5 Steps for Brain-Building Serve and Return
Serve and return interactions make everyday moments fun and become second nature with practice. By taking small moments during the day to do serve and return, you build up the foundation for children’s lifelong learning, behavior, and health—and their skills for facing life’s challenges.
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8 Things to Remember about Child Development
In this important list, featured in the From Best Practices to Breakthrough Impacts report, the Center on the Developing Child sets the record straight about some aspects of early child development.
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InBrief: The Science of Resilience
This brief summarizes the science of resilience and explains why understanding it will help us design policies and programs that enable more children to reach their full potential.
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InBrief: Early Childhood Mental Health
This brief explains why the foundation for sound mental health is built early in life, as early experiences—which include children’s relationships with parents, caregivers, relatives, teachers, and peers—shape the architecture of the developing brain.
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InBrief: The Science of Neglect
This brief explains why neglect, or the absence of responsive, supportive care, can affect the formation of the developing brain, impairing later learning, behavior, and health.
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InBrief: Executive Function
This brief describes why executive function skills are essential for school achievement, success in work, and healthy lives.
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InBrief: The Foundations of Lifelong Health
This brief explains why a vital and productive society with a prosperous and sustainable future is built on a foundation of healthy child development.
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Five Numbers to Remember about Early Childhood Development
This brief discusses five numbers that illustrate the importance of early childhood to the learning, behavior, and health of later life.
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InBrief: Early Childhood Program Effectiveness
This brief discusses how society can ensure that children have a solid foundation for a productive future by creating and implementing effective early childhood programs and policies.
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InBrief: The Impact of Early Adversity on Children’s Development
This brief explains how providing stable, responsive, nurturing relationships in the earliest years of life can prevent or even reverse the damaging effects of early life stress, with lifelong benefits for learning, behavior, and health.
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InBrief: The Science of Early Childhood Development
This brief explains how the science of early brain development can inform investments in early childhood. These basic concepts, established over decades of neuroscience and behavioral research, help illustrate why child development—particularly from birth to five years—is a foundation for a prosperous and sustainable society.
