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.