Childcare link to bad behaviour

By BRIDGET CARTER

Long-term childcare is being blamed for bad behaviour of young children.

A US study, which involved 1300 children throughout the US since 1991, found that 17 per cent of children in childcare for 30 hours a week were aggressive and defiant.

The misbehaviour was likely to be around the kindergarten age, the research showed.

The age of the children surveyed ranged from three months to 4 1/2 years.

But the study also indicated children would probably develop future behavioural problems from long hours in childcare.

Researchers said the results held true, regardless of gender, parental income or the type of daycare provided, including in-home long-term care from nannies.

Auckland University education professor Tom Nicholson said both parents worked in 80 per cent of New Zealand families, which suggested many New Zealand children were looked after outside the home.

Social interaction was important for young children and more likely to occur with mum or dad who thought their child was "the most wonderful person in the world."

A child would get less of that interaction with one person responsible for many children because they would be competing for attention from the supervisor.

"They are competing for attention in another environment ... Even with nannies, the nanny has less of a linkage with the child and may not give the same time to the children," he said.

Some children were more sensitive than others. A lack of one-on-one care could make them feel bad about themselves and they could take it out on other children.

Professor Nicholson said the situation was very difficult.

"Parents are having to work and look for daycare.

"It [daycare] is not going to turn them into villains but it is not giving them the quality care they could potentially have," he said.

One of the principal investigators of the American study, Jay Belsky, said the more time children spent in any kind of non-maternal care across the infant, toddler and preschool years, the more aggressive and disobedient they were at four or higher, according to caregivers in childcare, and at kindergarten age, according to mothers and teachers.

But she said that the long-term effects were hard to predict because the study would not continue to track the children as they got older.

She said the report should not be interpreted to mean that children who spent a lot of time in childcare were "psychopaths."

While the children with more hours in the childcare were more likely to disobey, bully, fight and be mean to their peers at kindergarten age, their behaviour was still within the "normal" range on a standardised rating system.

The director of the Children's Issues Centre in Dunedin, Anne Smith, said the quality of childcare in the United States compared unfavourably with other countries.

New Zealand research suggested that childcare out of the home - even during infancy - did not appear to harm children and could benefit them in some ways, such as improved performance at school.

A spokeswoman for Auckland Central Kindergarten Association, Stephanie Martin, said teachers had not noticed a difference between children who had been in care compared with others.

Birkenhead mother Adelia Hallett said she had her 3-year-old son in daycare.

She had to work because she was "the breadwinner."

Her child was in expensive care - $180 a week - she said, and many children would not get the same level of care in a cheaper centre.

She had felt guilty about putting her child in care before "but that goes with the territory of being a mother."