Parents Get Training to Support Children's Learning

Behind one-way glass, Nell Robinson, the parenting-skills program manager, coaches Wences Ramirez on how to interact with his son, Diego, at Childhaven in Seattle.

—Nick Adams for Education Week

Effort tackles intergenerational hardship

By Sarah D. Sparks

Seattle

Educators working to counteract childhood adversity often find themselves waging a two-front war: building the capacity for attention and self-control in both children and their parents.

Childhaven and other groups in Washington state's Innovation by Design Initiative are trying to break intergenerational hardship by fostering such executive-function skills as focus, impulse control, decisionmaking, and resilience in adults and children at the same time.

"Many of our children come from homes where their parents were also raised in environments with toxic stress and trauma," said Vicki Nino Osby, the senior vice president for program operations at Childhaven, a therapeutic early-learning center here. "It makes it doubly difficult for parents to impart good executive function when...