In communicating with policymakers you have to be patient and tenacious and understanding and understand the institutions that they are a part of and what they must do to be successful on their own in those institutions and how that limits sometimes what they can do.

We’ve worked with, and set up as a part of our program, sessions and workshops and the like, in which we involve policymakers, and we’ve gone to their settings to participate. And what we’re struck with is how much they agree with us in terms of what’s important and the developmental needs of children and how children developing well will learn.

And yet they will go back and under the pressures of getting legislation passed and trying to develop the majority necessary to pass that legislation, they will do things that are just the opposite of what we think children need.

But you have to understand that, not blame anybody, and try something else. And that’s what we’ve come to understand about working with policymakers. You have to be persistent, and you also have to try and think of ways that they can work or things that you can do that will help them meet their needs as well as what you think children need.

And you have to provide plenty of evidence. We keep our focus on providing good outcomes as much as possible. And so the intervention has to be based on theory, and there has to be empirical evidence as strong as possible. And you just keep presenting it. And we have people who turn away, but you keep presenting it.

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