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There’s a mental health crisis in America. If we want to turn that around, we need to start from the very beginning of a person’s life. Gloria speaks to Terri Chebot, an infant mental health consultant, about the huge role that childcare providers play in children’s emotional and social growth. With so much on the line from the ages of 0-5, how caregivers handle a child’s emotions is everything. Then, we hear from Grace Blanco, the director of an early learning center in Newark, N.J.. Grace saw firsthand how the pandemic delayed children’s development. But through patience and a lot of individual attention, she also saw them bounce back.

Special thanks to our partners who have made this season possible!

This series is produced with Neighborhood Villages. Neighborhood Villages is a Massachusetts-based systems change nonprofit. It envisions a transformed, equitable early childhood education system that lifts up educators and sets every child and family up to thrive. In pursuit of this vision, Neighborhood Villages designs, evaluates, and scales innovative solutions to the biggest challenges faced by early childhood education providers and the children and families who rely on them, and drives policy reform through advocacy, education, and research. Visit www.neighborhoodvillages.org to learn more.

This season was made possible with generous support from Imaginable Futures, a global philanthropic investment firm working with partners to build more healthy and equitable systems, so that everyone has the opportunity to learn and realize the future they imagine. Learn more at www.imaginablefutures.com.

This series is presented by The J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott Foundation.

This series is presented by the Bainum Family Foundation. Through their WeVision EarlyEd initiative, they are elevating the voices of families and early childhood professionals, their “proximity experts,” to generate equitable and practical solutions to make the ideal vision of child care in America real. You can learn more at wevisionearlyed.org.

This season is presented by The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, an organization working to improve the lives of individuals living in poverty and experiencing disadvantage throughout the world. Learn more at hiltonfoundation.org.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Terry, Grace Blanco, Gloria Riviera, News

News  00:00

The covid, 19 pandemic has taken a serious toll on children’s mental health. Leading child health care groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, said today, the pandemic has triggered a quote, national state of emergency in mental health among America’s youth. Talk to parents and teachers, talk to young people. They’ll tell you there’s a serious youth mental health crisis happening right now in this country.

 

Gloria Riviera  02:52

It’s really hard to turn on the TV or scroll through social media these days without reading something about kids and mental health. We can trace it back to the pandemic in 2021 pediatricians and psychiatrists declared a state of emergency in children’s mental health. But did you know mental health starts even before kids learn their ABCs? I’m talking about the very real emotional lives of toddlers and babies. What’s actually going on in their brains behind those smiles and frowns. So here’s what the data says. The Centers for Disease Control found that one in six children ages two to eight years old had a diagnosed mental, behavioral or developmental disorder, and that’s pre pandemic data. 120 22 study found that babies born during the first year of the pandemic have nearly twice the risk of delays in communication and social development than babies born pre pandemic. If your anxiety just spiked, don’t worry. Experts tell us kids can bounce back from these setbacks. What they need are supportive adults like the child care workers looking after our kids day in and day out. I’m Gloria Riviera, and this is No One Is Coming To Save us a show about America’s child care crisis. This week, we’re talking about the mental health of our young children. I talked to Terry chevit, an infant mental health consultant. I had no idea this job even existed, but she’s been doing it for over two decades, and by the end of our chat, I was convinced every child care center should have a terry you’ll also hear from Grace Blanco, the director of a child care center serving low income families in New Jersey. When child care centers reopened, Grace saw firsthand how the pandemic stunted young children’s development. Before all of that, we need to take it back to the beginning, to the start of every child’s story. From the moment we are born, our brains are poised to be profoundly shaped by the world around us and those in it.

 

Terry  05:07

When babies are born, there are 100 billion neurons in their brain that are relatively undecided about what they’re going to do.

 

Gloria Riviera  05:18

That’s Terry Chebit. She works at Jewish Family and Children’s service in Boston. Some

 

Terry  05:24

Terry are targeted to help us breathe, some are targeted to help our heartbeat. But most of them are yet unconnected, and they get connected up by the experiences that young children have in their lives. Some of those experiences are great. Some of those experiences are not so great, but it’s those experiences combined with our hard wiring that make us who we are.

 

Gloria Riviera  05:47

Clearly, she is the perfect person to ask about what could be happening in those cute little heads. I had a lot of questions. Let’s say I ran into you at a cocktail party or a dinner party, and I asked that dreaded Washington DC question, I am in Washington. What do you do? What would you tell me?

 

Terry  06:10

I would tell you that I support the relationships that young children have with their caregivers. And then I would tell you I’m an early childhood mental health consultant, which is a mouthful and very hard to understand, because in essence, what it is is a person who supports the relationships that young children have with their caregivers.

 

Gloria Riviera  06:33

It’s amazing to me, and it will never cease to be amazing to me that this all happens between zero and five, and it’s not a clean slate, I know, but so much is to be decided. How does that happen?

 

Terry  06:48

It happens through repeated experiences. So a baby is born, they cry. We cry because we’re hungry. Hopefully there’s a caregiver who can identify, oh, that cry means hungry, and feed a child over time, that child learns to associate that feeling with the idea of hunger and starts to know over time. Oh, when I have that internal sensation, I’m supposed to feed myself, that means my body is hungry. I’m supposed to eat. So it starts out by those littlest, tiniest moments and happening again and again and again. The little moments are what make us eventually who we are, and teach us what to expect from the world, who we are in the world, and how the world is going to treat us.

 

Gloria Riviera  07:37

That phrase, what to expect from the world. That’s such a big phrase. How did you get into this work?

 

Terry  07:44

I ended up here, like probably most people who are so curious about, how do we become who we are? So I started. I got a degree in counseling psychology. I worked in a psychiatric hospital, and I was fascinated by some of the hard things that I saw and wondering what happens to make this so that makes life so hard for some people. So then there was an opportunity to work with new mothers as a volunteer at the Center for Early relationship support at Jewish Family and Children’s Services, and I went on to work for that organization supporting infant mental health through the experience the children were having with parents. What I realized in my early years of working with new mothers was that if we can take good care of the caregivers, then they will be able to take care of their children.

 

Gloria Riviera  08:40

I love that phrase, if we can take good care of the caregivers, that is something that I haven’t heard put quite like that. And it fills me with, okay, yes, that is what we need to do.

 

Terry  08:52

Yes, that is what we need to do. Gloria, that on every single level. If we change the policy in America, if we change the focus that everything happens in the particularly those first three years. It’s not that children are done by the time that they’re three, but so much has happened. So much of the wiring is is set. So much of our nervous systems are set by the time children are three, children succeed because of the relationships they have. If we want children to have good mental health and to grow adults who have good mental health, we have to give them that experience as young children. Let’s think about who’s raising our children. Most children are in some form of daycare, and most daycare teachers or Early Education and Care Professionals qualify for federal assistance because they don’t make enough money they have two and three jobs, and think about yourself as a new parent or as a parent now, when are you most able to help your children with their big and hard feelings? Feelings when you’re rested, when you’re calm, when you’re fed, when you’re not worried about 20 other things. How are we taking care of the people that are taking care of the children?

 

Gloria Riviera  10:13

We’re going to take a quick break when we come back. How Terry helps take care of children’s mental health and the adults too.

 

Gloria Riviera  13:39

You’ve observed a lot of children. What does good, healthy mental health look like in a child?

 

Terry  13:48

Oh, I love that question. So much Gloria, it looks like a child going towards an adult when they need help with their big feelings. So often we see children who are growing up in less than ideal circumstances with parents who are not available to them to help them with their big feelings, and instead of going towards an adult to help them manage that, go away from an adult because they don’t necessarily trust that an adult is going to be able to help them with that. And so my work is to help the grownups stay regulated, enough, calm, enough, available, enough to help the children manage those big feelings and learn what are they called? What do I do with them, and how can I feel better?

 

Gloria Riviera  14:37

I love it when I hear stories about children who say I just feel, and it’s like, yes, What? What? Tell me what you feel. That’s what I want to know. But it’s not often that clear when it’s not overt. What have you observed in children that has clicked for you and made you think, aha, they’re trying. Trying to figure it out. It might be quiet. It might be a behavior they’re doing by themselves. What does that look like?

 

Terry  15:07

Let’s start even with babies. I see something. I’m a baby, I light up, and you delight in that with me, I might COO, and you might coo back at me. What happens to the baby that doesn’t have somebody respond to them? They start to become more and more locked in themselves, and they grow into a child, and they think, Well, what do I do if I need something? Well, I’m not really that important, or people don’t care that much about me, or I’m not going to be responded to. I don’t expect that somebody is going to care about what I’m feeling, what I’m experiencing, and what I need, so I’m going to try to figure it out on my own. So now this baby is a two year old who is pushing their friends or clearing the table when they’re upset or not being able to seek connection in a positive, straightforward way, so they go about it in a negative way. For so many parents who are unavailable, or so many teachers who are unavailable, they can’t, they don’t respond to their children in the those fun moments, those delight with me moments, they respond to their children when they’re doing something wrong, when they’re doing something bad, when they need to be corrected. And so children learn that the way I can get that connection, that we need, that vital connection, that fuel, is by doing something to get in trouble. So I think of that as like getting connection through the back door rather than the front door by asking straight for it. And that also is the beginning of poor mental health, poor relational health. And that just grows. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

 

Gloria Riviera  16:48

You talk to teachers all the time. You’re always teaching the teachers, so to speak. When I look at this, it’s like these teachers need to be part social worker, part therapist, you know, part everything to do their job the way the children really need it to be done. Can you give me an example of a common topic that comes up for you when you’re teaching teachers?

 

Terry  17:13

So this is what I’ve also learned. Gloria is that adults need a lot of what kids need. You know, I’m always sad when I go into a classroom and a child is sad or crying and the teacher says, or any adult says, You’re fine, you’re okay. That’s maybe the only way that they have to tell us that they’re feeling something, and we want, I want them to pay attention to what that is. Teachers think that their job is to help children learn their colors and their numbers and their ABCs. Because they are taught, they learn how to become teachers. They become certified to become teachers, at least in Massachusetts, by taking one course on human growth and development and then being in the classroom. Nowhere are they taught that relationships are the center of how this process works and the most important piece well, how do I teach something or how do I create something that I didn’t experience? That’s the biggest problem. It’s very hard for me to be patient with children if nobody was patient with me or curious about children, if nobody was curious about me.

 

Gloria Riviera  18:28

Wow, Terry, your job just got a lot more complicated than I thought. Coming into this interview.

 

Terry  18:33

It’s very complicated creating systems of care that are consistent, reliable and predictable, so teachers who are consistent, relationships that are consistent, that is something we want for all children, and that is mental health promotion. I think it’s really important to note that it’s not the bad things that happen to us that undo us, it’s how we understand them and manage them. So if a bad thing happens to a child a traumatic experience, and they have a relationship with adult who can help them through that process, they will be okay. But children who have a lot of bad things happen to them or toxic stress, which is just repeatedly having bad things or hard experiences happen to you without a caregiver to help them manage that they don’t do so well, but positive childhood experiences buffer the experience of adverse childhood experiences.

 

Gloria Riviera  19:31

And what keeps you going after decades in this world.

 

Terry  19:36

The way teachers light up when we introduce the critical nature of their work in building brains and nervous systems through relationship, they light up. Most people get into the field because they care about children and they want to do the best by children, right? So when I say relationships matter, let’s start there. Almost always they are excited to jump on board. That keeps me going.

 

Gloria Riviera  20:11

Thanks to people like you and the work that you do. We do have hope. So thank you so much, Terry.

 

Terry  20:16

My pleasure. Thanks so much Gloria.

 

Gloria Riviera  20:19

We are going to take another break. When we get back, we’ll hear from Grace Blanco, a child care director in Newark, New Jersey, she’s been helping build those little brains and nervous systems for 19 years. That’s after the break.

 

Gloria Riviera  20:48

Let’s just start with you introducing yourself for our listeners, how would your friends or co workers describe you?

 

Grace Blanco  22:47

Oh, that’s a good question. I think my friends would describe me as someone very energetic and determined. My coworkers would probably say the same. I remember when I first started working at ELC, people were amazed and how much energy I would have, because I would be ready to mop and hang things on the wall whatever was needed. I said, I can do it.

 

Gloria Riviera  23:18

This is Grace Blanco. She’s the director of the Ironbound Early Learning Center in Newark, New Jersey as director, she’s not really mopping or hanging things on the wall anymore, but she is still full of energy and passion for looking after kids, even over zoom, I could tell that almost 20 years in the industry has not slowed her down, and That energy is really needed, because the families lean heavily on the center to afford childcare. Ironbound prioritizes enrollment for those experiencing extreme financial hardship, some are single parents, unhoused or doubled up living with another family so they can put a roof over their heads. Many families immigrated from Latin American countries. You’ll hear a mix of English, Spanish and Portuguese at the center. Some families are from Brazil like Grace, the center cares for children ages zero to five, and grace is really tapped into helping them build strong, healthy relationships during this crucial time of their lives.

 

Grace Blanco  24:18

I tell my teachers, you’re brain engineers, you have the power to really make that child thrive. You know, even if you compensating for what they’re not getting at home, sometimes, you know, every time we read a story to a baby, we sing a song, we cuddle with them, we hug them, we pay attention to something that they’re showing us, we compliment them. The brain’s making those connections right in a positive way, and they grow on to develop healthier so yes, we have that power.

 

Gloria Riviera  24:58

And it’s an incredible power. Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about what you observed before the pandemic, during the pandemic and after, because we know a nurturing, stable environment is magic, magic food for the brain. What did you see during the pandemic and how it impacted the kids, social and emotional development, and really their ability to form relationships with their caregivers, with their brain engineers.

 

Grace Blanco  25:29

Yes, we know that the pandemic has been a traumatic event in everybody’s lives, right? Our families are already facing many different adversities as an addition so the level of stress have increased to the roof. We had children who lost parent, parents who lost employment, food insecurity, just to name a few. So the levels of stress and when a parent is stressed, the parent really cannot connect with that baby, right, or with that toddler. So our four year olds leaving to kindergarten now are still pandemic babies, right? They just turned five, and they may not have had all that family embracing and positive interactions, not to mention the lack of social interaction, the isolation. So when they came to us for back into in person, learning, yes, the teachers immediately felt the difference.

 

Gloria Riviera  26:37

The Science backs up teachers’ intuition. Research tells us infants and toddlers raised during the pandemic showed signs of delayed cognitive and motor skills and even language in non covid times, kids naturally build these skills with their peers. They are playing pretend or building things with big Legos or whatever it is, all with their friends. The pandemic also complicated access to care for children with developmental delays and disabilities. Think of child care centers as an early warning system. When kids are there, educators and parents can see that they’re developmentally behind other students. The earlier the signs are spotted, the sooner adults can help kids catch up, but all of this depends on those developmental delays getting noticed in the first place. When the pandemic upended our systems in so many ways, Grace saw many children go without the support.

 

Grace Blanco  27:37

Because the parents were isolated also, especially if your first child, you don’t know that my child may have a development delay because I didn’t see the others the other children to be able to compare. It’s my first run as a parent that didn’t have any concerns until they came to school and we identified a few children with severe, severe development delays that their parents had absolutely no idea.

 

Gloria Riviera  28:08

And how did that affect their ability to access services? I guess maybe it’s a simple answer. You don’t know what you don’t know, and therefore, why would you ask for help?

 

Grace Blanco  28:18

Yeah, exactly. They didn’t need they didn’t know they needed to ask for help, right? But even those that may have noticed during the pandemic, those services were interrupted for at least four months, and then when they were actually when they figured things out, they were actually able to provide some kind of intervention. It was done online. Can you imagine an 18 month old baby getting anything from a screen? No, I can’t. So the three to five year old is a little bit different, right? They have to be in a school setting for parents to be able to receive services, not that child. And when we came back, there was a shortage of key professionals to provide services.

 

Gloria Riviera  29:08

I mean, that is so hard to hear. That’s that’s just so hard to hear. My question is, have you observed children who came back into the center, let’s say, at a young age, between zero and three, and made progress where intervention being around caregivers on a consistent basis, receiving the message that when I need something, my need will be met. What kind of transformation Did you see when intervention worked?

 

Grace Blanco  29:37

Yeah, we did see progress, even those children that were severely delayed. So I usually go in the classroom in the morning to greet the children. I say, How’s everybody doing? Thumbs up. And you know, they’re in the bathroom. They’re like, putting their finger up for me. And one day, I go to this classroom with this little. Boy we’re talking about is there, and he comes to me like this, two thumbs up, you know, two thumbs up. He doesn’t speak a word, right?

 

Gloria Riviera  30:08

Oh my gosh.

 

Grace Blanco  30:10

He’s connecting with Yeah, which for him, is an advancement, you know, he’s connecting, which is a amazing skill for a preschooler, persistence.

 

Gloria Riviera  30:23

Well, speaking of persistence, let’s talk about, you know, the call to action, right? Because I can tell from the way that you speak and your passion for this that you also, I would guess, think about what needs to change. I guess the first question I would ask you is, do you think about policymakers coming out of this pandemic and what they need to do?

 

Grace Blanco  30:48

I think we lost the momentum. I think right after there was a lot of talk about the importance of childcare, just thinking about thinking about the economy, that’s politicians are thinking about money, right? Yes, but we somehow lost the momentum, right?

 

Gloria Riviera  31:07

But you think, I mean, it’s important that you say like we lost the momentum, because I have felt that watching this very closely since we launched this show in May of 2021 Do you feel like there’s anything that you received during the pandemic that you would like to see stick around. Is there any hope for that?

 

Grace Blanco  31:27

Yeah, so funding, yeah, we get a lot of supplemental funding during the pandemic. We’re able to raise salaries. The difficulty about getting people interested in working in this field is because the salary is so low. Yeah, you can make more working for McDonald’s. Sometimes assistant teachers make less than 40,000 a year. I’m not talking about those just starting, because that’s on the 30s, 40,000 it’s not a living wage, you know?

 

Gloria Riviera  31:57

I mean, that is something right there that is tangible and concrete, and people can go out and use their voice and demand it, right? So I thank you for that. I thank you for your time, Grace. I have to tell the listeners behind you, you have so many incredible signs. Amazing Grace is one you can do. This is one my brain has too many tabs open. Thank you again. Grace, we appreciate you and the work that you do.

 

Grace Blanco  32:23

Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity.

 

Gloria Riviera  32:27

Listen, I know that paying our child care workers more is not going to suddenly solve our widespread mental health crisis. It is just not that simple. I wish that it was. What I do know is that high quality child care will set a kid on the right path. Terry told us that you get healthy happy kids when their caregivers are healthy and happy too. So when we fail to support our caregivers, we fail our kids. Fortunately, none of this is irreversible. People like Terry help our teachers manage their own emotions so they’re better equipped to help kids showing signs of trauma, everyone learns how to express themselves in kinder, healthier ways. The issues we have with child care didn’t start with the pandemic, but it was the boiling point and Grace showed us how important child care providers are in helping kids return to normal. They really are heroes, but they’re not superhuman. They need to get paid fairly so they don’t have to pick up a second or third job just to make ends meet, and instead, they can go home and be with their own families.

 

Gloria Riviera  33:49

Providing full mental health and support services to young children is entirely possible. Is already happening. Just look at K through 12 schools across America. They have counselors, support staff and access to resources outside of school to meet all the needs kids might have. So there’s no reason this can’t happen in the zero to five space too. Our guest, Terry, is actually involved in a pilot like this right now in Boston. She’s collaborating with our partner Neighborhood Villages and other schools you’ve heard from this season epiphany and Ellis, they are bringing these K through 12 resources to child care centers. There’s no reason to wait until kids are five to start showing that we care about their mental health.

 

CREDITS 34:55

There’s more No one Is Coming To Save Us with Lemonada premium subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content, like unheard clips from our interviews. Subscribe now on Apple podcasts. No One Is Coming To Save us is a Lemonada, original produced with Neighborhood Villages. I’m your host, Gloria Riviera. Crystal Genesis is our senior producer, Tony Williams and Tiffany Bui are our producers. Tony Williams, Johnny Vince Evans and Bobby Woody are our audio engineers. Our music is by Hannis Brown. Jackie Danziger is our VP of narrative content. Executive producers are Stephanie Wittels Wachs and Jessica Cordova Kramer, along with me Gloria Riviera. The series is presented by Imaginable Futures, the J Willard and Alice S Marriott Foundation, The Banhum Family Foundation and The Conrad N Hilton foundation. If you like the show and you believe what we’re doing is important, please help others find us by leaving us a rating and writing a review, and most importantly, tell your friends follow No One Is Coming To Save Us wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership, thanks for listening and we’ll be back next week, until then, hang in there. You can do this.