

COMMUNICATION

• Knows the names of familiar people and body parts.

• Talks well enough for strangers to understand most of the time.

• Repeats words overheard in conversation.

• Names a friend.

• Follows simple instructions.

• Speaks in three- or four-word sentences.

• Says sentences with 2-4 words.

• Able to tell what is happening in the picture of a book if asked. For example,” what is the dog doing?” Your child should be able to answer, “barking” or “running.”

• Shows interest in toys, people and things around.

• Plays alongside other children (parallel play) and is beginning to include other kids in play, such as in chase games.

• Uses words or gestures to describe feelings.

PROBLEM SOLVING

• Can follow at least three directions.

• Begins to sort shapes and colors.

PROBLEM SOLVING

• Builds towers of at least four blocks.

• Can work toys with buttons, levers or moving parts.

• Uses a chair or stool to “help” you in kitchen or get something that is out of reach.

• Plays make-believe with animals, dolls and people.

• Points to things in a book.

• Does three- or four-piece puzzles.

• Scribbles with a crayon, tries to imitate a line you draw.

• Can copy a circle or line that he sees you draw.

• Copies things you do such as wipe a spill, brush hair.

HOW TO BUILD THAT BRAIN

• Try to limit screen time. Doctors say no screens before 18 months and no more than one hour a day between ages 2-5. When you do use screens, watch with your child so you can explain what’s happening.

• Gives your child simple chores — sweeping, picking up their toys — and praise them for being a good helper.

• Give more praise for behavior you do want than give criticism for what you don’t want.

• Points correctly to at least seven body parts, either on their body or on a doll.

HOW TO BUILD THAT BRAIN

• Go to play groups with your child or places where there are other children to encourage getting along with others.

• Talk to your child about their emotions and work with him to solve a problem if he is upset.

• Set family rules and stick to them.

• Gives your child simple chores and praise them for being a good helper.

• Set aside quiet time to read together, even just 15 minutes a day to start.

• Give more praise for behavior you do want rather than criticism for what you don’t want.

• Encourage your child to say a word instead of pointing. Start by prompting the first letter — “b for book”, then prompt your child to say the sentence — “I want the book.”

• Set aside quiet time to read together, even just 15 minutes a day to start.

• Make time to play outside or at the park. Run and climb on play equipment. Kick a ball back and forth.

• Make puzzles, stacking blocks and similar toys part of play. Choose puzzles with shapes, colors or animals, and name each as you place them.

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• Follow directions that show he understands spatial relationships, such as: “Put the book on the table” or “Move the zipper up” or “Put your shoes under the chair.”

BUILDING BLOCKS, A PARENT MAGAZINE

• Play games where counting and matching are involved. These are the beginnings of math skills.

• Use outside play and art time to encourage your child to play freely without structured activities.

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BRAIN BAGS! Working to change how parents view early brain development

BY Shannon Nickinson STUDER COMMUNITY INSTITUTE

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BUILDING BLOCKS, A PARENT MAGAZINE

E

ach one, teach one.

That African proverb simply and powerfully focuses on the need for each of us to learn — and to share what we have learned.

You could say it is our responsibility, as parents, as citizens, as human beings, to pass on the knowledge we have to someone else.

That is the underlying philosophy behind the Brain Bag project that Studer Community Institute began to undertake in late 2016. The project is built on the belief that if you have information parents need, you should give it to them.

The idea is, most of us parent the way we were parented. And if we don’t know another way, if no one shares the knowledge they have earned — if no one teaches us — we won’t do differently than what we knew from our circle of friends and family.

There are other concepts woven into the Brain Bag project, launched with support from the women of IMPACT 100 Pensacola Bay Area in the spring of 2017.

Ollie Griffin

The researched-backed concepts from our partners at the University of Chicago that encourage parents to “Tune In, Take Turns, Talk More” are there.

The developmental guidelines from pediatricians and child development specialists are there.

Tools that moms and dads and grandpas and grandmas can use to put those “Three T’s” into practice are there — a beautiful storybook, a developmental guide, a toy and other resources.

But “each one, teach one” is the foundation upon which they all stand.

In April 2017, Baptist and West Florida hospitals began handing out the bags; Sacred Heart began handing out bags in May 2017. All have been using the teaching points with new mothers to help them understand the importance of parent talk in the early brain development of their child. As of Oct. 30, 2018, 8,283 families have received a Brain Bag through the hospitals.

The Brain Bag survey asks moms two questions: On a scale of 1-10, rate your knowledge of how parent talk influences early brain development before the Brain Bag, and then rate it after. Here is how the responses breakdown by hospital: • West Florida: 6.4 to 9.4.

• Baptist: 7.6 to 9.4.

• Sacred Heart: 6.7 to 9.6.

• Overall: 6.9 to 9.5.

The first babies who received Brain Bags began turning 1 in spring 2018. It has been a joy to see the moms and kiddos who have been in touch with us as this milestone nears.

Traci Duncan’s son Jack is about to turn 15 months old. She works for Community Health Partners of Northwest Florida in the dental clinic located at the Escambia County Health Department office on Fairfield Drive.

“He loves books, period, and he loved the (“P is for Pelican”) book. He looks at it all the time. I did (use Baby Steps) anytime I had a question, I would ask the doctor or look it up. It was a real help.”

Megan Porter’s daughter, Olivia, was born in June 2017 at Sacred Heart. “We enjoyed the Brain Bag we received — what a great idea!” she said. “I’m glad we have something like this in our community. The rattle was one of our favorites early on.”

Some moms have been gracious enough to share with us before the one-year milestone.

Ashlynn Kate Griffin shared an adorable photo of her little guy via Facebook: “Thank you for providing us with this cute book! Baby Ollie was born at Sacred Heart, and we were so excited to find this book in our little going-home haul,” she wrote. “He was doing some light reading in preparation for his first Blue Angels air show (July 2018). Just wanted to say thank you for the book, we love it!”

Thank you to all of the moms and dads and grandparents who are sharing what they know about how important it is for children to have positive, meaningful interaction that is rich in words from the very beginning.

Those first 1,000 days of life are a critical window for healthy early brain development.

Sharing what we know about how to make the best of those days is important

“Thank you for providing us with this cute book! Baby Ollie was born at Sacred Heart, and we were so excited to find this book in our little goinghome haul,” she wrote. “He was doing some light reading in preparation for his first Blue Angels air show (July 2018).

Just wanted to say thank you for the book, we love it!”

— ASHLYNN KATE GRIFFIN, MOTHER OF OLLIE GRIFFIN (PICTURED ABOVE)

for the nearly 8,000 babies who’ve received a Brain Bag already, and for those whom we still need to reach.

It is, we believe, the path that will change the course of those lives — and the trajectory of our community.

And it happens one baby, one family, one life at a time.

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PARENT OUTREACH W

BY Reggie Dogan STUDER COMMUNITY INSTITUTE

SCI PARENT OUTREACH HIGHLIGHTS SINCE JULY 2017: → 80 mothers, fathers and grandparents have been served at one of the locations. → 240 children estimated to benefit from the classes (80 families, with an average of 3 children per family). → 18 parents earned certificate of completion awards in parent outreach. → 10 parents found gainful employment since joining parent outreach program. → 4 parents enrolled at Pensacola State College. → 2 parents enrolled in GED classes.

32 

hen it comes to babies and toddlers, learning takes place through play, the energetic exploration of their environment.

But more importantly, learning comes through the positive interactions with significant adults in their lives.

Gaps between children of different income levels in the amount and quality of talk, vocabulary growth and style of interaction appear early and widen long before a child enters school.

Relationships with parents and caregivers are crucial as the brain develops the complex web of visual, language, motor and social-emotional connections essential for later learning.

Helping parents understand this important relationship is at the crux of Studer Community Institute’s Parent Outreach and LENA Start programs. The parent programs play an important role in helping families support their child’s health, growth and development.

Young children develop in the context of their families, where support relationships nurture their growth. For parents

BUILDING BLOCKS, A PARENT MAGAZINE

Project helps build up parents as they build their child’s brain facing economic difficulties, it can be especially challenging to provide their children the necessities of life. But one thing any parent can provide is the power of the spoken word.

Word power is brainpower.

Words are food to a baby’s brain. The more words a child hears in the first three years of life, the stronger the connections in the brain will be.

Since July 2017, the Studer Community Institute’s Parent Outreach Program has focused on helping parents use the power they have to build their babies’ brains through words.

For one hour each week, SCI staff offers tools, training and strategies in early learning initiatives for parents of children under 4 in Pensacola Area Housing Commission campuses at Moreno and Attucks courts.

The program has extended to Oakwood Terrace apartments, a privately owned subsidized complex formerly named Truman Arms.

The ultimate goal is to reach parents with helpful ways to engage their children and build babies’ brains, and in the long run, build lives and a better community.

Pensacola

LENA Start

highlights include: The one-hour, once-a-week parent programs uses educational information and techniques from the University of Chicago Thirty Million Word Initiative and LENA Start, emphasizing the key component of the three T’s: Tune In, Talk To and Take Turns.

SCI staff also builds lessons and activities from early learning curricula, textbooks, websites and other sources that focus on using language to help parents help their children reach developmental milestones.

LENA START Another parent-centered program offered

by SCI is LENA Start.

LENA stands for Language Environment Analysis. The LENA system measures the way parents and their young children converse.

Lena Start is focused on helping parents build stronger conversational habits that will have an impact on babies in the program’s 13-week duration by providing parents with a powerful resource to keep talk top of mind.

Pensacola was the first site for LENA Start in Florida.

At the First Presbyterian Child Discovery Center, parents participated in the weekly sessions that include a curriculum of lessons, activities, videos and table exercises. Another session was offered at St. Mark United Methodist Church for young students at Pace Center for Girls.

The Early Learning Coalition of Escambia combined a group of parents at Kid’s Club on Davis Highway for a session and another at the main branch of the Pensacola Regional Library.

→ 52 participating families,

with a 65 percent graduation rate.

→ 40 of 52 families returned surveys.

→ 5 out of 5 on usefulness of

what you learned, LENA reports, (parent guide got a 4.7).

→ 5 out of 5 on likely to recommend.

→ All reported the data was

valuable, that they would use the techniques moving forward and talking tips were easy to apply to real life.

→ All families increased adult Outcomes show that babies whose caregivers have participated in the programs are building five months of language development in two months’ time.

Conversations, meetings and planning sessions are taking place at area daycares, community centers and affordable housing complexes to offer helpful ways to engage parents and build babies’ brains, and in the long run, build lives and a better community.

At SCI, we’re taking small steps in many ways each day to make Pensacola’s America’s First Early Learning City.

Parent Outreach and LENA Start are key components of becoming an Early Learning City by ensuring that parents are ably prepared to help their build their babies’ brains, prepare their young children for kindergarten and help them reach important developmental milestones in their lives.

words by 24 percentile points, turns by 14. Low talk families (who started with words and turns under 50th percentile), gained 52 percentile points in words and 26 percentile points in turns.

→ Children whose parents participated in program

gained 1.5 months of developmental skill every month.

All children gained 9 percentile points; low talk family children gained 21 percentile points.

→ Parents in the program

increased reading minutes by 1.5 times in course of the program, up to 25 minutes per day on average.

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 33

High Impact, Big Change Projects to Improve Escambia’s Kindergarten Readiness Rate Kimberly Krupa eady for school means ready for life. Yet more than half of our Escambia County children are not ready to start kindergarten, according to the latest state assessment data.

Escambia children who start behind, stay behind. Children ready for kindergarten are 17 percent more likely to graduate high school, four times more likely to graduate college, 19 percent less likely to be arrested and significantly less likely to need public housing assistance.

How can we work better together to ensure every Escambia County child is ready for school and life?

How can we align and improve systems to put children and families at the center of our community?

And how can we equip more parents with the tools and resources to give their children the best beginning?

These questions guide the work of the Achieve Escambia Kindergarten Readiness Collective Action Network.

Organized in fall 2016, the network focuses on implementing, testing and scaling high-impact strategies to prepare more children for school.

Wanting to reduce the gap between where we are and where we want to be, in summer 2018, the network developed a shared vision, action plan and communitywide

goal to improve kindergarten readiness from 46 percent in 2017 to 75 percent by 2025. An improvement of that magnitude would result in an additional 900 children ready for kindergarten in the next five to six years.

That’s a bold goal, but we know how we can do it — by targeting improvement where it’s needed most.

Areas that need improving include educating the community about the importance of high-quality early childhood experiences; supporting and strengthening families; creating more impactful child care and early learning environments; aligning around education, health and well-being outcomes; and empowering communities and neighborhoods to take action toward change.

Over the past year, Achieve Escambia partners have taken steps to target two areas with the greatest potential to create the big change we wish to see.

One project is centered in the 32505 zip code and based at the C.A. Weis Community School. The hope is to build a community of adults who want to share responsibility in fostering the success of every child.

Using Weis’ 3-year-old preschool program as a model that can be implemented in other settings, the Early Childhood Learning Network is organizing a team of partners to align the work of 20 childcare centers,

churches, health-care organizations and businesses around a common early learning improvement plan.

The second project — Early Screening Matters Escambia — is motivated by recent studies that suggest as many as 1 in 4 children ages 0-5 are at-risk for a developmental delay. Even worse, only 23 percent of pediatricians in a recent national survey reported using a standardized screening tool, despite the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations to screen all babies and toddlers at 9 months, 18 months and 30 months.

The Early Screening Matters team is taking a holistic look at the barriers and solutions to early identification and their impact on a child’s kindergarten readiness.

The goal is for this work to improve our community’s ability to identify the developmental and social-emotional needs of our youngest children as early as possible and connect them with appropriate programs, services and therapies right here in our community.

It is easier, less costly and more impactful to intervene early in the development of a child’s brain than it is to do so later.

The 46 percent kindergarten readiness rate for Escambia County should be a call to action to us all. It is data that demands we work better together to ensure a stronger economic future for our community and region.

The Achieve Escambia effort is using data to accelerate action in our community. This means aligning efforts to ensure that every child in Escambia County begins school ready to learn and grow, and ultimately, to positively contribute to our community.

Kimberly Krupa is director of Achieve Escambia. To learn more or get involved, visit achieveescambia.org.

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BUILDING BLOCKS, A PARENT MAGAZINE

PHOTO COURTESY ACHIEVE ESCAMBIA

R

BY ACHIEVE ESCAMBIA

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