My Connections to Play

When I was younger, everyone supported play. My parents would always allow my siblings and myself to go outside and play.  I remember being playing bus in the trees with my siblings. My sister was the driver and we use to sit in the tree on limbs which were the seats on the bus. We yused a lot of pretend play. Play is a lot different now than when I was growing up. When I look at the children today, they don't go outside anymore because of all he technology that's available to them such as video games and computers.There is not physical play unless they are at school and that's why there is so much obesity in children today. I feel that parents need to make sure that their child is getting some physical play each day or at least 3-4 times a week to keep the child healthy. One of my favorite things to play with was jumping rope. I use to win all of the jumpping rope contest that I play with my family and friends.

Relationship Reflection

 Each of us has a variety of relationships with other people in our lives. Then we have friends, people we communicate regularly with. All of us have friends at work, in our neighborhoods, at our schools or in our church. I have many aquaintances because I have 8 sisters and 2 brothers so I've always had several friends right in my home.

Research shows that people who have a strong social network tend to live longer, the heart and blood pressure of people with healthy relationships respond better to stress, strong social networks are associated with a healthier endocrine system and healthier cardiovascular functioning, and healthy social networks enhance the immune system's ability to fight off infectious diseases.

The relationship can be a business relationship and a casual relationship. In the pictures above, I showed family realtionships. In the first picture, it's my daughter and me.  In the second picture is my brother and I.  The third picture is my son, husband and myself. another loveof my life. We have a mother-daughter relationship that I really love. The fourth picture is my son and my two nephews. All of these people play a big role in my life.

A Note of Thanks and Support

First I would like to thank God who is the head of my life. Then I would like to thank my colleagues for sharing their experiences which have strengthened my understanding about a lot of things. Also, thanks for all of the comments and insights on my discussions. It helped me to hear the views of others so that I coukld see different views of certain topics. I feel like I gave my colleages the same things  such as great feedback on discussions and blogs.  I wish all of my colleagues nothing but success in their future endeavors. I wish them all to become future leaders in the early childhood field.

I would also like to thank my professor who was also great and very helpful with whatever questions or issues that I had. Walden couldn't have had any better professors and I'm glad to be apart of this University.


Quotes

"Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children."
Charles R. Swindoll
"Life, love, and laughter - what priceless gifts to give our children."
Phyllis Dryden

Testing for Intelligence

In early childhood,  children should be assessed but not measured on their ability to do something.  I feel that they should be assessed on the five developmental domains which are fine motor, gross motor, social/emotional, language and cogntive. I also feel that the satndarized test are good to see what a child knows but it shouldn't determine big milestones in a child's life such as graduation or entering college. A test doesn't always your abilities and strengths. Someone may be a good test taker and another person may not be. For example, in high school my daughter was a student who made A's and B's and my niece was a student who made A's, B's, C's and D's. She was a very non caring person when it came to taking a standarized test and my daughter was nervous during that time. They both took the GHSGT which is the Georgia High School Graduation Test and my niece passed all of her test. my daughter didn't pass Science or Social Studies. This is an example of good test takers and bad test takers. My daughter currently has test anxiety and she gets nervous when taking a timed test.

School-aged children are assessed all over the world and the country that I'm interested in getting information about is Japan. In Japan, children are assessed and measured in school. The focus of Japanese parents and teachers is to prepare students for two important tests: one at the end of ninth grade, which determines whether a student goes to a vocational school, a first-rate public college-preparatory high school, a second rate high school or an expensive private school; and another at the end of the 12th grade to gain entrance to university. This is similar to the schools in the US.  Also, national achievement tests are given to primary school sixth graders and third year middle school students. In some cases, the test require students to not only give an answer but their calculations.

When it comes to children being assessed,  one of my big concerns is giving the smaller children test. When they are four to eight years old, I feel that they don't understand how important it is when comes to taking standardized tests so it shouldn't be measured.

Reference:

http://factsanddetails.com/japan.php?itemid=830&catid=23&subcatid=150

Stressors

 A stressor is an activity or an event that causes stress. My husband experienced a stressor during his childhood with racism. Racism has existed throughout human history. It may be defined as the hatred of one person by another or the belief that another person is less than human because of skin color, language, customs, place of birth or any factor that supposedly reveals the basic nature of that person. It has influenced wars, slavery, the formation of nations, and legal codes. During the past 500-1000 years, racism on the part of Western powers toward non-Westerners has had a far more significant impact on history than any other form of racism such as racism among Western groups or among Easterners, such as Asians, Africans, and others.

When my husband was in his younger childhood, he went to a school that only had 2 African Americans and he as included in the 2. He said that the children called him and the other African American child bad names. He also said that thesome of the parents took their children out of school because they attended the school. He doesn't show in any way that it affected him but it was stressful for him during that time. Now I have a son that's 16 years old and he doesn't see color at all like my husband. He has friends of all cultures. We talked with him about racism and he realy didn't understand it. He even got offended when my daughter tried to give him examples of events that have happened dealing with racism. I feel that we should treat everyone like we want to be treated whether they are black, white, orange or blue, it shouldn't matter. I've taught my kids to never judge a person from the outside but the inside.

Some children do suffer from racism for a long period of time. I watched Oprah during black history month and there were so may people on there who were still hurting from something that happened when they were children. For example, one lady was on there and she talked about how this other lady called her names and made fun of her to her friends an bothered her everyday. This lady was still hurt today from that incident. The lady apologize for doing all those horrible things to her and gave her a hug. It was sad to see. Racism still lives but people need to get right with God because they will have to answer to that one day. Children in all states and countries effected by racism  however it is stronger in some places than others.

Below is a picture of my husband and I.

Breastfeeding

The reason why I chose this topic is because my daughter just experienced this with her baby. When my daughter was in the hospital, the lactation nurse came and talked to her about breastfeeding because that was the method that she had chose. I've always heard people say that babies that are breast fed are smarter and are less likely to get sick than babies that are not breast fed and my daughter wants nothing but the best for her baby like I've always wanted for my children and my grandson so she decided to breast feed. From listening to the conversations with my daughter and the nurse, I learned that its true that they are less likely to get sick because brest milk provides the babies with antibiodies against any disease to which the mother is immune. I also saw the weight that she loss in such a short period of time from breast feeding. She said that each time she fed the baby, her stomach would contract and her stomach went back down to its size. She only got a chance to breast feed my grandson for 2 weeks because she was put on blood pressure pills and she was recommended to stop while taking the medication. I also learned the signs when a breast fed baby is getting enough nourishment. Two of the signs are breasts feel softer after nursing, because your baby has emptied some of the milk that was making them firm and after a feeding, your baby seems relaxed and satisfied. This was what I heard the nurse say to my daughter.

According to Berger, in developing nations, breast feeding reduces infant death. In the US and worldwide, more than 90% of infants are breast-fed at birth, but only 36% are breast fed only for the firs six months. The country that I chose to talk about is breast feeding in Africa. “In South Africa, as well as in most of Africa, there is a strong cultural belief that babies must breastfeed, no matter what. When you are not breastfeeding, your child is losing the nutrients that the child is supposed to be getting. So the child will grow up with a lot of illnesses, because his or her immune system is not strong, according to the article, "Exclusive Breastfeeding Protets Newborns from HIV/AIDS". The pediatrician says research, including his own, has proven that “breast milk is best” for babies, and that other methods to feed the youngsters should be considered “last resorts.” Coovadia says of all the ways to prevent the deaths of the estimated 10 million children who die every year in the developing world  such as vaccinations and safe breast feeding is “top of the range.” It was really interesting to find out that breast feeding babies in African reduce the baby's chance for getting HIV/AIDS.

References:

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/a-13-2009-05-29-voa19-68815977.html

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

The Birth of My Grandson

First, I would like to share my thoughts on the birth of my first grandchild. On December 28, 2010, my daughter gave birth to her son, Carson. That was one of the happiest days of my life. Before I explain her birthing experience, I will tell you how her pregnancy was. During her first trimester, she was sick everyday. She lost 7 lbs because she wasn't eating a lot because of the nausea. She couldn't deal with smells because they would make her sick. After that first trimester, she was fine up until her 8th month. During her 8th month, she got preeclampsia which put her in the hospital because her blood pressure was elevated, liver enzymes were abnormal and she had severe swelling in her feet and legs. She stayed in the hospital for 16 days until she gave birth. On Christmas Day, we all were in the hospital wating on his arrival. Her husband and I took her for a ride in the wheel chair around the hospital just so she didn't have to stay in the room on Christmas day. She wanted to be home for Christmas but I explained to her that the weather was bad and she lived far from the hospital so if something happened at home, that wouldn't have been good. She listened and tried to make the best of it. The doctors and nurses were so sweet and gave her whatever she needed. They even brought her a laptop that she had the entire time that she was there. I had never heard of that before. They also brought her a DVD in her room so she was getting spoiled while she was in there even though she was on a low carbs diet so her food was not so tasty at times.

The day of her delivery, she was taken down to labor and delivery and was prepared to deliver. At 12:00 noon, she was given Petocin, then at 4:00 pm, her doctor broke her water. She delivered my grandson at 1:14 am. Her epidural kept wearing off and I was feeling so bad for her. I even told her I wish that I could do it for her. It was hard as a mom watching your daughter in pain and knowing that you can't do anything about it. She says now, from what she had to go through, she doesn't want to experience that again. From all of that, my adorable, healthy grandson came and I'm just loving him and spoiling him rotten. We talk on the phone and she puts him on speaker phone and just talks to me and I talk back to him. When he comes to my house, he lights up the house with his presence.

One of the questions was what do I think of births occuring at home. With my daughter being in the situation she was in, I would want her to be at a hospital because they are very equipped for any complications that could occur. The main reason why she chose the hospital that she chose was if there would've been any complications, they would get the care they needed at that location.

Another question was to choose a region of the world or a country, other than the U.S., and find out how births happen there. The region I chose was Asia. This is what I learned when I did research on Asian women and childbirth. According to the Health Day News, Asian women experience less labor pain than other women, say US Researchers. "Labor progress and pain are influenced by many different factors but are difficult to study because conditions during labor are continually changing," Dr. Pamela Flood, of the anesthesia department at Columbia University, said in a news release from the American Society of Anesthesiologists. "We created mathematical models to assess labor progression and pain in 500 women having their first babies," Flood explained. "This technique has the benefit of allowing researchers to assess the labor experience for individual women, in addition to the responses of a group as is seen in this study. Ideally, in the future we can use this model to predict when and if a woman will be able to deliver vaginally." The researchers studied 100 sequential deliveries from each of five ethnic groups -- Asian, Hispanic, black, white and other -- and found significant associations between ethnicity, labor progress and labor pain. Asian women had slower active labor and reported less pain than women of other ethnicities. The researchers also found that women who weighed more generally had slower active labor. The study is in the November issue of Anesthesiology. "The ability to predict labor pain would be helpful to assist in the development of specific coping mechanisms during labor, helping each woman better know what to expect," Flood said. "More accurate expectations about labor pain and progress will help new mothers and their doctors to plan their treatment."

What other stressors that surround birth might influence a child’s development? Taking drugs, stressing about jobs, finances, etc, could influence a child's development in many ways.

What kinds of support and/or intervention surrounding a child’s birth may foster healthy development? Support from the spouse, family members and friends play a big support role. Her husband and I were very supportive to whatever she needed and that made her not be stressed about anything. She had great friends and cousins to come over and cook for them after the birth of their son. There were programs that the hospital offered that provided healthy development but she didn't go because she had a lot of support without the services that were offered.

References:

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/pain/articles/2009/10/30/asians-seem-to-suffer-less-during-childbirth