{"id":169746,"date":"2025-05-19T11:20:03","date_gmt":"2025-05-19T17:20:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tecscience.tec.mx\/en\/?p=169746"},"modified":"2025-05-26T11:21:01","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T17:21:01","slug":"early-childhood-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tecscience.tec.mx\/en\/education-and-humanism\/early-childhood-development\/","title":{"rendered":"Early Childhood Development: The Key Is in the Next Thousand Days"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Investing in early childhood care \u2014specifically, from two to five years of age\u2014 has positive short- and long-term effects on the well-being of children, their caregivers, and society. This is especially important in low- and middle-income countries<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAfter my first project with young children in preschools, something switched for me,\u201d says Catherine Draper<\/a><\/strong>, associate professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Catherine Draper spoke with TecScience about the costs of failing to invest in early childhood. (Photo: Taken from The Conversation)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Draper and a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional, and multicultural group of researchers have highlighted the importance of ensuring this period is lived healthily, safely, and entirely through a series of articles recently published in The Lancet<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From birth to two years of age, children spend the majority of their time with their parents or primary caregivers and healthcare workers, as this is when they receive vaccinations and medical checkups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This changes starting at age two, and children begin to spend most of their time with their caregivers and early childhood care staff\u2014if they have the resources to go to preschool\u2014before entering school at age five.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This window of time represents a challenge, as many children do not receive adequate stimulation for optimal development. However, it is also a valuable opportunity to create evidence-based interventions <\/strong>to boost well-being during these years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe call this stage the next thousand days<\/strong>,\u201d says Draper. \u201cOur work builds on previous series in The Lancet that generated strong momentum in the first thousand days,\u201d says Milagros Nores<\/a><\/strong>, co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) and one of the authors of the new series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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