ECFE in Minnesota

The final Early Childhood and Family Education (ECFE) class of the school year was Monday night and every seat in the classroom was taken. This was despite the record heat wave and lack of air-conditioning in the building. Like me, no one wanted to miss the last class, even if it meant flushed faces, matted hair and sticky legs against vinyl-upholstered seats.

As I looked around the room at my fellow parents, I realized that I'd learned something from every single one of them, even those I didn't know well at all because their children were older and in a different classroom, or simply because I'd joined the class mid-year. They had either given me parenting advice at one point or another over the months, or had told a story about their own parenting joys and challenges that will stick with me long after our children graduate high school. Only as a long summer loomed in front of me did I realize what a resource I had had every Monday night when I could ask a handful of teachers with backgrounds in child development and a classroom full of fellow parents what to do about random issues, such as tantrums or sleep disturbances.

The Early Childhood Family Education (ECFE) program was created by the Minnesota legislature and is available to all Minnesota families with children between the ages of birth to kindergarten entrance. The program is based on the idea that the family provides a child’s first and most significant learning environment and parents are a child’s first and most important teachers. Thus, the purpose is to provide parenting education to support children's learning and development.

Since the program is offered through Minnesota public schools, families have access to local programs throughout the state, and program fees, which are based on family income, are a bargain even if you pay the highest rate. But what makes Minnesota's program so unique is that accessibility and affordability have created a program that is valued across classes, family structure and national origin. I'm sure I have friends who are parents in other parts of the country who would think a parenting class is something you take because you're mandated to do so by the courts. That stigma doesn't exist here. In fact, in my district, one of the most diverse in the state, there aren't enough classes to meet demand.

I learned about ECFE when I was pregnant with Oliver and started our first class when he was only four weeks old. He didn't do much more than nurse or sleep through class during those first few months. In the spring and following fall we took classes specifically for babies his age, which meant that the babies were all around the same age and developmental abilities and most of us parents were newbies and as clueless as the next. Every milestone was celebrated. Oh my gosh, Even can sit up! Look at Leo crawl! Did Abigail grow a head of hair since just last week?

Our class this last semester was a birth-5 class and included a lot of sibling groups with an age group spanning from babies as young as six months to kids old enough to be entering kindergarten in the fall. The kids were divided into two classrooms by age, so Oliver got to do activities geared towards his developmental abiltities and interests, while the older kids got to do their big kid things in the other classroom. We'd spend the first half an hour playing with the toys and doing the activities the teachers had set up encourage the different development areas, like gross motor, fine motor, literacy, etc.

The big change for both of us this semester was that this was a "separating" class. After a half and hour of parent-child interaction, we left the kids with their teachers and headed for the parent education room, where we had an hour to discuss that week's topic without the interruption of children. With Chris away so much, it was sometimes the only hour in the week I had adults-only time.

Oliver made huge strides with his separation anxiety the past couple of months. Not only was he becoming even more comfortable being left with caregivers, he slowly started letting me leave his sight without melting down. I saw a similar pattern of improvement at ECFE. He was fine the first class, but started crying as we approached the school building for our second class, and his teachers finally had to call me back to his classroom with ten minutes to go. During the third class, I only made it ten minutes into the parent discuss before having to go back to Oliver. But since then, despite some emotional highs and lows, (a fall down a slide sent him into a crying jag, or bad nap that day left him exhausted and easily to cry by the time our 6:00 p.m. class started) his teachers said he was doing great. I knew things were looking up when Chris took Oliver for a walk on a Sunday afternoon and Oliver lead him right to the ECFE entrance (the school happens to be down the street from our house) and then cried when he couldn't get in!

I hope to get us into a morning birth-5 class in the fall so I can take the same class with Oliver and his new sibling. Maybe by this time next year, I'll be the one answering the questions of parents with younger children and saying, "I understand, I've been there."