Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

HIPPY Stimulates Children's Brains

Children's brain development use it or lose it. Recent Time and Newsweek articles have stressed that children's brains that are not stimulated and challenged at an early age will grow 20% to 30% smaller than normal. Researchers stress the importance of parent involvement and early education in healthy brain development. The President will recognize the Home Instruction program for Preschool Youngester (HIPPY), a model program designed to assist parents in helping their children realize their full learning potential, on Saturday, April 26 when he introduces the legislation for the American Reads Challenge. Two HIPPY Parents will join the President in the oval office as he presents this bill to the nation via a live radio address at 10:00 a.m.

The American Reads Challenge is a two part bill with the goal of ensuing that all children can read independently by the end of the third grade. HIPPY will be instrumental in the second part of the bill, the Parents as First Teachers Challenge Grants. This $300 million in grants over five years will foster effective programs to provide asistance for interested parents to help their children become more successful readers. HIPPY, as an early childhood education program that focuses on the parent as the child's first and most influential teacher, has been specifically named in this legislation.

The President first beccame acquanted with HIPPY in 1985 when he was Governor of Arkansas. The Clintons helped establish the original four HIPPY programs in Arkansas and as a result of their support. Arkansas passed early childhood education legislation that currently funds over thirty programs in the state. Mrs. Clinton served as a founding member of the National Board of Trustees and currently serves as an an Emeritus Board Member. The Clintons' relationship with HIPPY provided them with the opportunity to see, first hand, the impact on parent involvement on children's emerging literacy.

HIPPY currently reaches over 13,000 families in 27 states. It serves parents who have had limited access to formal education and their three to five year old children by sending a paraprofessional, who is also a parent from the participating community, into the home every other week. During the home visit, the paraprofessional prepares the parent to work with his or her child by role playing that weeks activities together. On alternate weeks, all of the parents and paraprofessionals meet to gather at the HIPPY site to roll play the activities together and participate in a wide variety of enrichment activities. After role playing the week's activities, each parent spends 15-20 minutes a day working on the curriculum with the child.

Research has shown that teachers rate children who have been in HIPPY as significantly better adapted to the classroom. A study that followed chidlren in Arkansas through grade ten, concluded that HIPPY has had a positive, sustained impact on achievement and adjustment in school.

Currently serving 41 families, HIPPY was established in Gurdon in 1996, and is located at 810 South 5th Street. Delores Hodge had been with HIPPY for two years and serves as coordinator.

For more information call Clark County Youth Development Center at 353-6145.