Extreme Heat Affects Young Children. Are Early Learning Programs Equipped for It?

2023 was the hottest year ever recorded on the planet — by far. More than halfway in, 2024 is on track to exceed it, with June the hottest month on record and July 22 the hottest day.

Everyone is feeling it — energy bills are up, social plans are disrupted, sleep and exercise are more elusive. In early care and education, children and caregivers are finding that it’s disrupting their everyday routines and experiences.

“The heat is different this year for us,” says Tessie Ragan, owner of Perfect Start Learning, a licensed home-based child care program in Rosamond, California, which she describes as the “desert part” of the state.

By the end of June, temperatures regularly approached or exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit in her Southern California community.

Although Ragan runs a nature-based summer camp for 3- to 6-year-olds, the weather made it impossible for them to be outside some days.

“It’s just too hot for them,” she concedes. “Some of the kids started breathing heavy. It just made it miserable for them to be outside.”

Extreme heat can be dangerous for anyone, but it’s especially troubling for young children.

Children under age 5 are physically more susceptible to the negative effects of extreme heat, explains Allie Schneider, an early childhood education policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank that recently published a report on the topic.

Little kids’ bodies heat up faster and cool down slower. They have fewer sweat glands. And any hit to their sleep or concentration can have a deleterious effect on their learning and development, Schneider says. Plus, when temperatures are up, air quality tends to go down, which is also worse for kids, who inhale and exhale about twice as often as adults.

As temperatures trend upward, already-hot places like Rosamond are getting hotter, while more temperate regions that have long escaped a need for indoor air conditioning and outdoor heat-mitigation systems are now having to adjust to a new normal.

That’s putting a strain on early care and education programs, which are responsible — first and foremost — for keeping kids safe and healthy, but seldom have access to the funds needed to add or upgrade heat-mitigation systems.

“They absolutely do not have the infrastructure that they need,” says Angie Garling, senior vice president of early care and education at Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF), a national community development financial institution with an early care and education team focused on investing in the child care ecosystem. “Our sector is not prepared for this.”

Garling often hears from child care providers, whose messages boil down to this: “I know about kids. I know what I need for kids. Somebody needs to help me figure out the rest.”

Providers want support figuring out how to navigate, prioritize and afford solutions like solar panels and HVAC systems.

“They’re also very cost conscious, because they’re severely underpaid and under-reimbursed,” Garling adds.

Ragan has been running her summer camp for years. She used to start it after her program’s school year ended in May, with camp running for six weeks, from the first of June to mid-July.

A few years ago, grappling with extreme heat that had become “insane,” she had to reconsider her approach.

“We could not be comfortable or safe outside,” Ragan recalls. She says she was scared for the kids. “They all started turning bright red. No matter how much water I gave them. … They slowed down and weren’t enjoying themselves.”

She adds: “It made it impossible for us to have actual, meaningful summer camp activities.”

The plastic play equipment would get so hot it could burn a child’s skin. The overhang on her house only extended so far, leaving much of the backyard exposed to the sun. She couldn’t afford to buy a misting system or a larger shade structure or wooden playground equipment — all thousands of dollars apiece — to ease the situation.

“It didn’t seem like it was in the children’s best interest for me to run the summer camp [if] we didn’t have the ability to be outside as much as they need to be outside,” says Ragan, who talks about the importance of outdoor play for kids’ gross motor development.

She decided to abbreviate camp going forward, wrapping up at the end of June. That meant losing two weeks of income, but it would allow her to cut out two of the hottest weeks of the summer.

Ragan made a personal sacrifice to prioritize children’s health. As a provider, she knows what signs to look out for and when kids might be reaching their limit.

Because young children are less able to recognize and communicate when they are experiencing symptoms of heat exhaustion, it falls to the caregivers in their lives to notice and respond.

That is an important but tricky responsibility, says Schneider, since there is no standardized guidance for caregivers. Some pediatricians say that anything above 85 degrees could harm a child’s health, she notes, but it’s difficult to pinpoint a single temperature, since humidity, sun exposure and exertion are factors to consider.

Still, Schneider believes clear guidance is both achievable and necessary for early childhood programs and providers in the near term, but she stops short of saying there should be any requirements around it.

“One hesitation we have about including a specific, enforceable requirement in child care licensing programs, is that it does present a financial barrier for providers who are already operating on very thin margins,” she explains.

Garling, at LIIF Fund, agrees — and believes that’s why early childhood should be prioritized for climate adaptations. These include outdoor improvements such as heat-resistant play equipment, misting systems, trees, solar panels and shade structures, as well as indoor upgrades like insulated windows, air purifiers and electric HVAC systems.

“Businesses can benefit, and therefore children can benefit,” Garling says. “Children can be inside in a healthy way, and they can be outside.”

Nancy Harvey, a home-based provider in Oakland, California, has welcomed some climate adaptations in her home over the last year.

With the help of a grant from LIIF, Harvey was able to replace an outdated heating system and get air conditioning in her home for the first time. (That grant is part of the work LIIF is managing on behalf of the state of California to help about 4,000 providers expand and improve their physical spaces.)

Oakland doesn’t experience some of the extreme temperatures that many other parts of the country do, Harvey acknowledges, but it can still get up into the 90s in the summer and down to the 40s in the winter.

Last October, Harvey got a ductless mini-split heat pump installed in the ceiling on the first floor of her home. The placement alone is a huge relief, she says, since her old system was a wall heater that she always feared a child would burn themselves on (she had a plastic lattice cover on it for safety, but says: “Has that ever stopped a child?”)

The new system has made the inside of Harvey’s house more comfortable during both winter and summer, she says.

“This is a learning environment,” she emphasizes. “[Now], we don’t have to worry. It enables the children to focus and have a better educational environment.”

Without the grant, she never would have been able to afford these upgrades, Harvey says.

“We don’t have enough funding. We’re worried about paying our bills, paying our staff,” she says. “It leaves very little — almost nothing — to save for something like this.”

Extreme heat can cause real, serious health effects, especially for children with asthma and other respiratory issues. But many people are quick to point out that, when it’s too hot for children to be outside, they are also denied key gross motor development opportunities and quintessential experiences of being a kid.

“Children this age — they love outdoor play,” says Harvey. “They thrive on it. It is certainly a very big disappointment when they can’t go outside and breathe in clean air, fresh air.”

Harvey has woven numerous outdoor activities into her program, from painting outside to riding bicycles to setting up a “castle” they can play in.

When they’re stuck inside — due to extreme temperatures or bad air quality from wildfire smoke — “they miss all of that,” she says. “Those are important developmental activities that they’re not able to enjoy when we’re forced to be inside.”