Your Child’s Health

When we talk about a child’s growth, we often think first about height and weight. These are two important parts of your child’s physical health. Each time you visit your doctor, your child’s growth since your last visit will be measured. You can access the growth charts your doctor uses on the following website: http://www.cdc.gov/growthcharts/.

Your child’s health is the foundation of all growth and development. Of course, your child’s health includes more than physical growth. Some other important parts of your child’s health include their cognitive (learning and thinking) development, social and emotional growth, and mental health. All aspects of health and development work together to form your child’s overall well-being.

This website has tip sheets you can use to help make sure that your child care provider is supporting your child’s health and well-being at every stage of development.

You are the most important person to support and promote your child’s health and wellness, so it is important to find quality health care services and professionals. Expect professionals to answer your questions, listen to your input, and be available. You know your child best, and are his or her primary advocate.

Responding to Challenging Behaviors

Many times parents are not sure how to respond to their child’s challenging or unpredictable behaviors. Often, just when you feel that you’ve finally figured everything out and settled into a routine, something changes and it gets challenging again.

These changes may just be a normal part of a child’s growth and development, but they can still feel frustrating and overwhelming. For example, you might be struggling with your child’s crying or temper tantrums, communication, discipline, eating, toileting, sleeping, or getting along with others. Behaviors can also be influenced by an environment that is stressful or unhealthy, a major change or disruption in the family, or stresses experienced by the child, parents, or caregivers. These issues may not be as easy to address, and can feel overwhelming for both children and parents.

All of a child’s behaviors have meaning and communicate messages. Adults recognize some of these communications right away—like a toothless grin. Other behaviors may be confusing, and you can only take a guess at what they might mean. A child’s behavior might do any of the following:

• Show how they feel about themselves

• Communicate their needs and feelings

• Establish important connections with the people around them

• Be part of exploring the world and how the world responds to them

Children, especially young children, are learning new ways to communicate all the time. At a young age, children don’t always have the skills to tell us what they want, need, or feel. When this happens, children are likely to behave in ways that are confusing or challenging to their parents and caregivers. It is up to us to try to understand children’s behaviors and help them learn to express their feelings in appropriate ways.

Your child care provider can be a good partner and source of support when you are finding your child’s behavior challenging. A trusted provider can work with you to handle challenging behaviors in constructive ways. You are more likely to be successful if you and your provider are handling things the same way.

Talk with your provider about changes in your child and any concerns. Offer your own opinions and ask questions, and find out what your provider is seeing when you’re not there. When you’re ready, you can work together to create a plan to address the behavior.

The following list has some valuable tools that may give you new ideas for building a positive relationship with your child and responding to challenging behaviors. Though information can be a useful guide, remember that your child's path is unique and your parenting journey will be unique as well.

Resources

Parenting Essentials
This page may help you handle common parenting challenges. It has fun videos and “how-tos” for specific parenting skills.

Building Structure and Consistency to Support Positive Behavior
Learn about how building structure and consistency in your child’s everyday routines can support their development and encourage positive behavior.

Family Resources from the Center on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning
This website provides resources to help you support your child’s social and emotional development, and prepare for kindergarten. It has resources for children from birth to age 5. It provides information on teaching your child to express emotions, responding to biting, teaching your child to cooperate, and much more.

Head Start Center for Inclusion
This resource offers handouts that provide useful tips for families to promote positive behavior during common family activities and routines that can sometimes be challenging.

PBS for Parents: Understanding Emotions and Self Awareness
This website provides families with tips to help children name their feelings, understand them, and develop strategies for expressing them in healthy ways.

National Center for Effective Mental Health Consultation
This website provides families with practical guidance on ways to promote young children’s healthy social and emotional development and reduce challenging behaviors.

National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) Encouraging Positive Behavior and Reducing Challenging Behavior
This website provides families with helpful resources, including how to help your child develop self-regulation skills, how to address biting, and how to provide positive guidance and encourage compassion.

Zero to Three: Challenging Behaviors
This website provides several resources to help families address challenging behavior, including how to deal with tantrums, defiance, biting, and aggression.

Building Connections with Your Community

Social networks that include extended family, friends, and fellow parents can make a big difference for you and your child. Social support in the form of friendship and connections to a community can help us be better nurturers of our children. And practical support such as help with transportation, babysitting, or lending clothes helps us manage our lives and give our children what they need.

Social networks can help families do the following:

• Meet their basic needs, achieve their goals, and successfully raise their children

• Overcome obstacles such as unsafe neighborhoods, family violence, and homelessness

• Feel cared for and receive help from others

• Strengthen parenting skills

Family social networks can help children interact with various safe and caring adults, have different experiences, learn to understand different points of view, and grow up safe and healthy.

Your child care program may be able to help you develop supportive relationships. Check to see what opportunities your child care provider offers for families to get to know each other. For example, your provider may offer “meet and greets,” potlucks, message boards, parent councils, family volunteer activities, parent information sessions, and parenting classes presented by community partners. If your program does not offer such opportunities, ask for them!

Preventing Exclusion and Expulsion from Child Care Programs

It is difficult to imagine that infants, toddlers, and preschoolers would be excluded or expelled from a program because of their behavior. But there is growing evidence that young children are asked to leave child care and preschool settings three times as often as school-age children.

Families can be asked to remove their child from a child care program (or reduce their child’s hours) for many reasons. Here are a few examples:

• The program or the schedule for the day is not a good fit for the child.

• The teachers may not have the knowledge to assist the child.

• A teacher may not know what is going on in the family.

• The child is coping with experiences that they need help to understand.

Providers and families can work together to prevent expulsion by building strong relationships and talking about the child's culture, social, emotional, and behavioral strengths and concerns, approaches to learning, and strategies that work at home and in child care.

How can families work with providers to help prevent expulsion?

• Read your child care provider's policy about expelling children or excluding them from school. Ask questions about the policy if there is something you don't understand.

• Tell the provider about your child’s needs, interests, and preferences for routines like sleeping and eating.

• If you find your child’s behavior challenging, share with the teacher and discuss possible responses.

• Talk to your child’s teacher every day.

• When you have time, visit the program, have lunch, and stay awhile.

• Welcome teachers into your home for home visits.

• Talk to your child’s teacher about the best way to respond to challenging behaviors at home and at child care.

• Follow through on getting a screening or assessment if your child’s teacher suggests it.

What can my child care provider do to help prevent expulsion?

• Develop and share guidance and discipline practices that are developmentally appropriate and promote your child’s social, emotional, and behavioral health.

• Work with you to use these practices consistently and without bias or discrimination.

• Work with you to use these practices as learning opportunities to guide your child’s behavioral development and set appropriate consequences for challenging behavior.

• Work with you to set goals to support your child’s social, emotional, and behavioral development.

• Communicate with you about how your child is doing and make changes, if needed, to help your child.

• Build their skills to support your child’s social, emotional, and behavioral development. If needed, seek support from specialists, such as early childhood mental health consultants, behavioral coaches, school counselors, or special educators.

• Attend to their own health and wellness. Work reasonable hours and access social services, health and wellness services as needed.

What can I do if my child is asked to leave a program?

• Read your child care provider’s policy about expelling children or excluding them from school. In addition, learn about your state’s policies on suspension, expulsion, and exclusionary discipline:

  • Early childhood programs are strongly encouraged to establish policies to eliminate or severely limit expulsion, suspension, and other exclusionary discipline practices. All discipline policies must comply with federal civil rights laws.

  • Some states have laws or regulations that prohibit or limit expulsion or suspension. Contact your state’s child care licensing agency for more information.

• Ask if the provider works with an early childhood mental health specialist. If not, is one available?

• If you suspect your child may have a developmental delay, disability, or mental health issue, ask where your child can get an evaluation. This page has more information about what do to if you have concerns about your child’s development.

• If you agree that it is best for your child to attend another program, focus on creating a smooth transition.

• If your child has a disability, work with an early intervention specialist to make sure your child gets the support needed. Your early intervention specialist can also help your provider support your child more effectively.

• Let your child’s doctor know about the transition in case your child can benefit from screenings or evaluations.

• Ask your child’s doctor if a referral to a specialist could help. Your child’s doctor may recommend someone who can do an in-depth evaluation of your child.

Resources

All states are working on strategies to prevent exclusion of children from early childhood programs. In many states, the work is just beginning, so resources may vary depending on where you live. Here are some possible resources you might want to ask your child care provider, doctor, or child care resource and referral agency about:

• Referrals to early childhood mental health agencies, behavioral health organizations, and community mental health centers

• Your local early intervention office

The following organizations also have some helpful resources:

• Zero to Three

• Center on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning and Technical Assistance Center for Social Emotional Intervention

• Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University

• Center for Social Emotional Foundation for Early Learning

• Strengthening Families

Child Care Financial Assistance for Military Families

There are several programs that help military families pay for child care, wherever they are stationed. There are also other child care financial assistance options that military families can consider should those programs have waiting lists. Learn about these programs here.

Use MilitaryChildCare.com (MCC)

MCC provides information on military-run programs worldwide. Through MCC, military families can search the full range of military child care options that match their needs. Military families who would like to enroll their child in a military-run child care program must submit child care requests through MilitaryChildCare.com. Military-run child care programs use a sliding fee scale based on family income to help military families with the cost of child care.

Apply for Military Child Care in Your Neighborhood fee assistance

If you cannot access military-operated child care due to distance or waitlists, active duty service members (including reservists on active orders) may also be eligible to apply for child care fee assistance if they do not have access to on-base child care.

Select your branch of service below to learn more about its child care fee assistance program:

Air Force Fee Assistance Program

Army Fee Assistance Program

Marine Corps Fee Assistance Program

Navy Fee Assistance Program

U.S. Coast Guard Fee Assistance Program

The Department of Defense is also funding a pilot program to provide fee assistance to military families for full-time child care in their own homes. Visit MilitaryChildCare.com to learn more. 

Use a Dependent Care Flexible Spending Account (DCFSA) 

An exciting new DoD program now allows military families to set aside up to $5,000 in pre-tax earnings to help cover the cost of dependent care expenses like child care, prekindergarten, and summer camp. 

Military families can use funds from their flexible spending account to pay for child care costs while they work, look for work, or study full-time. This program is available to service members in the active (regular) component, active Guard Reserve on Title 10 orders, and DoD civilians. Service members receiving DoD child care fee assistance can also participate in a DCFSA. The programs are treated differently for tax purposes. 

Enrollment for the 2024 plan year will occur during the 2023 Federal Benefits Open Season from mid-November through mid-December 2023. 

Learn more about this new Dependent Care Flexible Spending Account program today. 

Consider state or territory child care financial assistance programs

If military child care and military fee assistance programs have waiting lists, military families with low-income may be eligible for child care financial assistance in the state or territory in which they are stationed. Select your state or territory on the “See Your State’s Resources” page and review the “Financial Assistance for Families” tab to find the child care financial assistance program in each state and territory.

Consider other military child care relief or respite programs

Military families may also consider other military family support organizations that sometimes provide temporary child care relief or respite programs to help military families with child care costs. Visit Military OneSource or the National Military Family Association to see if other child care financial assistance options are available.