As children grow older, they build the psychological and social skills that are needed to better understand their surroundings and are able to gather a better sense of control. As the child’s developmental limits are reached, most of their fears which are typical in childhood start to go away. Therefore, the rise of normal childhood fears are not the same as the anxieties and fears caused by traumatic circumstances for example, sexual or physical abuse. While common fears dissipate with age, the anxieties and fears caused by mistreatment and other situations do not. In early childhood the exposure to severely fearful encounters tend to affect the brain of the developing child, especially in the areas that involve learning and emotions.
Such toxic stress can have damaging effects on learning, behavior, and health across the lifespan. Learning how to cope with adversity is an important part of healthy child development. The most effective prevention is to reduce exposure of young children to extremely stressful conditions. Research also indicates that supportive, responsive relationships with caring adults as early in life as possible can prevent or reverse the damaging effects of toxic stress response (Center on Developing Child, nd). By establishing clear lines of communication between adults and children, and home and school, parents and teachers can help to shape children’s perceptions in informed ways. During times of trouble, when emotions run high, parents and teachers can help children develop the skills necessary to manage their feelings, to confront unpleasant or adverse realities, and to acquire greater emotional stability. In order to support children in better understanding their world, adults may have to help them come to terms with circumstances that are frightening, confusing, overwhelming, or possibly unrelated to their past experience. By providing a safe and supportive environment and a healthy acceptance of all that is good in life, a calm and ready-to-listen adult can facilitate children’s well being, and help to alleviate the fear, dismay or confusion they may feel. In doing so, it is important to honor and nurture children’s sensitivity. Although parents and teachers cannot shelter children from all adversity, they are well positioned to help children learn about the imbalances in the world, to better comprehend their impact, and to find thoughtful ways to strike a comfortable and meaningful balance of their own (Foster & Matthews,
During the Salem witch trials, many lives that were taken due to a few people’s self defence. In the book, The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, a group of girls caused a whole town to go array. This group of girls were caught naked, dancing and conjuring spirits. These girls were going to accept the blame and receive the whipping for what they did, but one of the girls, Abigail, was not about to go down. Abigail had the whole group of girls convinced that it would be best to lie and to not accept the beating. By doing this, they were put into the court and used to tell the judges whether or not the people whom were accused were truly witches. Though the girls had no way of telling if the accused were truly witches, they
The conditional fee arrangement was introduced by the Access to Justice Act (AJA) 1999, as an attempt to transfer legal funding from the treasury to the private sector. This occurred as a result of an increasing and ridiculous growth in the cost of legal aid, namely from a few hundred million to well over 2.1 billion pounds from the 1980s to 2000. Moreover, it was not because demand was growing. Rather, number of cases relying on legal aid had decreased. Due to the need to control budget, Conditional fee arrangements are used to fund many civil cases which legal aid now excludes, and the issues brought about by conditional fee arrangements have been debated over the last decade. The conditional fee arrangements are sometime known as ‘no
At young ages, children can be influenced greatly by the things they see around them. A child’s mind is easily influenced at young ages. Fear is a major influence that can shape the way a young girl/boy grows up. In the article “Why boys become Vicious”, Golding states, “when people are afraid they discover the violence within” (Golding).
Children have many fears which should be acknowledged by adults. Fears are often the underlying cause of aggressive behavior, withdrawn behavior, and physical symptoms. Oaklander reads a book about fear to children then encourages them to tell a story about fear. Picture cards and drawing fears with lines, shapes, symbols, or colors also help children share their fears. Just like adults, children have stressful situations and traumatic experiences.
In Camilla Townsend’s book, Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma, Townsend points out that there are many historical inaccuracies and myths that are associated with the story of Pocahontas. Using historical evidence to support the story of Pocahontas, Townsend attempted to create an accurate timeline bringing the past to the present. At the same time, the Disney film Pocahontas attempted to depict Algonquian culture accurately, however, according to history, much of the material presented in the film is full of misconceptions and is historically imprecise. In fact, Disney’s Pocahontas epitomizes John Smith and
Social Class’s Standards In 1930, the national income halved and one-fourth of the American workforce stood unemployed (“The 1930s”). When the lower end of economic social class implied an empty stomach, social class naturally lingered on everybody’s mind. However, social class exists not simply as an economic construct. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee presents a story of a town during the 1930s with many well-defined social classes.
Childhood trauma affects many brain systems. The stress response system and its cosystems pay the greatest toll when a child experiences chronic threat. Taking a closer look at the
Childhood is a time for playdates and learning, a time for big dreams and imaginary adventures. Safety and security should not be questions that linger in uncertainty. However, this is not the case for many children across the globe. Thousands of children from all walks of life each day are faced with unspeakable horror and must deal with the resulting trauma from then on. However, in children, managing this trauma takes a different toll on the mind and heart than it does in adults. While the type of trauma may vary in pervasiveness across countries, trauma occurring in childhood has the ability to cause long term damage to the growing neurological functioning in the brain and negatively influence children’s spiritual development, wounding
It impacts the maturation of specific brain areas at particular ages, the physiological and neuro-endocrinological responses as well as impacting the ability to coordinate cognitions, behaviours and emotional regulation. Therefore, the effect of trauma is different in different developmental stages. Ornitz (1996) has listed critical periods of major structural changes in brain development in accordance with Piaget’s stages of cognitive development. This includes the periods between early childhood (1.5-4 years), late childhood (6-10 years), puberty and mid-adolescence. This ensures that there are widespread implications of trauma in childhood especially in terms of the age at which exposure to trauma occurs as well as the areas of the brain affected. For example, the volume of the brain shows a rapid increase in first two years (Matsuzawa et al., 2001), a time when the development of attachment also takes place. Moreover, this growth is more experience- dependent (Schore, 2001). Children below the age of two also show a greater right brain than left brain
In Bremner’s (2007) article, he states that “Traumatic stress has a broad range of effects on brain function and structure, as well as on neuropsychological components of memory” (p. 455). Specifically, the areas of the brain that are affected by a trauma response include the amygdala, hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, and, the neurochemical systems. Therefore, neurologically speaking, when trauma is experienced, it changes how the brain transmits, interprets the event and stores the information. In addition, Broderick (2015), states that physiological and neuropsychological changes are also evident in children who have experienced risk. For example, DRD4 indicates higher levels of aggression, 5-HTT indicates anxiety and depression, the child can experience weak verbal, problem solving skills, and, become unable to understand the consequences, of their reactions to feeling at risk (p. 276).
Research has shown that early exposure to circumstances that produce persistent fear and chronic anxiety can have lifelong consequences by disrupting the developing architecture of the brain (National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, 2010). Changes in the brain activity and have been shown to have long-term, adverse consequences for learning, behavior, and health (National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, 2010). Research as shown that several parts of the brain are key actors in the production of fear and anxiety (National Institute of Mental Health, 2014). Using brain imaging technology and neurochemical techniques, scientists have discovered that the amygdala and the
Julien Green, the renowned 20th century writer, articulated the unique emotional trauma that children experience when they experience fear. While fear can be stressful for young children, it is also a natural part of the developmental cycle of children, and occurs in predictable patterns. (Nicholson J.I, Pearson Q.M., 2003) Throughout the years, researchers have been able to identify a cycle pertaining to the nature of fear that children experience. The initial fears of infants include being separated from their parents and of strange people or places. As children mature, these initial fears are replaced with the fear of dark rooms, sudden changes in appearances, large animals, and mystical creatures. When children are of early school age, fears morph once again to dangerous people and being alone. (Nicholson J.I, Pearson Q.M., 2003)
What causes fear is a warning trigger as a cause of the 2-system-view that produces an instinctive biological reaction to an environmental trigger stimulus. Also, the cognitive system reaction of emotional stimuli may cause a response through interpretative and social, subjective on the basis of one’s experience through events. Therefore, fear may be an emotional reaction to causal life events or stimulus, coping and response strategies initiate and activate responses. For example, fear triggers fight or flight, raises cortisol levels in the brain, and initiates emotional and physical reactions. The emotion of fear may cause different effects, for example, with positive affect; there may be a cause to seek safety in a dangerous situation or
Through out the course of this paper fear and its uses in persuasive campaigns will be examined thoroughly. Evidence will be shown through the campaigns used to stop smoking, have safe sex, drink responsibly, and stop drug abuse. When evaluating the techniques one must also be aware of the target on is trying to persuade. Everyone is different and internalizes their fears differently, leading to different stages of the mental process it takes to persuade the targets to improve their choices in terms of these topics.