When I Think of Child Development …

Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ~Elizabeth Stone

Choosing a school for a child is one of the most imprtant decisions parents make. The school - its teachers, curriculum, educational philosophy, and values both explicit and implicit - will affect the child's day-to-day life. It will help shape the child's personality, view of life, behavior, and destiny as an adult. And it will also deeply affect the lives of the parents and the life of the family as a whole' ~Ronald Koetzsch

I chose the two quotes above because at this point in my life, I have and continue to raise my children who are now young adults and I have a direct influence on the lives of many other children and their families who attend the childcare center for which I am the Director. I look back on my years in early childhood as well as a parent and I know and can see the choices that I have made and how they played a role in who my children have become. I am looked to for advice from parents as well as teachers and I truly believe that the above quotes express how I feel in regards to the impact that adults have on children.

Testing for Intelligence?

When considering whether or not children should be assessed and measured, I do not beleive that every child needs to be assessed unless there is a concern with their development. This goes the same for children that we think may also be "advanced" compared to their peers. I believe that children today have such over stimulated lives that if we start picking them apart "just because" it just adds worry and hype as well as stress to their already busy lives. This particularly holds true if the child has neurotic parents.
I definately believe that we need to be able to assess children, however every child does not need to be assessed and their intelligence measured.

Developmental milestones can be different depending on the cultural background of the child. For example, activities such as preparing breakfast cereal, using a knife and fork, pedalling a tricycle and playing board games would be uncommon for children in rural Africa. A pink doll used in a ‘feeding the doll’ test can be terrifying to many children who may have never seen anything like it before. And some of the questions feature pictures – problematic when many children have never seen a book or a pictorial representation of an object before, let alone some of the more foreign objects (such as a horse or a car). The Malawi Developmental Assessment Tool (MDAT), was designed to be used as an assessment tool with children in rural Africa. Unfortunately, even with the tool, there are obstacles to improving child development in low- and middle-income countries. Many are limited in the resources they have available for screening children and for helping those whose development is delayed or disrupted.

Reference:
  Article, "Refining the milestones: assessing child development in Africa"; Retrieved on December 10th, 2011 from http://wellcometrust.wordpress.com/2010/08/11/refining-the-milestones-assessing-child-development-in-africa/

Consequences of Stress on Children’s Development

Disaster:


The stressor that I experienced as a child (age 3) was a house fire that happened on Christmas eve while we were away visiting family. I and our family were able to cope with this because of our family and friends. I/we lost all my childhood mementos, all our clothes except what we were wearing and what we had packed for our trip to visit our family our of town on the day it happened. The aftermath, for me, was that I lost my attachment to physical things. My "stuff" never again held an emotional pull for me. I believe now this is a good thing. I have never been very consumer oriented and I believe it is part of why I have never had materialistic attitudes. I believe that this is part of why I have tried to move through life without carrying a lot of baggage, both physically and emotionally. Only replace what you really need, and try to feel the freedom that comes with traveling lightly through life.

I chose the topic of Poverty in America because I would like to know more about how this is impacting the development of children in our country and what is being done to minimize the harm. I discovered through and  internet search that more than 16.4 million children in America are poor, but they live in working families. A disproportionate number are Black and Latino. Poor children lag behind their peers in many ways beyond income: They are less healthy, trail in emotional and intellectual development, and are less likely to graduate from high school. Poor children also are likely to become the poor parents of the future. Every year that we keep children in poverty costs our nation half a trillion dollars in lost productivity, poorer health and increased crime (http://www.childrensdefense.org/policy-priorities/ending-child-poverty/). New data released by the U.S. Census Bureau shows a devastating increase in the number of children living in poverty.

Child Development and Public Health

Immunization
Immunization protects children not only from diseases but also from serious complications, including deafness, blindness, sterility, and meningitis (Berger, 2009).  As a director of an early childhood program, I  often have families who have questioned whether or not they should immunize their child according to the recommended vaccine schedule and sometimes they questioned whether they should immunize their child at all. The American Academy of Pediatrics believes that vaccines are one of the most successful medical advances of all time. Yet there are still several parents who elect to not have their child vaccinated either at all or through a delayed vaccination schedule. As an administrator, I have had parents question if their child is at risk because some children are not being immunized. I am able to reassure these families that the child who is immunized is not at risk, however the families who opt out of immunizations are placing their children at risk of acquiring a disease which is preventable through immunizations. One reason why some families choose to not immunize according to the recommended schedule is because it is believed that immunizations are one of the main causes of autism, even though this hypothesis has been repeatedly disproved (Berger, 2009).

Immunizations are an important topic to me because I am responsible for the health and safety of all the children in our program. It is important that I am able to communicate the risk factors to the parents of the children in my care and help them to make educated decisions regarding immunizations not only for the health of their child, but also for the health of all the children who are cared for in our school. It is sad that there are still so many children around the world that die each year because vaccines are not readily available for widespread use (Berger, 2009).

References:
Berger, K.S. (2009). The developing person through childhood (5th  ed.). New York, NY: Worth Publishers

Children's Health Topics, retrieved from www.aap.org/healthtopics/immunizations.cfm on November 12th, 2011.

Childbirth––In Your Life and Around the World

Personal birthing experience:

The personal birthing experience that I chose to write about for this assignment is the birth of my first child. Not only was a very young married woman at the age of 18, I was also a military wife. My husband was deployed over seas in my 7th month of my pregnancy. I moved back home with my parents while he was deployed. Our first son was born via a scheduled c-section because he was breach. On the day that I was scheduled to deliver, I recieved news that a helicopter from my husband's ship had crashed killing more then 20 US service men. I entered surgery to deliver our first born, not knowing if my husband was on the helicopter that had crashed. I did not find out that he was safe until more then 24 hours later. In addition to this added stress, the anesthesiologist had given to much numbing medication in my epideral that kept me numb and unable to walk or feel anything from my waist down for 3 days.  Although the birth of our first child was a happy experience, it had many factors that contributed to additional stress leading up to and following his birth and although it did have a happy ending, that day could have gone a different direction.

I chose this example for this assignment because of its uniqueness and to show that situations can play a part in attitudes and behaviors that can play a part in life's events that can have an impact on a child's development.

The country that I chose is the Netherlands and although it does not have much to do with my experience, I found it interesting to know that most women here deliver their babies via a midwife and deliveries in hospitals most often do not allow an epidural as a source of pain killer. Therefore, most births occur through natural delivery. Additionally, mothers and their newborns usually do not spend more then a few hours at the hospital after a delivery. The comparison that this would have as it relates to my situation would just be that of what would happen in this situation and the risk to the mother and unborn baby if a complication, such as mine (ie: breach birth) could be extremely dangerous to both mother and child without the ability to foresee possibly birth complications.

3 IDEALS

The three ideals contained in the NAEYC and DEC codes of ethics that are meaningful to me, and how they are significant to my professional life.


NAEYC:
I-1.2 To base program practices upon current knowledge and research in the field of early childhood education, child development, and related disciplines, as well as on particular knowledge of each child.


I-1.3 To recognize and respect the unique qualities, abilities and potential of each child.


I-1.8 To support the right of each child to play and learn in an inclusive environment that meets the needs of the children with and without disabilities.


These ideals are meaningful to me as a early childhood professional because they speak to the purpose of why we are working with children. In order to run a successful program that is designed to meet the needs of the children, it is extremely important that we stay in tune with best program practices as well as current knowledge and research in the field of all areas of early childhood. In doing so, we must always recognize and respect each child and their families unique qualities, abilities and strengths of each individual child and their family. If we do not recognize their individual qualities, this would mean that the child's needs are not being met. Our purpose as early childhood professionals is to ensure that each child is able to reach their full potential. In order to ensure the children receive all of the necessary supports, we must recognize that the environment is set up in a way that every child is able to play and learn in their environment. This also means that we must be prepared to modify or arrange our play areas at any time to welcome every child that enters our program or classrooms.

Additional Resource links

Scholastic: Early Childhood Today Magazine
http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/ect/

Early Childhood News
http://www.earlychildhoodnews.com/default.aspx

Child Care Resources, Inc.
http://www.childcareresourcesinc.org/