Program practices, caregiver stability, and child–caregiver relationships

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Abstract

In this article, we examine program practices, caregiver behaviors, and classroom climates associated with positive child–caregiver relationships. We used the presence or absence of these practices and our independent observations of child–caregiver interactions and classroom climates to predict children's attachment security. Two hundred and fifty-six children (48% girls) from 22 programs serving underrepresented children and families in Los Angeles and rural North Carolina participated in this research. Three of the programs served only children from difficult life circumstances. Over half of the children experienced basic stability and uniform/consistent caregiving, while primary caregiver assignment and looping were rare. Programs specifically serving only children from difficult life circumstances were more likely to use relationship practices; 74% of them experienced all four practices, in programs for the other children, none of them experienced all four practices. The children from difficult life circumstances were in less acrimonious classrooms, and were more likely to be with teachers who interacted with them intensely and sensitively. Intense and sensitive interactions, and spending more time with the primary caregiver were most important in predicting child–caregiver attachment security. Secondary and negative predictors were membership in a caregiver direction cluster and being assigned to a caregiver.

Introduction

Children in early childhood programs spend their days with a variety of caregivers. They often have different caregivers in the morning as they do in the afternoon, and move through multiple groupings and activities that are facilitated by different adults. Caregivers however are not interchangeable. Each child–caregiver relationship is with a particular caregiver. A child in a classroom may very well have different patterns of relationships with the morning caregiver, the afternoon caregiver, and the assistant caregivers. Every time the child experiences a new caregiver, both must then engage in the process of constructing a new relationship. The nature of the relationships that children construct with their caregivers influences children's competence and learning while they are in their current program, and as they move along in school Howes, 2000, Howes et al., 1994, Howes et al., 2000. In this article, we examine program practices that inhibit or promote the development of secure attachment relationships between caregivers and children—caregiver stability, caregiver behaviors, and classroom climates associated with positive child–caregiver relationships.

In general, child–caregiver attachment security is independent of child–mother attachment security Goossen & van IJzendoorn, 1990, Mitchell-Copeland et al., 1997, Pianta et al., 1997. Each new caregiver has the opportunity to construct a different relationship than the child has previously experienced. However, when children come from difficult life circumstances they may bring to new relationships prior histories of acrimonious, conflictual, neglectful, or unstable interaction and caregiving. These children who have experienced difficult life circumstance often tend to act towards new caregivers as if they too will be untrustworthy partners (Howes & Ritchie, 2002).

Caregivers may have to be particularly sensitive and talented to construct a secure attachment relationship with a child with prior difficult life circumstances. Children who have been adopted from Romanian orphanages (Chisholm, 1998), and from the United States foster care system Marcus, 1991, Ritchie, 1995 are able to construct secure attachment relationships with their new caregivers. The likelihood of achieving a secure relationship is increased when the caregivers are rated as highly sensitive, consistently positive, and committed to the loving caregiver role. Therefore, in our current work we were particularly interested in the relationships of the children enrolled in programs only for children with difficult life experiences.

Ideas drawn from attachment theory and empirical research on child–caregiver relationships suggest that the particular nature of children's social interactions with their primary caregivers and the emotional climate of these interactions Boyce et al., 1998, Cassidy & Shaver, 1999, Howes, 1999 influence the nature of relationships. Thus, all children who have warm, responsive, and individualized interactions with caregivers in the context of a harmonious classroom emotional climate are more likely to form secure attachment relationships with their caregivers Goossen & van IJzendoorn, 1990, Howes & Hamilton, 1992, Howes & Smith, 1995, Kontos et al., 1995. These findings are consistent with a large and well established body of research on mother–child attachment relationships, which finds that warm, responsive, and sensitive mothers construct secure mother–child attachments with their children (Bretherton, 1985). Accordingly, we examined children's experiences of caregiving with particular attention to the emotional quality of child–caregiver interactions.

A body of literature suggests that children who experience instability in caregivers are less likely to form positive relationships with caregivers. The prototype context for this concern is foster care and adoption rather than childcare. Children who experience extremes of instability, particularly as infants, tend to have persistent problems with positive relationship formation Marcovitch et al., 1997, Rutter, 1999. Because childcare environments frequently involve multiple caregivers and high turnover rates there has been some documentation of the negative impacts of instability of caregivers in childcare. The National Child Care Staffing Study (Whitebook et al., 1990), the Child Care Employee Project (Whitebook, Phillips, & Howes, 1993) and the NAEYC Accreditation as a Strategy for Improving Child Care Quality (Whitebook et al., 1997) have all established as best practice the need to reduce high turnover rates amongst teaching staff. Children in the National Child Care Staffing Study who were enrolled in centers with higher rates of caregiver turnover spent less time engaged in social activities with peers, more time in aimless wandering, and scored lower on assessments of language development (Whitebook, Howes, Phillips, & Pemberton, 1989). Furthermore, children who experienced more caregivers between the ages of one and four were more aggressive with peers than children who had fewer caregiver changes (Howes & Hamilton, 1993). Infants who spent more time with the same caregiver were rated (by the caregiver) as having a more secure attachment relationship with their caregiver (Raikes, 1993). The National Child Care Staffing Study, more than any previous research effort, made it apparent that as long as the early childhood field failed to resolve the staff compensation crisis that contributes to high turnover, that childcare's capacity to nurture children and assist families would continue to be shortchanged (Whitebook et al., 1993). Childcare quality also has been found to affect turnover. Centers that retained a greater percent of highly skilled teachers are significantly more likely to receive good or better ratings on overall classroom quality (Whitebook et al., 1997).

The response of the early childhood field to the issues of high turnover rates and the importance of positive child–caregiver relationships has been to develop a number of practices designed to mitigate the potentially negative influences of caregiver instability and to enhance positive child–caregiver relationships. Although widely accepted as “best practice,” and drawn from years of experience, there have been few empirical tests of the efficacies of these practices. As part of our ethnographic work with programs designated by communities as successful in their work with children and families, we identified a number of practices the program participants believed to be important in the development of positive relationships. In this paper, we used the presence or absence of these practices as well as our independent observations of child–caregiver interactions and classroom climates to predict children's attachment security.

To reduce caregiver instability, programs attempted a number of strategies to keep instability to a minimum. At the most basic level caregivers were assigned to a group of children, usually a classroom, for 1 year. Caregivers were not rotated between groups and caregivers did not move to different classrooms or sites during the week. Programs who articulated a particular concern with relationship formation added at least one of the three following practices to their repertoire: primary caregiver assignment; uniform/consistent caregiving, and/or looping. When programs practiced primary caregiver assignment, the director or head caregiver assigned each child within a group to a particular caregiver. The assigned caregiver was to provide all emotionally salient caregiving for that child—greeting the child in the morning, helping the child with meals and toileting or diapering, putting the child to nap, and monitoring the child's play throughout the day. Programs that practiced uniform/consistent caregiving believed that all caregivers in the program should share and practice a uniform/consistent philosophy. They made purposeful efforts in staff meetings and in-service training to insure that caregivers maintained shared beliefs around ideas of positively relating with children, language development, separation from parents, and child involvement in the program activities. In programs that practiced looping, a group of children were assigned to a head caregiver for more than 1 year.

The emotional climate of the classroom is a relatively recent addition to the construct of childcare quality. It refers to the tone of the classroom and can range from positive and prosocial to acrimonious and harsh. Early classroom climates in one study, predicted social competence with peers in second grade (Howes, 2000). Acrimonious interactions disrupt the learning of the child involved and at times, the entire classroom. Acrimonious interactions can involve conflicts between teachers and children or between children and children. They are often marked by verbal or physical aggression, disregard for classroom rules of conduct, or disputes over materials. We prefer to call them acrimonious rather than conflictual interactions because in these episodes children introduce disruptive behaviors and teachers can respond by escalating or de-escalating behaviors. For classroom interaction to be harmonious, there must be agreement on the rules of conduct, specifically the explicit and implicit rules for which behaviors are permitted and forbidden in classrooms.

Important to examining the tone of a classroom is an awareness of the nature of the difficult relationships within it. Attachment theorists have described two attachment organizations associated with insecure relationships: avoidant and ambivalent/resistant (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978). Children with avoidant attachment organizations turn away rather than seek comfort from adults because they have experienced rejection and insensitivity from adults (Ainsworth et al., 1978). Since they expect the adult to reject them, they tend to make “preemptive strikes,” acting in a hostile fashion before the adult has an opportunity to be rejecting. Alternatively, they may avoid the adult to avoid being rejected. Children with avoidant maternal attachment histories tend to be rated by teachers as high in aggression and passive withdrawal (Renken, Egeland, Marvinney, Mangelsdorf, & Sroufe, 1989).

Children with an ambivalent/resistant attachment organization also do not trust their attachment figure to provide comfort and emotional security. However, in contrast to children with avoidant attachments, their experience of the attachment figure has been inconsistent, and thus confusing (Cassidy & Berlin, 1994). Sometimes, the adult will be there for them and other times the adult will withdraw from the child. Children with ambivalent/resistant attachment organization tend to be dependent and hard to comfort. These children may appear to seek comfort, and then reject the adult's attempts to provide it. Thus, these children are both “clingy” and difficult. Children with a history of ambivalent/resistant maternal attachment are characterized as fearful and inhibited in exploration with both peers and materials (Cassidy & Berlin, 1994). Children with ambivalent/resistant attachment organizations can also be disruptive within classrooms. Unlike the child with an avoidant attachment organization, the child with an ambivalent/resistant attachment organization uses disruptive behavior to draw the teacher into interpersonal conflict.

In a positive classroom climate, the goal of teachers is to maximize harmonious interactions by keeping acrimonious interactions from becoming conflicts that disrupt learning. It would be logical to assume that children from difficult life circumstances would be in more acrimonious classrooms, as children who act out more could prompt more teacher frustration, more time-outs and reprimands. Consideration, however, of the teachers who choose to work in classrooms with these children in programs that have a philosophical base which supports the development of positive relationships can perhaps reduce the likelihood of acrimony for children who have likely already experienced far too much of it.

As early childhood classrooms become increasingly burdened with federal and state mandates for child outcomes in literacy and math, it is essential to bear in mind the practices and program philosophies that may promote children's success in school which are not directly linked to academic progress. This study examines the ground work, the basic principles and practices which allow children to form important relationships with their caregiver so that they are ready to take the opportunities to learn that are available to them in the programs they attend. It is essential to remain mindful of this idea as we explore the pathways that lead children to success. Educational policies that compel an academic agenda that forsakes the development of the whole child may be both shortsighted and counterproductive. Children with more positive child–teacher relationships appear more able to make use of the learning opportunities available in classrooms (Howes & Smith, 1995) and better adjust to the demands of formal schooling (Birch & Ladd, 1997). Awareness of the specific practices that may well be the precursors to success for children is important for the lives of the children in the programs as well as for the efficacy of the people who provide their care.

In summary, we examined the prevalence of practices to mitigate against caregiver instability and enhance positive relationships in programs serving underrepresented children and families, associations among these practices, classroom emotional climate, caregiver behaviors, and the prediction of child–caregiver attachment security from practices, classroom emotional climate, and caregiver behaviors. Our design included assessing the integrity of classroom practices, conducting observation of children and caregiver behavior, and assessing child–caregiver attachment relationship quality.

Section snippets

Advisory board

Ten respected early childhood professionals identified 23 exemplary programs that worked with low income, minority children in Los Angeles and rural North Carolina. This was not a random sample, but rather one purposefully comprised of programs that earned the respect of the community they served. Baseline data on environmental quality was gathered at each nominated site (n=23). Classroom scores on the Early Childhood Environmental Rating Scale (ECERS) (Harms & Clifford, 1980) averaged 5.67 (SD

Child–caregiver attachment relationships

A security score of .33 and above indicates a secure relationship with the caregiver. Security scores for children in the study averaged .29 (SD = .24) and ranged from −.52 to .74. The mean indicates low level secure relationships and the range indicates both some very difficult relationships as well as some that were very positive. There were no relations between age and security and no ethnic differences in security scores. Gender and ethnicity was determined by chi squares and an ANOVA was

Discussion

Over half of children experienced basic stability and uniform/consistent caregiving, while primary caregiver assignment and looping were rare. Traditionally children are placed in classrooms or groups for 1 year. High turnover rates in childcare, rather than philosophical approach may account for lack of basic stability for those children who did not experience the same caregiver over the course of a year. Short of the good luck of having teachers work in concert with one another without

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by grants to the National Center for Early Development and Learning under the Educational Research and Development Centers Program, PR/Award Number R307A60004, as administered by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, US Dept. of Education. We wish to acknowledge the participation and time of the programs, teachers, and children who allowed us to record their actions, words, and practices. We would also like to thank the research assistants and project

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