Don't let Canada's daycare diehards blind you to behavioural realities

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Posted by Olivia 635 days ago (http://choiceforchildcare.blogspot.com)
Category: Needs and Care

Don't let Canada's daycare diehards blind you to behavioural realitiesLydia Lovric, Special to The ProvincePublished: Friday, March 30, 2007The Liberals in Ottawa must think we're really stupid. First, they failed to implement anything meaningful in the way of child care, despite more than a decade in power. Then, on the eve of an election, they tried to bribe Canadians with a national daycare scheme, about which voters were clearly lukewarm.Now they've launched a tirade against Stephen Harper, crying about the fact that Canada isn't spending enough on child care -- even though Harper's Tory government has already made payments of $100 a month per child to those families with kids under the age of six."The Conservatives' failure on child care is hurting Canada's families. This government owes it to Canadian parents and children to support a real child-care program that will provide quality spaces for all," weeps Ontario MP Ruby Dhalla, the Liberal social-development critic.Email to a friendPrinter friendlyFont: ****What is most irksome is the fact that the Liberals appear to be blithely ignoring a major study on daycare that was also released this week.The study, funded by the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, shows daycare kids are more likely to exhibit behavioural problems.According to the institute, "the study authors found that the more time children spent in centre-based care before kindergarten, the more likely their sixth-grade teachers were to report such problem behaviours as 'gets in many fights,' 'disobedient at school' and 'argues a lot.'" Other problem behaviours cited in the study include demanding a lot of attention, bragging and boasting, cruelty, bullying, lying, cheating and screaming.The daycare lobbyists and left-leaning media types, of course, aren't listening. They're too busy demanding more money to create more spaces so that more kids can have second-class care.Even Reuters, the world news agency, has trouble swallowing the truth. "Few effects of poor daycare last past age 11," screams the headline of one of its stories.Yes, well, perhaps that's because the researchers have yet to analyze the data past grades five and six.The original NICHD study, released in 2001, showed that daycare kids were more likely to be "aggressive" and "defiant" in kindergarten. This latest study follows the same group of kids and echoes earlier results. Is there any reason to think these children will suddenly shape up and act like little angels later on in school? Critics of the study will try to downplay its findings by suggesting that any behavioural differences are minor. Perhaps that's because, for the purposes of this particular study, daycare kids were defined as any child who spent more than 10 regularly scheduled hours per week away from mom.Something tells me that if researchers compared kids raised by stay-at-home parents to those placed in full-time day care the differences would be much more pronounced -- and much more unpalatable to the daycare diehards.Lydia Lovric can be reached through her website: www.lydialovric.com

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