What shapes habits in a child? Why is it that some children are more proactive in sports or physical activities while some are good at crafts or creative activities?
While interests differ from child to child, researchers point out that daily behaviours — such as how much they move, play, rest, or spend time on screens — are powerful in shaping not just preferences but also lifelong habits. Healthy movement behaviours support young children’s physical, mental, and social development, and shape lifelong habits. These habits include engaging in physical activity, reducing sedentary screen time, and obtaining sufficient sleep, including naps.
National 24-hour movement guidelines for children exist in Canada, with recommendations on physical activity, sedentary and screen time, and sleep. But only 13 per cent of young children in Canada are meeting these guidelines.
Over one million young children (aged birth to five years) in Canada attend child care, spending most of their weekday waking hours in these settings. The number of children enrolled in child care is projected to rise with the rollout of the national Early Learning and Child-Care Plan, which comes with reduced fees for parents.
Child-care settings play an influential role in healthy movement behaviours and early childhood development, offering a unique and primary environment for supporting these behaviours — and a prime location to enact movement guidelines. Despite this, discrepancies remain in the quality of child care across Canada, and only the Northwest Territories and British Columbia specify a duration of required physical activity in their regulations.
Guidelines help to establish clear expectations for the operation of child-care centres, promoting consistent and high-quality care. They also provide direction and objectives for educators, supporting their understanding of responsibilities and effective practices.
Research shows that children in centres with formal physical activity guidelines are more active, demonstrating the value of guidelines in promoting healthy behaviours in child-care settings. The guidelines were developed using a rigorous and inclusive approach. The resulting guidelines serve as a series of best practices for educators, program directors, and child-care centres to promote healthy movement behaviours.
While guidelines are important, simply introducing new guidelines may not be enough to effectively improve healthy movement behaviours in child care. Rather, combining guidelines with professional development designed to enhance educators’ skills and confidence to provide movement opportunities may help effectively put guidelines into practice.
However, importantly, few educators across Canada receive training relating to healthy movement; many also report limited knowledge and confidence in their ability to lead physical activity in their roles. To address this issue, a lab created the TEACH e-Learning course, focused on promoting physical activity, limiting sedentary screen time, and supporting the development of children’s fundamental movement skills within child-care centres. The course, developed with educators and movement experts, has been tested across Canada. It’s led to significant improvements in educators’ knowledge, confidence, sense of control, and intentions related to movement behaviour practices with the young children in their care.
The next steps for the best practice guidelines will involve testing them, with the TEACH e-Learning course, in participating child-care centres across Ontario. Piloting and testing are required to assess the guidelines’ acceptability and feasibility, which could lead to modifications. This will also help to determine whether this approach leads to changes in child-care environments, educator practices, and children’s movement.
Child care in Canada is at a pivotal point with the implementation of the 2021 Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care Plan. This draws on the earlier (2017) Multilateral Early Learning and Child Care Framework’s principles: affordability, accessibility, quality, and inclusivity.
(Via — The Conversation)
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