Guiding Young Children

OUR PHILOSOPHY: DEVELOPING HUMAN POTENTIAL Guiding Young Children,Seventh Edition, is designed for use by college students and others who are learning to interact and to communicate with young children in group settings. Our emphasis is on the process of developing human potential in all children by consciously applying principles of guidance. Those principles are teased upon child development theory and research, as well as upon our many years of experience working with young children and their families, with early childhood professionals, and with students preparing for careers with young children. Because our emphasis is on developing human potential, we view guidance as a concept that is broader and more complex than discipline or behavior management.Guidance is more than getting children to do what we want them to do today; it is helping them to become everything they can become for all of their tomorrows.It is important that even beginning caregivers and teachers understand, or at least think about, the ways in which their interactions can have an impact on those tomorrows. Thus, in addition to offering specific, concrete suggestions for adults who might be working with young children for the first time, we try to explain the reasoning behind those suggestions, and to offer general principles that can serve as a framework to guide--not to dictate--the reader's decisions and interactions with children. Along with the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), we believe that early childhood professionals need a firm grasp of typical patterns of development as well as a thorough knowledge of the interests, abilities, and unique characteristics of each child in their care, including as well the family and community context within which those children live and grow. We offer many suggestions for assignments in observation and application that will help the reader get to know individual children and try out, and perhaps even refine, the general guidelines discussed in this book. We recognize that our views are shaped by our own cultural and educational backgrounds, and we encourage our readers to think about the origins of their own values and beliefs as they encounter different ideas among colleagues and the families of children in their care. As increasing numbers of young children in this country spend more and more of their early lives in group settings, we note with alarm a move toward regimented curricula and high-stakes testing of young children: We remain unwavering in our conviction that early childhood professionals must work to make children's settings resemble the supportive and enriching aspects of home and family life, rather than impersonal institutions. Rigid timetables and uniform treatment may be signs of efficiency in factories, but they run counter to the goals of high-quality child care programs, in which guidance requires taking the time to learn about each specific child in each specific situation. NEW TO THIS EDITION While this seventh edition ofGuiding Young Childrenretains many useful features from earlier editions, including provocative "Talk It Over" suggestions in each chapter, it has been extensively revised and updated. Infants and Toddlers.We continue to incorporate information about infants and toddlers throughout the book to underscore our belief that early childhood professionals understand children better when they are able to place current development within a larger context, and when they have an idea of how far the children in their care have come and where they are likely to go next. The Role of Culture.In recognition of growing diversity within early childhood classrooms, we have expanded our discussion of the role of culture in every decision made by the early childhood professional. Again, rather than isolate this discussion, we have atHearron, Patricia F. is the author of 'Guiding Young Children', published 2004 under ISBN 9780131130654 and ISBN 013113065X.