Celebrate young children this week

“The future which we hold in trust for our own children will be shaped by our fairness to other people’s children.”— Marian Wright Edelman (American activist, b. 1939)While the Northwest Corner trends toward some of the most mature demographics in Connecticut, there are also, of course, families with children living here. There are good reasons why these families choose to live in a relatively isolated, rural area like this one, despite the challenges of expensive and sparse housing and a generally high cost of living.The Region One school system provides a good education and a good environment for children from kindergarten, and on a limited basis pre-kindergarten, on through high school. Classes are small in our public schools as compared with those in more highly populated areas, and children tend to get to know one another when they’re very young. They maintain relationships with one another, and one another’s families, throughout their formative years. There’s something to be said for such continuity at a time when society and American culture can be seen as becoming more and more fragmented. The busy lives young parents are often required to maintain in order to keep financially afloat can make raising their children ever more difficult. Time is always at a premium. It can help to have fewer distractions and more connection with nature, which is happily inevitable when living in the country. There are also some of the best private schools anywhere in a 25-mile radius in the Northwest Corner, giving more affluent parents the chance to have alternative choices available for their children’s education while living in a beautiful place with a pace that’s slower than that of relatively nearby urban areas.Each of the Northwest Corner towns also has a child-care center that serves those young children who will rotate into Region One elementary schools, whether public or private. All these child-care centers have services as defined by their parent populations’ needs, so vary in what they provide, but all have one thing in common: They are not part of the school system, so do not benefit from the budget that covers Region One schools. They must function as individual businesses, operating using tuition and money brought in by fundraising and grants to keep afloat. Many studies have shown that children who have access to early childhood education have a better chance of doing well, starting strong and staying in school through high school graduation and beyond. All the more reason that the child-care centers, which function as early childhood education centers and several of which are nationally accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), need to be available as support to the region’s young families. But their programs are expensive, and it’s a burden that’s impossible to place completely on the families who pay tuition.This is the Week of the Young Child (April 10 to 16), so a good time for anyone who hasn’t recently visited your town’s child-care center to take the time to stop in and see the joys and challenges faced by the teachers who care for and teach children from as young as 6 months up to 6 years old. It’s a lot of fun, but a lot of work, often made harder by struggling to keep the lights going and the heater running (especially this past winter). Every center does fundraising and annual appeals, but each needs more help than that. Support them in whatever way possible: money, volunteering, just ask them and they’ll let you know the best ways to help. Because as the founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, Marian Wright Edelman, says above, all of us benefit when children receive fair and equitable education from an early age. For more on the Week of the Young Child, go to www.naeyc.org/woyc.