The Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation, a 45-year study of children born into poverty, offers a number of lessons for practitioners. Among these are the potency of early relationship experiences for predicting developmental outcomes and the fate of early experience following developmental change. This article describes the lawfulness of both continuity and change in development, why early experience in so powerful, why change can be difficult, and why it is nonetheless possible. Case examples as well as group data are provided.