Prematurity is the leading cause of peri and postpartum morbidity and mortality. About 9% of newborns are born prematurely, that is, born with less than 37 weeks of gestational age (GA). The number of gestational weeks determines the development and health of preterm infants. Indeed, the comorbidities associated with a premature birth are aggravated by…

“One day I arrived at the daycare center and the teacher told me, to let my wife know that Miguel’s diapers were almost finished. It was not the first time this happened, and that week the mother (my wife) was abroad for work (as it had been shared at the daycare). That day, with a…

In daycare, people spend too much time in diaper changing?! Changing diapers is a chore to get done fast, and “everyone knows how to change a diaper”?! Comments like these are common and contain many misleading ideas about Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) and about development in the first years of life. In this…

When we talk or write about children with disabilities, we should think carefully about the words we use, as we explained in a previous blog post (The power of words). These words should be grounded in a good understanding of what a disability means. Therefore, this post will theoretically address the understanding of disability and…

Imagine two situations where children are playing: Situation 1 | The five-year-olds play joyfully outside. Joe is autistic and Tom is disabled. They show great difficulties in the game, because Joe isolates himself and Tom cannot move his wheelchair through the playground area. Situation 2 | The five-year-olds play joyfully outside, except for Joe and…

“I think (…) that children are always challenging (…) everything we do here in preschool is very important to them”.  These were statements by a teacher with whom we talked about the challenges and opportunities of working with different groups of children. Working with any group of children is challenging! But are these challenges similar…

Sara has been crying a lot when saying goodbye to her mother, on arrival to childcare. Someone suggested that she should leave without her noticing, but when discussing this situation with the teacher, a more constructive solution was found, making this separation less stressful for everyone: when arriving at childcare, the mother enters the classroom…

This blog post was contributed by Cecília Aguiar (ISCTE-IUL). Every year, in some countries, a number of parents of children who were born in the last months of the year, need to make an important decision: to register in primary school or spend another year in preschool. Meanwhile, teachers reflect on the best recommendation to…

This blog post was contributed by Nadine Correia (ISCTE-IUL). Hitting adults is called assault. Hitting animals is called cruelty. Hitting children is for their own good? This was the motto of a Council of Europe’s campaign, launched in 2008 with the objective of raising awareness for the abolition of corporal punishment against children. In this message, we…

We reblog this research update, written by journalist Jack Graham and published on the BOLD blog. In an early childhood classroom, male teachers are a rare breed. Around the world, numbers range from barely more than 0.2 percent of early childhood teachers and caregivers in Israel to 9 percent in Norway. Often having to cope…