Psychological Adjustment Essay

Poverty also influences our responses to health and illness. The level of income below that which people cannot afford a minimum, nutritionally adequate diet, suitable and secure housing, heating and hot water, and beds to sleep on.

In the article “School Readiness for Infants and Toddlers? Really? Yes, Really!” by Sandra Petersen, she discusses how from birth to age three are crucial for school readiness. The “exuberant period” which is the months before and after birth is the time when the brain creates connections, “each capturing a moment of learning.” During infancy, foundations are built in each developmental area – language, motor, cognitive, and social-emotional. These later develop into skills such as curiosity, paying attention, memory, gathering information, problem solving, and working through frustration are learned. These skills are established in infancy and toddlerhood, but they are used throughout your whole life. These are essential skills that teachers look for.

Early childhood education is crucial for success in the formalized education system. Many children born into lower income communities do not obtain this advantage. According to Kozol, simply based off accident of birth a child will lead completely different educational lives (2005). For example, a white toddler in an upper middle class neighborhood might attend a prestigious educational preliminary kindergarten. These respected early education schools are often referred to as “baby ivies” (Kozol, 2005). The child participates in pre-numeracy skills along with pre-writing skills. Conversely, a child of minority descent living in an underprivileged neighborhood may not initiate school until they are five years old. In the three previous years a

“Environmental influence during the first few years of life is crucial to all later abilities, especially intellectual ones”(Lightfoot et al., 2013, p.437). In the United States many children don’t receive an excellent education due to living in neighborhoods that are economically poor, typically where many minority children grow up. Children usually learn through social enhancement, imitation and explicit instruction that are provided in their culture from their families. The children who come from low-income backgrounds are found to do poorly in subjects, as well as standardize testing. Some thoughts are whether standardized testing discriminates against ethnic minority students and students from low income backgrounds, which usually rank below from other students in other socioeconomic status.

Children in families with lower incomes at or below the poverty line have been connected with poor cognitive and social development in early childhood. The studies that I chose to use evaluate the cognitive and social development during early childhood using various surveys, evaluations, and observations completed by or with the children, parents, and teachers. Development of any kind is dependent on the interplay of nature and nurture, or genetics and environment. These studies draw from a child’s environment during the earliest years of development, specifically birth, pre-school, and early elementary school. The studies propose living in an impoverished environment as opposed to an environment above the poverty line imposes certain

Early childhood. During the 1990s, the nation was inundated with reports on the importance of the early years on children's brain development and later cognitive achievement. While some of the reports may have overstated the issue and understated the importance of a child's later years on development, evidence suggests that the early years may be a critical period of development in which family poverty has particularly strong effects on young children. As seen in Table 1, poverty occurring early in a child's life (age two to four) is associated with large effects on indices of child school readiness and cognitive outcomes.

In conclusion each child has a unique pattern of adjusting to school life and academics in their own pattern of

There were 90 middle-class participants, mostly Caucasian, in three different age groups that participated in this study. The early elementary school group consisted of 16 boys and 14 girls age’s six to seven. The late elementary school group consisted of 16 boys and 14 girls age’s nine to 10. The adult group consisted of six men and 24 women ranging from 17 to 29 years old, all of which were currently attending a public Midwestern university. Three early elementary school children, six late elementary school children, and six adults were disregarded from this study because they did not complete the second interview. The children who participated were recruited from university staff and from local preschools and elementary schools with parental consent. The adults that were recruited were drawn from two undergraduate psychology classes and were given either class or research

One of the greatest tragedies is the effect of the economic margin between ethnic and racial groups. Families of minority groups are more likely to be the living in what is relatively speaking, poverty levels, than the majority group. The majority, primarily of the white race, live with the advantage of their much better economic standing, and are benefitted with the advantage of having the ability to get their kids ahead academically. Which leads to disproportionate ease of transition into kindergarten for kids. In a sample of 3,595 teachers surveyed by using the National Center for Early Development and Learning’s Transition Practices Survey (1996), it was reported that about 16% of children faced difficulty during entrance to kindergarten. The rates of problems acknowledged among the children also reflected the minority composition, and

The development of children can depend on many factors, one of the important ones being socioeconomic status (SES). SES can be defined as a multidimensional construct, including measures of social factors such as power, prestige and hierarchical social status, and economic resources (Hackman and Farah, 2009). Child development can be studied from multiple dimensions such as physical, mental, social, and emotional development among others. For the purposes of this study, I will be focusing on how socioeconomic status affects child cognitive development.

One main reason behind students not being successful later in school is related to the readiness of the child when they enter school. “Evidence suggests that children’s academic skills at school entry are linked to their later school achievement (Entwisle & Alexander, 1993), and that test scores in the elementary school years are associated with long-run economic outcomes such as employment and earnings (Krueger, 2003)” (Magnuson, Ruhm & Waldfogel, 2005).

Transition in education is a period of change that a child may experience when starting preschool, primary or secondary education. In this essay, the focus will be on issues faced in transition from preschool to primary school.

Even when children have a stable home there are other family life factors that can affect their progress at school. Child neglect, drugs, alcohol, gangs, violence, and hunger can all have a significant impact on how children learn both at school and at home. A child’s first educational experience should be at home, however with increasing use of drugs and alcohol, and sometimes unintentional neglect from not being able to afford quality daycare means that some children entering the classroom are woefully unprepared.

Even though some may believe that disadvantaged students may get socially abused in a preschool type program, the social development of the disadvantaged child can be one of the most influential effects that these programs can have on the student. Any one person can tell from experience that children who have any type of disadvantage tend to be either secluded from the rest of society or to be more antisocial and isolated. In a study called the Ypsilanti Perry Preschool

About one in five children in the United States has the misfortune of living in a family whose income is below the official poverty threshold (Borman and Reimers 454). Poverty has harmful effects on a child’s academic outcomes, general health, development, and school readiness. The impact of poverty has on a child depends on many factors for instance community features ( crime rate in neighborhood and school characteristics) and the individuals present in the child’s life like their parents, neighbors, or relatives. It is clear that schools and outside environmental factors contribute to whether a child is successful or not in their academic life. A child’s family, neighborhood, and type of school effects that are related with poverty