Winter is here, a season when we love to get together with family and then curl up with a cup of hot cocoa. We wish all readers a very beautiful and blessed festive time with warm rays of sun which will soon bring the season of spring.
This issue covers several items: an introduction to the Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) project, a highlight of some interesting KIT findings on children’s sleep quality, and a brief profile on two KIT Collaborative Investigators: Dr. Tsung-Ning Huang at the Department of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, MacKay Children's Hospital, and Associate Professor Yu-Ju Chou at the Department of Early Childhood Education, National Tsing Hua University. Also, there is a guide to Big Bear's Big Boat, a storybook written by Eve Bunting and illustrated by Nancy Carpenter about a big bear who gets happier when he stays true to himself.
Growing Up in Ireland (GUI)
Funded by the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (DCEDIY), Growing Up in Ireland is collaboratively conducted by DCEDIY and the Central Statistics Office (CSO) since January 2023. Prior to this, the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) and Trinity College Dublin (TCD) had been working in partnership to deliver the study on behalf of DCEDIY.
The GUI study aims to inform policies related to children and family. It collects information about many aspects of children’s lives, child development, and their well-being. Also, it explores the effects of early childhood experiences on later life and identifies the advantageous/disadvantageous factors that can influence child development. The GUI follows the lives of two groups of young children: Cohort ’98 and Cohort ’08. Cohort ’98 started with 8,000 children aged 9 years. Since then, three waves of data have been collected when the members were at the age of 13, 17 or 18, and 20. Cohort ’08 has a sample of 10,000 children. They were initially visited at the age of 9 months and were re-visited when they were 3, 5, 7 or 8, 9, and 13 years old. The study participants also include the child’s parents, teachers, and their school principals. Interested researchers can have access to the GUI datasets from the Irish Social Sciences Data Archive (ISSDA) after their request has been approved. Please go to https://www.growingup.ie/ to know more about the GUI.
Cognitive Development: Executive Function
Executive function is in charge of monitoring and regulating our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, enabling us to achieve goals and exhibit appropriate behavior in life. Children with strong executive function skills are better at inhibiting impulsive behaviors; also, they can engage in cognitive flexibility in different situations and can remember more information needed for tasks. Empirical research evidence indicates that children with stronger executive function tend to perform better academically during their school years. Besides, they are less prone to behavioral problems and are less likely to drop out of school. In adulthood, they are less likely to engage in habits such as alcohol or drug addiction. Moreover, they usually have better physical health, higher incomes, and a higher sense of life satisfaction. In other words, executive function has a profound impact on a person's life.
Executive function is governed by the prefrontal cortex, and the synaptic and neural pruning in this cortical region does not reach a level similar to that of adults until the age of 7, which means that the development of executive function exhibits high plasticity before the age of 7. At kindergarten, young children are required to begin learning self-control and adhere to school rules. Therefore, the executive function in children between the ages of 3 and 5 experiences significant growth as a result of both brain maturation and their surrounding environment.
KIT Findings: Does the Quality of Children's Sleep Affect Their Executive Function?
Previous research has shown that sleep issues in infancy such as frequent nighttime awakenings or movements during nighttime sleep (e.g., night crying) are related to later language development.
Analysis of the Kids in Taiwan (KIT) data revealed that among 5-year-old children, 0.5% had "poor" nighttime sleep quality, 3.4% had "fair" sleep quality, 21.2% had "average" sleep quality, and 74.8% had "good" sleep quality. The majority of young children had "good" nighttime sleep quality, but there were still 25.2% of children whose nighttime sleep quality was not very good. Furthermore, the sleep quality of 5-year-old children is significantly positively correlated with their executive function performance at both 5 and 6 years of age (r = .136, r = .128), which supports the fact that the better the sleep quality at age 5, the better the child's executive function performance at both ages 5 and 6. The above results suggest that it is a worthwhile issue to consider how to improve children's sleep during their early childhood in order to facilitate the development of their executive function.
Dr. Tsung-Ning Huang and Professor Yu-Ju Chou have played a very fostering role since the KIT project started. They assisted in creating videos and promotional materials to help parents become acquainted with KIT and encourage their participation. We are very grateful for their support and would like to introduce more about them to our readers.
About Dr. Tsung-Ning Huang
Dr. Tsung-Ning Huang is a senior attending physician at the Department of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, Mackay Children's Hospital, and a columnist for Parenting Magazine. With a Ph.D. from the Graduate Institute of Clinical Medicine at National Taiwan University, Dr. Huang is a highly popular pediatrician in Taiwan. In addition to sharing parenting experiences on his Facebook fan page and YouTube channel, "Dr. Huang's Health Classroom," he has also authored various books and courses on parenting and child-rearing, making him one of the most influential experts giving advice to parents.
As a father of two, Dr. Huang understands the anxiety and uncertainty that parents actually encounter. On the basis of research evidence, he talks about his own parenting experiences and uses a warm and approachable language to explain medical knowledge, clarify parenting concepts, and empathize with the feelings of moms and dads. This approach has earned him strong support and wide recognition from parents in Taiwan.
About Professor Yu-Ju Chou
Prof. Yu-Ju Chou works at the Department of Early Childhood Education, National Tsing Hua University (NTHU), and is currently the leader of the Child Development and Neuropsychology Lab. She earned her PhD from the Department of Human Development and Family Studies, National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU), and her academic interests center on neuroscience of child development, social development, emotion development, and parent-child interaction. In addition to teaching and research, Prof. Chou has devoted lots of effort to support parenting education and is very popular among parents in Taiwan. Drawing from theories and practices of child development and early childhood education, she often provides parents with important evidence-based information that is clear and easy for them to understand. She also enjoys sharing useful parenting techniques which help parents discipline children in a developmentally appropriate manner.
Book Review
Written by Eve Bunting and illustrated by Nancy Carpenter, Big Bear's Big Boat is a storybook about the simple happiness that comes from following one’s dreams. Big Bear listens to his friends and builds a big boat; however, he doesn’t like it when he ends up with an ugly mess. Finally, he takes all the extras off the boat and goes back to its original design. Interested readers can find its English version at Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E78IE4K), and its Chinese version is available at books.com (https://www.books.com.tw/products/0010633950). Click https://youtu.be/B5nnQyn0O_o to listen to it in Chinese.